[A1.3] Blanchéd Dove is Only One

Blanchèd Dove is Only One

The small border town of Riverside appeared as a dot on the horizon and—more alarmingly—it looked like a speck of dirt on a colossal bulwark of rippling glass that rose from the town’s namesake and extended far beyond anypony’s vision—both on either side, and vertically.  The thick wall vanished into the sky and didn’t appear to even think of ending until it hit the void of space.

A collective gasp ran through the group, and even I couldn’t hold back a foreboding shiver.  The rippling glass that comprised the wall was, I knew, water drawn forth from the river, and the concept itself was a contingency plan in case Draconic-Equestrian relations became less than favorable.  That the wall was active was a warning in and of itself.

I couldn’t tell whether the group’s surprise came from worry at that revelation, or just from awe at the rippling wall, but they did not slow their pace.  For the first time, genuine fear flashed across Deluge’s face, but she swallowed hard, her eyebrows dropped, and she set her eyes firmly on the tiny spot that was Riverside, a mixture of determination and fear solidifying in her eyes.  I couldn’t help a small smile; it was expression I knew well but had rarely ever seen.

Green foliage below us gradually gave way to golden stalks of a postcard-worthy plains, bathed in fading sunlight filtered through the wall; a wavering beach for the standing ocean that towered before us.  Through the depths of the rippling glass, we could see a mountain range’s silhouette and no more, but every now and then a dragon-shaped silhouette would wander across the watery crests.

I checked Descant’s compass.  Riverside lay on the west side of the river, Draconia on the east, so the compass should point upstream, along the river.  But it hadn’t budged.  It was still pointing at me.  I moved it around me experimentally, and the needle smoothly followed my moments, always pointing at me.  What was up with this thing?

Deluge gulped again when a particularly large shadow popped up, roaring inaudibly.

“He’ll be fine,” I said suddenly.

She gave me a look, half-exasperated, half-confused.

“Look.”  I pointed at the wall.  “None of them are trying to get through.  It’s not ponies they’re after.”

Deluge followed my gaze and found the truth.  “Well,” she began.  “We still have to find him.  He could be anywhere.”

The speck that was Riverside had split from a dot to several dots.  One of them stood far above the rest, and even from this distance it was clearly a gateway through the wall.

“No,” I said sharply.  “I know where he’ll be.  The tricky part will be getting past the wall.”

She suddenly turned to me with a viciously venomous gaze, blue eyes churning with rage.  “You know where he’ll be?” she repeated ominously.  “First you know where he’s stationed, now you know where he is?”

“Look,” I said calmly.  “One of my contracts had work for me here.  For me to work, I kind of have to know where every official within a few miles is.  Your fiancé w—is lieutenant of a special task force.  I don’t know what for, only that it was something specific enough that he couldn’t spare enough time to interrupt me.”

“Hm.”  Her muzzle scrunched in a very not-wholly-convinced way, but she left it at that.  Or she did, until we were minutes away from Riverside and the soft gurgle of the rippling wall permeated the air.

“So what about guards here?”

I nodded at the two that were escorting us.  “They don’t recognize me,” I said quietly.  “And if they don’t, the ones in Riverside won’t.”  Though it was no excuse for impetuosity, precious few could connect the callsign of my hoofwork to my appearance.  After the first time, I had gone out of my way to ensure I would not be seen.  But then, it is simple to not be seen when lightning reduces your entire appearance to a mirage made of shadows.

Deluge looked a little more reassured but had time for little else.  The Riverside-speck had blossomed into the glorious town that I’d staked out in for weeks before my last job; a small-but-dense forest of what looked like lighthouses with wide-open gaps at their tops for dragons.  It looked rather like a collection of chess pieces, except for the gate.

I had seen it before, but back then it had been inactive.  Rune holes carved into the black stone were now ablaze with swirling turquoise light, little whorls of white wandering this way and that along the gateway’s length.  The gate itself did not mark a safe entrance; just through its aperture,  a thick downfall thundered past, dropping straight into the river without so much as a single stray drop.  It looked more like a decorative waterfall than an entrance into Draconia.

Two figures stood in the archway, made all the more regal by the fluid cascade that was their backdrop.  One’s dark blue armor kept winking at me from the shadows, while the other’s sapphire scales did the same with about seven more colors.  The dragon—an Eastern dragon—was smaller than Descant, but an imposing figure nonetheless, undulating slowly as her kind were wont to do.  Other than those two, the town appeared to be deserted.

Fleet Hooves angled us straight for them, and one, two, three, four crates touched down, each crate’s squad still hovering at the ready.  Fleet Hooves, to the contrary, set all four hooves firmly on the ground before marching straight up to the purple unicorn.

“Good afternoon,” she said courteously, her voice loud enough for us to hear.  “I have a shipment due for Crimson Lotus.”

“Crimson Lotus?  He’s around.”  Emerald tendrils wrapped around the unicorn’s horn as he circled the crates, scanning their contents.  He trod around the convey with measured steps, his darkened armor glinting in the sun; I shivered involuntarily, but he passed us without comment, and when he was back at the front, he released the magic.  “Ma’am, just one question, if I may.  Who are the two mares in the back?”

“Friends,” Fleet Hooves replied without hesitation.  “They’re just looking for Lieutenant Aubade.”

“Ah.”  Deluge and I wordlessly joined Fleet Hooves at the fore, just in time to see the unicorn looking crestfallen, his true character hidden by the magic of the guard’s helmet.  “They’ll have to wait, I’m afraid.  We cannot open the gate for you at this time.”

Before anypony could say any more, there was the sound of rustling grass, and I wheeled around to find another soldier, an earth pony, standing behind us.  There was a odd-looking tangle of sticks and string slung across her back.  “Excuse me,” she said smoothly, her dreamy voice freezing the scene.  “Would one of you happen to be Fleet Hooves?”

“I am,” Fleet Hooves said uncertainly, having turned around at her name.  “May I ask who’s speaking?”

“Swan,” the earth pony said, still in that dreamy voice.  She removed her helmet, and immediately the metal’s magic faded, revealing her to have a coat of pure white, cared for so painstakingly that it shone and glowed like freshly fallen snow.  She swept aside a lock of jet-black hair, which swung back into line with her dirty orange, elegantly-curled mane, and examined us with eyes the color of honey.

“Um.”  While the transformation was striking, I found it more concerning that she had removed her helmet in front of complete strangers.  If she had worn it to meet us, then she was probably on-duty, but since she’d taken it off, she either wasn’t on-duty, or she just wasn’t afraid of the repercussions.

Swan nodded at one of the many towers surrounding us; now that I looked properly, each tower had a different arrangement of golden rings.  The one in question bore six rings, with four sitting near the base and two criss-crossed near the top.  “It’d be a huge help if you flew those crates up there.”

Fleet Hooves hesitated.  “What kind of feathers did you order?”

“Oh, right,” Swan said, smacking herself.  “Swan, Trumpeter Swan.”

Fleet Hooves looked relieved, and she motioned to the convoy to move the crates up.  As the mailponies obliged—some with hushed grumbling—Swan led Deluge and me into the tower.  Spiral stairs curled up the whitestone wall, leaving the tower’s center wide open, and the steps were spaced out and more than large enough for a dragon to climb them.  Swan had the short end of the stick; Deluge and I merely hovered along, dodging the crystal lamps, as she clambered up the steps with a speed—or rather, lack thereof—that she was clearly growing annoyed of.

“Here,” Deluge said, moving down and teasing Swan’s helmet out from under her leg.  “I can carry this.”

“Thanks.  I can’t stand wearing that for too long,” Swan said gratefully, skipping up the steps with unhampered agility.  “So...I don’t believe I caught your names.”

“Silhouette.”

“Deluge.”

Swan’s muzzle scrunched up instantly, and her head swiveled around so she could get a better look at Deluge.  “Deluge?” she repeated in wonder, mouth left agape for just a second before she pulled herself together.  “Of course.  Well, I was going to ask you what brought you to Riverside.”

Deluge made the connection instantly.  “Is he okay?” she demanded.

“Lieu—excuse me, Meridian—is fine.  He’s a little tired, but that’s it.”

“I need to talk to him.”

Swan’s step faltered ever so slightly; she reasserted herself and took the next step, making the trip-up look like a momentary hesitation more than a reeling shock.  The way her limbs splayed, however, exposed two things; the boot on her right foreleg had two miniscule hooks on the inner side, and the boot on her left foreleg had a long, raised strip of metal along the side, bent at one end so it looked like an elongated U. “He’s on the other side of the wall,” she said.  “But you heard Azimuth— they can’t open the gate right now.”

“Why’s that?”

I shot a sideways glance at Deluge, whose ears were upright with tension.  There was iron in her voice, an edge that demanded answers, but she honed it with courtesy and choice words; I had expected a sharp why not, not why’s that. Her two words were the last nail in my growing suspicions; here was a pony whose habits and manners were consistent with that of the highest of social classes, whose fillyhood was blessed with wealth beyond mosts’ imagination, and who bore invisible scars left by insurmountable expectations.  They may have been left by vastly different things, but they were eerily identical to mine.  If I didn’t know any better, I wouldn’t be able to tell our scars apart.

“Nopony knows how,” Swan said simply.  “Azimuth and what’s-his-face have been trying to figure it out for days.”

“Hmm.”  Deluge rubbed her chin, but by then we’d reached the end of the stairs, a red wooden door.  Swan lifted the latch and ushered us into into a wide-open room with enough space for several dragons.  An opening at the far end looked out over the rolling forest, which seamlessly blended into mountains at the horizon.

A pile what looked like thin wooden sticks sat next to us; to their right was the four massive crates and a black mound that looked like a pile of coal.  On the other side of us lay a neat arrangement of three sleeping bags, a few pairs of saddlebags custom-tailored to fit around the guard armor , and a couple of bales of hay.

Deluge’s eyes fell upon the crates and widened, then she quickly darted to the opening.  “GOODBYE, FLEA!”

And barely, just barely, I heard the mailpony’s response.  “Later, De’!  Later, Silhouette!”

“Damn,” Deluge said quietly.  “We’ve gotta catch up some time.”  The pegasus turned away from the opening to find Swan and I staring at her; Swan out of confusion at Fleet Hooves’ nickname, myself at Deluge’s sudden disregard for an indoor voice, though we weren’t really indoors.  To her credit, she took it in stride; she returned Swan’s helmet, then went to the opening again.

“I’m gonna go talk with Azimuth and the dragon,” she said.  “Maybe I can figure something out.”

And with that, she dropped out; I didn’t bother protesting or asking to help.  I would be more a hindrance than anything else trying to deconstruct a sky-high wall of water.

“I could use your help with something,” Swan said suddenly.  “If you’ve got the time.”

« § »

One lecture, over two dozen failed attempts, and about an hour later, I made my very first arrow that made it past Swan’s inspection without being immediately dismantled.  The sun was only just starting to touch the horizon, yet in the short amount of time since Deluge had gone to look into the rippling wall, the earth pony had somehow managed to make about four times as many functional arrows as I had even attempted to make.  Guess that’s what a cutie mark of three arrows does for you.

“Good!” she said, turning the shaft of my arrow over so she could see all the fletchings.  “Good, good angle, good spacing.”

I groaned a little, but reached back, withdrew her tangle of sticks, and deftly shook it; with a click-clack-click, it unfolded into a sturdy wooden bow.  It appeared to have one too many shafts until she slotted extra one into the groove on her left foreleg; the contraption limited her movement, but only slightly.  She moved to the far end of the room and, with one swift, practiced movement, nocked and loosed the arrow at one of the hay bales.  It hit dead center.

“See, you’re getting the hang of it,” she said, detaching her bow.

I groaned again, louder this time.  Craftsponyship and artistry were a foreign world to me.  Beautiful, exotic, but foreign.  I could’ve sat there trying to make arrows for days and I wouldn’t’ve gotten any better at it; the one supposedly good arrow was beginner’s luck for sure.  I still couldn’t verbalize what exactly was happening.

“Know why we use swan feathers?” she said suddenly.

I almost dropped the half-completed arrow I was holding.  “Uh...sure, I guess.”

“Swans are vain,” she said simply.  “They’re always preening.”

Around the time the sun had completely vanished, Deluge flew in through the opening, looking despondent.

“No good,” she said, as soon as she was within earshot.  “Azimuth and Canzonetta said it just rose about a week ago.  It didn’t look like magic to me, pegasus or unicorn.”

I remembered the dragon staring wistfully up at the passing torrent, her sapphire scales reflecting a veritable rainbow of hues, and a sudden thought struck me.  Might she be...?

“Hm.”  Swan tossed another arrow into the pile, but got no further; the sound of spirited chatter floated up the steps, and within a minute we had been joined by two new ponies.  Both of them were armored and both were carrying their helmets instead of wearing them.  One stopped abruptly once she noticed the room’s occupants.

“Ohhi!” she said.  She was a pale yellow earth pony with magenta eyes and a green mane which appeared to be unable to hang in anything but tangled clumps.  The other, a unicorn whose blue coat was so dark it seemed to absorb light, looked about as thrilled as one might be at a funeral, and wasted no time in haughtily turning her back on us, a wispy curtain of tinted silver swinging forward to hide her face.  Her ears were folded down.

Deluge hesitated, then advanced and introduced us both; I hardly heard her.  The concerted effort to make arrows had drained a lot of my energy, but what little I had left was spent shooting furtive glances at the blue unicorn every time nopony was looking.

I knew a number of Deluge’s secrets, and I could guess at a few of Swan’s.  Even the newcomer earth pony was dropping tells like she just got out of the rain; the way she kept inching towards her bags, the way her muzzle twitched in revulsion as she neared me, and of course, the knife and carrots on her flank.  If I could watch her for ten minutes I could pare the guesses I had down to three, maybe two.

But the blue unicorn...I could not guess at hers.  Even her cutie mark—a smudged black dot with a thin ring around it—told me nothing.

“Eve,” Swan said loudly.  “At least say hello, will you?”

The unicorn grunted, but did not turn around.  Deluge was frozen; only her eyes were moving, following the lazy swish of the unicorn’s gossamer tail, the rest of her face set in a sort of hard-baked expression I couldn’t even begin to place.

“A-hem.”  The sound popped the tension like an overinflated balloon; everypony stopped to look at the earth pony.  “Hey guys, I’m Juli, Julienne.”  She bowed.  “Caelum’s mess sergeant, at your service.”

She glanced at the blue unicorn, who was smoothing out her bedroll with an air of sharpened dignity.

“And that’s Eve,” Julienne whispered conspiratorially.  “She’s in charge of, err...cleaning up after us, so I’m guessing she’s not too happy to see you two.”

“Definitely not,” said Swan.

“My apologies.”  Deluge inclined her head politely, but her ears twitched by a hair.  “Deluge.”

“Silhouette.“

“Deluge?”  Julienne repeated.  “So you must be—oh.”  Her face fell, and she looked at Eve again.  “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

The temperature seemed to plummet, the air crystallized, and even time slowed its immutable march at the sound of the word.  The voice—Eve’s voice—was rough and laden with bass tones, almost a growl, and did not seem like it belonged to a pony.  I did a double take and had to look around to make sure nopony else had spoken.  They hadn’t.

It was becoming harder and harder to resist the urge to stomp my hoof and demand an explanation.  There was more going on here than I could tell—which wasn’t entirely new, but it was starting to smell like danger, and I was surrounded by military ponies.  A single misstep could kill the entire endeavor and possibly me before I could do so much as unfurl my wings.

Deluge’s ears twitched again, and so did her wings; she didn’t look so much confused as worried.  Swan and Julienne’s eyes swiveled between Eve and Deluge, tracing a line that might as well have been an icicle, spanning the distance between the rain specialist’s blue eyes and the back of the dark unicorn’s head.

“So um,” I muttered.  “What’s that dragon doing here?”

Swan bolted upright, neck stiff and eyes wide.  “Don’t,” she said warningly.  “Don’t ever, ever call her ‘that dragon’.  Ever.”

“Her name is Canzonetta,” Julienne said firmly, rooting through her bags.  “And as far as we know, she’s the only one who can pass through the wall without being crushed.”

I bit my tongue as Swan deftly finished another three arrows and tossed them into the pile.  “She was on the other side at first, but when Azimuth showed up she came through to see if he had any ideas on how to get others through.”

“He doesn’t.”  Eve looked back at us, and I shuddered involuntarily.  Her eyes were a pale purple that had an otherworldly air about them, and they weren’t so much hard as...soulless.  Hollow.  Windows into a void.

Swan threw her empty quiver at Eve, who sighed, turned around, and began lifting the arrows one by one, floating them over her head.  The quiver began to glow gently, and as each arrow passed by her horn, she briefly touched it in turn, causing it to give off a blinding burst of light that possessed the same pale purple, cavernous look of her eyes.  The light quickly faded when she broke contact, leaving the arrows looking no worse for the wear, if perhaps a bit darker.

“Thanks,” said Swan.  Eve grunted again and lifted another string of arrows; Swan turned to us.  “You know you two don’t have to keep carrying those.”

Deluge immediately removed her saddlebags and bedroll.  I hesitated but followed suit, setting them down gently next to the opening, thankful for the dried fruits.  She dropped her bags beside mine, and we both turned around to find Julienne attacking a multihued spread of fruit and vegetables with a knife.  She looked up.

“I could use some wood,” she said kindly.

I instinctively looked to the wooden crates, but Swan was inside the only open crate, gathering another batch of feathers for fletchings.  The other three were still sealed; emptying the first would provide the needed wood, but it would also leave the feathers free to fly around, most likely into the fire that Julienne presumably intended to start.

“Why us?” Deluge asked curiously.

The chef shrugged.  “If you’re going to wait the wall out with us, it’ll be a while.  And y’know...none of us are pegasi.”

I waffled on whether or not to ask why Eve couldn’t help, but the periodic flashes of her odd magic were throwing me off.  There were only two ponies I knew of who could cast magic that didn’t look like a colored field of stars, and both possessed both wings and a horn.  Yet here Eve was, belting out spells that looked like she’d torn them straight from the blackened void of outer space.

Deluge nudged me and took off; I caught up with her once we’d cleared the opening.  Silver light from the rising moon welcomed us to the sky with open arms.

“Hey,” she said.  “I’ll get the wood.  You go talk to Azimuth and Canzonetta—maybe you’ll figure something out.”

“Wait.”  I swerved until we were face-to-face.  “What’s between you and Eve?  You guys looked ready to kill each other.”

Deluge sighed and flew around me.  “Can I get the wood first?”

I frowned.  “Sure, but if one of you gets killed I’m flying away.  Far away.”

She snorted disbelievingly and, without turning around, flew off towards the distant forest.  I watched her gather sticks for a while, just to make sure she wasn’t doing anything bizarre, before I glided down to the gate, where Canzonetta was still staring forlornly at the wall.  Azimuth, unlike the other three soldiers, had not shed his armor , and also unlike the other three, there were no other Lunar Guards nearby.

I walked up to him and stood behind him for a bit; he was engrossed in a particularly large rune hole on the underside of the archway.  It was odd seeing someone clad in the Lunar armor without disguised features; I hadn’t taken a good look at him when he inspected us earlier.  His coat was this peculiar shade of purple that reminded me of the night sky at dusk, but his eyes were a deep green, his mane a striking pale orange.  When he didn’t notice me, I took a deep breath and adopted the most formal tone I could.  “Azimuth?”

He wheeled about, but his eyes were calm.  The clanking armor of a Lunar Guard even sounded different than its solar sibling.  “Can I help you, ma’am?”

Silence and a meaningful glance at the wall was answer enough.  Canzonetta tore herself away from the water and swayed over to Azimuth’s side, gazing down at me with two icy blue eyes that rippled as the wall behind her, a world and a half colder than Descant’s golden pair.  I couldn’t help an apprehensive shiver; here, right in front of me, was an honest-to-Celestia Eastern water dragon.  Eastern dragons were rare enough—undoubtedly especially so, given the dragons’ decline—but a water dragon, too?  Virtually every dragon I’d encountered was a fire dragon; water dragons couldn’t be all that common.

Don’t ever call her ‘that dragon’.

“Greetings.”  Canzonetta commanded a voice as fluid, regal, and beautiful as the open sea, but it held the same hints of lurking peril, and as was characteristic of most elder dragons, it was a voice that breathed with the world.  I internally panicked at the sound—would she, like Descant, be able to smell the magic on me?  How much would she be able to see?  What would she be able to see?

“Know this one,” she said suddenly; Azimuth craned his neck backwards until he could see her.  “The Forbearer.  One with broken wings.”

I cringed, but stayed standing.  One and two.  Speech oddities aside, what she meant was terribly clear.

“Know what one has wrought.”  She paused.  “Have one’s gratitude.”

A shiver ran down my back.  Three.

“Whom one seeks awaits the other.”

Meridian was waiting for Deluge.  My dragon-given name.  What I’ve done.  I dropped my act.  She saw.  Saw it, knew it all.  There was no point in trying to hide it from her, and indeed within seconds she’d guessed why I had come.

“Wall.”  She straightened up and looked skywards, where the wall faded into the sky.  “Knows, breathes.  Stops from leveling other lands.”

“We need to get through.”

She arched her neck down, once again staring me down with her eyes of ice.  “Know not how.  The Sentinel cannot read runes, cannot bring others through wall.”

As I shivered at her name for Azimuth, she lifted one claw, brought it to the wall, and pushed it through the shimmering surface.

With a piercing hiss and the crystalline ring of shivering dragonscales, the water she touched vaporized, swiftly recondensing and plunging the immediate area into a whiteout fog so dense I could barely see the ground beneath me.  The tinkling of ice followed, vaguely from Canzonetta’s direction, but I could see nothing.

A sudden flash of emerald light cleared the fog, and I was left stupidly blinking to clear the lingering image of white.  Canzonetta had withdrawn her claw and appeared perfectly unaffected; underneath her was a dragon-shaped outline of tiny ice pellets, and her scales were as iridescent as ever, with not a single drop or scratch on them.

Then Azimuth approached the wall, lowered his head, and poked the wall with his horn.  Unsurprisingly, frigid water flew everywhere, soaking the gateway, the ground, and me, but I hardly felt it; once again, the water that touched Canzonetta vaporized, condensed, then solidified.  The resultant sleet bounced off of her scales with a cascade of lucent pings and tumbled to the ground to join the others.

Azimuth’s horn lit up, and with a burst of magic he dried us off; I shivered involuntarily.  “See, a water dragon had something to do with the wall’s creation, or it would crush her, the same as it would me.”

I floated around him to examine the runes, trying not to let my stomach growl too loudly.  They looked vaguely like the ones I’d seen on Whimsy’s new blade, but they might as well have been a bunch of chicken scratch for all the good that did me.  What did strike me as odd was that the runes weren’t merely engraved, but carved all the way through the archway, once sharp edges now worn dull.  “Aren’t they draconic?”

“No.”  He lit his horn again, and the runes holes spiraled to life with his emerald magic, rippling, pulsing, breathing.  “They came before.”

I raised my eyebrow, quietly wishing Whimsy were here.  What little history I knew I’d learned from her, but none of it predated dragons.  There was plenty of myths and legends that did, stories of fanciful fairies whose powers only grew with every retelling, and monstrous cross-breeds with creatures from Dreamscape, Tartarus, and Celestia knew where else.

“Before.”  Canzonetta rose above the gateway, inhaled, then exhaled slowly.  Out of her snout trickled a long snake of clear water.  “Only one.  From one came all.”

As she spoke, the water snake split into several smaller ones, curling and twisting around her, bending the moonlight so silver spots danced to and fro, wavering and rippling in little arcs that waxed and waned, brushed against each other then parted ways again.

From one came all.

Lucifa?

“Small, at first.  Few.  But time—time turned few to many, and many to legion.”

Canzonetta looked skyward, and every snake of water split again, expanded their orbit, then split again, then expanded their orbit some more.  Where there was no water the dragon breathed more.  The entire affair was completely silent save for her narration; not even the rippling wall seemed to want to stop her.  Within moments, the three of us were contained within a lattice globe of water droplets, still dancing this way and that.

Then the dragon brought her snout slowly downward, and the last of my breath was stolen away.