Broken Wings, Scattered Dust

If All I Am is Fortitude to End

“Hey,” said a quiet voice out of nowhere.  I leapt to my hooves, inadvertendly bowling aside a startled Deluge and spotting a haloed coterie of cumulonimbus clouds on the horizon, bellies full of festering thunder.  Flashes of lightning drummed out its heartbeat and a thick rain spilled from its underside, drenching the forest beneath and undoubtedly turning the tangled undergrowth into a tangled wet undergrowth atop a fresh batch of treacherous mud.

“Hm,” I said blearily.  “That looks ominous.”

“Yes, I’d like to not be around when it gets here,” Deluge said dryly, picking hay from her wings, but I was busy trying to figure out a way I could be caught in the storm, quietly.  I needed the lightning, but I also needed to stay with Deluge or it would raise red flags like nopony’s business.  Silhouette wouldn’t dare brave a storm on her own.

Eve was stomping out the fire and covering the ashes in the same black magic she had used yesterday.  All four crates were gone, as were the pile of shafts, the mound of arrowheads, and the bedrolls the other three had slept in.  The dark blue unicorn had yet to don her armor , but Swan and Julienne were already wearing theirs.  With the armor ’s magic unifying their appearance, the only way I could tell the difference was the takedown bow resting on Swan’s back.  The chef, on the other hoof, carried no real combat weaponry; she had only pair of chef’s knives, one of which she was sharpening with a small stone.

“What?” she said defensively, noticing where I was looking.  “What kind of chef gets caught with dull knives?”

“I didn’t say anything,” I said innocently.  “Are we ready to go?”

“No.”  Eve finished clearing up the fire, then turned her black magic to our bedrolls and vanished those as well, leaving the room spotless and unremarkably empty.  Then, with a flash of magic that seemed to suck the light out of the room, dark blue metal plates materialized upon her, its own magic morphing her into the grey-coated, dragon-eyed pony exclusive to the Lunar Guard, though the disguise did not mask the ineffable gleam in her now-golden eyes.  “Now we are.”

We traipsed downstairs with a cold sort of air between us.  There was a trust and ease between the three soldiers, but there was none between them and us, and it was easy to tell that everyone could feel it.  Deluge’s neck was stiff from an apparent refusal to so much as look in Eve’s general direction, and likewise I kept my head down and my eyes averted, and always stayed a step or two behind Deluge.  It would look like I was just along for the ride, and in a lot of ways—none of which were very comforting—I actually was.

So they were two Solar Guards were traveling with one Lunar Guard.  They were two sides of the same coin, to be sure, but in my experience they typically kept to themselves; the Lunar Guards operated during the night, and the Solar Guards during the day.  Communication between the two was minimal on the best of days.  And nights.

The only reason they would group like this is if there was an issue critical to the continued survival of Equestria or its interests...but this was a small group.  At least four soldiers—Swan, Eve, Julienne, and Meridian—but it couldn’t be much more than that, or there would’ve been many more arrows and a lot more food.  What could threaten the whole of Equestria but not warrant more attention than that of a small squad, no more than a dozen in number?

We arrived at the gate and exchanged casual greetings with Azimuth and Canzonetta.  Ragged breathing and bags under the Azimuth’s eyes were clear signs that he had not slept nor tried to, but he was wearing a small smile that did not seem concerned with the storm on the horizon.  It was hard to tell what Canzonetta was doing, thinking, or even looking at, given that she was hovering a good fifteen feet above us and that her snout kept drifting out of sight behind scaly coils.

There was the clinking of metal as Azimuth looked up at her.  “She says the storm is natural, and that if its magic were to collide with the wall’s, there might be some...oddities.”

Eve took a step forward and put her face within inches of Azimuth’s, but he did not back down or do so much as flinch.  “That could mean anything from ‘the wall is lowered’ to ‘we all die a horrible, slow, painful death’,” she said quietly, but the threat was there for all to hear.   “We could really use some clarification, Miss Canzonetta.”

At which the dragon looked down, and I took an involuntary step backwards.  Her eyes were ablaze again, not with the pure white light of the night before, but with a swirling, misty grey, like something had tainted the silvery white from yesterday night.  Her head twitched and jerked erratically, but it was always angled in such a way that she could keep the storm in sight.

“No,” she said to no one in particular, seized up as though she were possessed.  “Oddities, all natural.  One knows not...” She paused as a violent spasm thundered along her body.  “Knows not what will happen.”

“She’s been like that since the storm appeared,” said Azimuth.

Eve moved even closer; I could almost see their breath mixing in little foggy whorls.  “So why are you smiling?”

“The gateway’s—and the wall’s—magic is that of the ancients.  It’s the magic that birthed and shaped Equestria, every land beyond, and then some.  It’s older and more primal than anything I or even dragons could bring forth, but the land...”  He moved past Eve, uncowed, and stared, entraced, by the dark clouds gathering.  “The land itself is that magic.  If that’s a natural storm like Canzonetta says, then how it interacts with the wall will give us hints as to how that ancient magic works.”

Swan, Julienne, and Eve all grew stiff at the word ancient; Deluge merely looked confused.  I, however, had noticed something moving on the wall’s other side.  It was too small for a dragon, was predominantly brown, appeared vaguely pony-shaped, and seemed to be looking directly at us.

“Oh balls,” Julienne said quietly, noticing where I was looking.

“Not good,” Swan agreed, and Eve added several more colorful words under her breath.

The pony’s shadow raised a leg, paused, then rammed the leg into the ground.

A brilliant white-green light flared on impact and the wails of a crying star accompanied it, otherworldly tones rife with grief and regret, but as soon as my vision cleared I saw that the gateway’s rune-holes were now blazing with a bright, lime green light, a color nothing like any unicorn magic I’d seen—including Eve’s black magic—yet nonetheless the gateway started to rumble, the earth beneath it started to crumble to dust, and the black stone started sinking into the earth, like a turtle’s head when endangered.

“Huh.”  Azimuth could’ve been perusing a basketful of rotten apples.  “That’s interesting.”

When the archway’s top had receded beneath the surface, the dirt shifted of its own accord and filled in the gap.  Yellow grass to match the plains sprouted from the shifting dirt, growing from tiny stubs to full-size stalks in seconds, and when it had finished, the earth rumbled as though being dismantled from the inside out, throwing a startled Julienne to the ground and permeating the air with the impossibly low, impossibly loud grinding of stone on stone, like one mountain scraping against another.  Yet despite the volume, I could still make out Canzonetta’s voice, her normally fluid tones marred by the jagged edge of worry.

“Sunburnt sands are shifting,” she said, putting a frown of concentration on the Azimuth’s face.  “Moving to oblivion, to nothing...echoes and ashes move to the void.”

I was quietly thankful that my grumbling couldn’t be heard over the quaking Earth—at least Descant talked straight most of the time, but the water dragon seemed flat-out incapable of it.  It was challenge enough trying to glean the need-to-know bits of information from what I perceived without someone trying to muck it up or make it all nice and poetic.

Just the thought of the word oozed enough pretentiousness that I almost puked.  Beauty in words wasn’t my problem with it; my problem was most poets I’d encountered got so caught up in beauty-in-words that they forgot to see the forest for all the words they could dress it up with.

Far, far above us, the watery wall started to drop.  Slowly, at first, then swiftly, pulled by something far stronger than gravity alone, and within seconds it had retracted completely.  The only trace of its existence was a fine mist, gently drifting in the wind as it fell earthward.

On one side of a small river was us; two pegasi, two armored earth ponies, two armored unicorns and one coiling blue dragon, who was still jerking about erratically.  On the other stood a lone, hooded earth pony, her coat the color of the desert and a nondescript brown cloak concealing her cutie mark and Celestia knew what else.  A simple silver ring kept her cloak on.

Metal clinked behind me; I felt the guards shifting uncomfortably.  The newcomer stepped forward, skipped across the river, walked past us without so much as a glance at any of us; we parted wordlessly, unsure of what to make of her.  I noted the unbidden absence of dragons in the skies.  She approached Canzonetta with a steely conviction; the dragon’s convulsions intensified and water sprayed from her snout, but the cloaked pony merely waited.

And waited.

...and waited.

Until at last the dragon floated just a little lower, and the pony deftly reached up, laid a gentle hoof on her sapphire scales, and spoke.  “Cool it.”

Her voice was odd, almost alien; here was a flash of brilliantly green light, and the dragon’s convulsions stopped instantly.  The water she’d leaked was withdrawn back into her, the mist overhead shuddered visibly, and she drew one, long, shuddering breath before bending down to meet the newcomer.  “Gold and silver,” she murmured.

“Straight-up.” The pony turned to us.  “You two,” she said to Deluge and me, and I found myself unable to call her anything but Dust.  “Nose out, if you don’t mind.  And the rest of you, keep it up.”

Swan and Eve took a few steps back; Deluge and Julienne bowed courteously, and I struggled to keep the confusion off my face.  Azimuth hadn’t lost his inquisitiveness, but he thankfully remained mute.  I could make precious little sense as it was without his interference.  Just who was this mare?

Canzonetta touched her snout to the newcomer, then plunged into the river and mysteriously vanished from sight, despite the clear water.  Dust was a little more polite and nodded to us before doing the same; the current carried her along for a second before she, too, simply vanished.

“Huh,” Azimuth said, after a few seconds of stunned silence.  “It would seem that dragons can use their medium as...a method of transport.  For themselves and others.”

At which the blue dragon erupted from the water, blanketing the sky with mist, sparkling with every color of the rainbow.  She coiled her way back down to us, and inexplicably I found myself face-to-face with a water dragon who had very little sense of personal space.  Shifting waters rippled within her blue eyes, and I vaguely wondered if any sort of that same soulful energy was visible within my own.

“Forgot,” she said, in her normal voice.  “Have no aid for this one, one must aid oneself.  Apologies.  But...”

She moved her head to Deluge’s, and touched her snout to the mare’s muzzle.

“One with crystal eyes.”  She met the mare’s eyes, as blue and as fierce as her own, and her pupils sharpened suddenly.  And, in a wholly different voice, one that rang with renewed clarity and mutual understanding, she said, “I will see you soon.”

The mare’s eyes had widened already, but she only looked more stunned when Canzonetta whipped her tail in between them, bit off a scale, and offered the shimmering, humming piece of herself to the pegasus.  Deluge took it gracefully with her own mouth and without breaking eye contact; I could tell she was trying desperately to maintain her composure, but there was no hiding that kind of amazement.  I wasn’t even sure I was managing to pull it off.

“Thank you,” she whispered reverently, the words clear despite her mouthful of scale, and the dragon nodded.

“I will have another gift for you later.  Goodbye.”

The dragon dived back into the river, and she was gone.

The mist finally reached us, dampening everypony’s coat and giving the guards’ armor a glistening sheen.  Nopony seemed to want to talk, and only a couple seemed to want to cross the no-longer-sky-high river.  Deluge was clutching the dragonscale and looking up, eyes closed, soaking in the mist.  Azimuth was scratching figures into the dirt, mumbling something about missing variables and deteriorating paradigms.  The others, however, looked heavily concerned, and for once they shared the same, wordless expression, a feat normally made impossible by Eve’s constant brooding.  It was an expression bereft of levity and laden with concern.

“What’s wrong?” I said sharply.

As one, they turned to me with looks of darkness, but not one of them spoke nor even opened their mouth.  Azimuth appeared at my side, but he, too, shared their symptoms.

“Oh,” I said, the truth dawning on me; their oaths bound them, prevented them from divulging their mission.  Yet by that very oath, two things was clear, one of which I’d already known; the cloaked mare was something...different, and the same mare was somehow involved in their mission.

And it would seem that, from their stunned and unfavorable reactions to the mare’s appearance, that she was not supposed to know about their involvement in...whatever it was.  There was another story here, somewhere, hidden in the shadows, lurking out of sight.

Interesting, indeed.

Deluge opened her eyes to find four completely inscrutable ponies and me with my nose in my wings.  Her elation had yet to wear off, but she gave me a curious look that strayed uncomfortably close to the emerald dragonscale in my bags, sandwiched between two packs of dried apples.

“We need to talk,” I said shortly.  I nodding curtly at the sky, then turned to the guards.  “Can we have a couple minutes?”

Eve nodded; the others said nothing.  Deluge and I took to the skies in a rush of wind, and we found a pocket of still air high above the river.  Her elation faltered slightly when she turned to face me, and I felt suddenly compelled to share a secret.  It wasn’t something that was inside my comfort zone, but it seemed that she might know a little more than I do, and finding out what was a little more important than keeping an otherwise shiny-but-useless trophy a secret.

“Yes, I have one too,” I said, withdrawing Descant’s scale.  “No idea what they do though.”

Deluge’s mouth fell open.  “Don’t you see?” she said breathlessly.  “She knew I specialize in rain.  She’s a water dragon.  This—” She lifted her dragonscale.  “—has to have some secrets on how to manipulate water.  So yours—yours must have tips on manipulating wind.”

I looked down, at the shimmering green souvenir from a lightning dragon, and I felt an unbidden mixed rush of fear and elation.  Lightning was Holly’s area of expertise, not mine.  I knew a few tricks; the scale could teach me more, I was almost certain.  It couldn’t be coincidence that Descant had just given me one—the dragon might be one for formality and melodrama, but never did he strike me as one for souvenirs.

But in a lot of ways, lightning was the reason Holly was no longer here, and Deluge thought it was from a wind dragon...

“Later.”  I put the scale back in my bag.  “For now, we need to stay sharp, and you need to know we’re probably about to fight a dragon.  Maybe more.”

“I—what?”

“Think about it.” I pointed at the river.  “Giant wall of water keeping us out, or them in.  All is well out here, so...”

“Something’s wrong inside,” she completed.  “...I see.”

“Those three are part of a bigger unit than can fight dragons.  Meridian’s unit,” I added.  “But we might not make it to them without your help, if you catch my drift.”

“I don’t know.  Maybe.  They seem like they could hold their own.”

“A chef, an archer, and a...” I hesitated.  “...yeah, I have no idea what Eve is.”

Deluge nodded sagely and said nothing.

“Okay okay,” I admitted.  “Eve might be able to do it.  You’re welcome to sit idly by, but I’m not going to.  I’m not walking away without knowing I tried.  But,” I added emphatically.  “I’m not going to kill it either.”

I didn’t even bother to look at her, instead choosing to peel off downwards and brush a cold wind in her direction.  Whether she helped or not didn’t matter much to me; taking down a dragon wasn’t easy, but I’d done it before, and I could do it again.  What did matter is how many of my...skills would be needed.  I had an inkling of what Eve might be, and if I was right, then spotting things that were hidden was part of her speciality—even something as small as proving I was faster than almost any pegasus alive would tip her off for sure.

The guards were having a quiet conversation, each wearing the weighty expression of business; I landed much farther away than necessary and sat down to wait.  I didn’t need to overhear them, nor did I need them thinking I wanted to or even could.  Instead I just watched the storm drenching the fields in its tears, still belching roaring bolts of lightning.

Deluge landed next to me a few minutes later.  She was tense, but determined.  “I don’t know what good I’ll do, but I can try,” she said, an all-too-familiar steely conviction shining in her eyes.  I simply nodded; the others appeared to be in no hurry, and it didn’t take long for my focus to disseminate.  My vision blurred, my ears heard the world instead of a voice or the river, and my mind went on a journey with no destination.

The sound of gurgling water sang alongside the whistle of grass, rippling in the wind, the muddled words and shifting metal of the guards, the quiet chatter and soft pitter-patter of countless hidden insects and animals.  Clouds—mostly cumulus and cirrus—trundled along the open sky, casting colossal shadows that wandered across the amber plains like harbingers of some nebulous corruption, only to leave behind unscathed stalks, glowing brilliant gold in the midday sun.  I vaguely wondered what it looked like, sounded like, felt like, at night.

The guards’ conversation slowed as the sun inched onwards and the storm closed in, and eventually the Azimuth finished his musings and joined them, his expression equally grim.  It was odd seeing a guard of his stature on even ground with the others; his armor was nearly identical to Eve’s, perhaps just a touch darker, but unlike hers, his armor did not mask his appearance.

What was reassuring was that none of their eyes ever flickered in my direction.  The same, however, could not be said for Deluge.

“You don’t seem afraid.”

It took a few seconds for my focus for Deluge’s words to penetrate, but it was one second too many.

“...You’ve fought a dragon before.”

I inclined my head.  “I have.”

“Did you...win?” she said breathlessly.  I just looked at her, face blank.

“Yes.”

Her eyes widened, and she uttered a soft wow.  I could only sit there, silently dumbfounded.  There was no pride to be had in doing what must be done, but there was plenty in adding your own flair, and that particular job was one of the few things I was genuinely, if morbidly, proud of.  I was shocked; most ponies failed to see that destruction had a flavor of beauty all its own.  Deluge, eyes shining, was clearly not most ponies.  Not only did she see the grim beauty in my work, but it was the first thing she saw.

I felt myself reddening.  “It really wasn’t all that hard...”

“Yeah, okay.”  A sly sort of grin curled her mouth, but it slid off just as quickly.  “So, how did you come to get a job like yours?”

A lump rose in my throat, and my stomach twisted itself into knots.  I watched a line of ants scale a flower and slowly haul the carcass of a dead fly back to their colony, each ant clinging to the stem for dear life as it swayed this way and that in the wind.  “Not by choice.”

“Hey,” she said softly.  “You know my story.  When do I get to know yours?”

I extended a wing and straightened some crooked feathers, letting the wind whistle, the leaves rustle, and the unseen animals chatter in my stead.  She did not press me, but simply sat there, mute, waiting.

Minutes passed in silence.  I moved to my other wing with no excessive amount of haste, but it was becoming more and more apparent that the rain specialist possessed the same brand of prolonged patience that I had come to possess.  It made sense, I had to admit; stirring wind to life didn’t take nearly as long as drawing rain from nothing but air.

What seemed like hours elapsed.  I found I could no longer let my focus fan out; I could barely hold a coherent thought for more than a few seconds.  My mind was utterly blank, empty.  To most, it seemed, such release would be relaxing, but to me it was just a stifling blanket of calm that had settled over my storm.  One of us was bound to break, and still she sat there, implacable, still, unwavering, with more patience than I could ever hope for.

“I...lost control when I was young.  At the time I had these—” I held up my bands and shook my head.  “Didn’t know what they did.  Had a body on my hooves before I knew what’d happened.  I took all I had and ran, but when somepony finally caught up...” I took a breath.  “...they weren’t part of the government.”

“What do they do?”  She nodded at my bands.

I pulled one off and gave it to her.  It felt unnatural, casually sharing secrets with a mare I’d only met days ago, but she’d shown no signs that she was even thinking of turning me in.  And whatever our circumstances may have been, we were two peas in a pod whether we liked it or not.  “My father made them.  They’re solidified cloud, bound by magic.”

We both turned at the distant roar of thunder; the storm was minutes away from Riverside.  I stared longingly at the lightning, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Deluge look at me, then at the storm, then back at me.  She returned my band, flew over to the guards, talked to them for a moment, then flew back to me.

“Let’s go,” she said simply, and I knew she understood.

I had never flown into the heart of the storm with anypony at my side, but flying with Deluge was unsettlingly comfortable.  She wasn’t able to keep up with me, but even so she matched my every dip and dive, every sharp turn I made to avoid becoming lightning-fried pegasus.  This wasn’t her first time weathering a storm, that much was certain.

I jinked this way and that, feeling the restless charges in the air, feeling the two clouds tugging at my being as if to rip it in two, smelling  the metallic scent of burgeoning lightning.  It didn’t take long to find a negative cloud; I pressed my left band against it for a few seconds, feeling the magic-bound cloud equalize, and a little ways off I did the same with my right band and a positive cloud.

Satisfied with the soft vibrations of my freshly charged bands, I made sure Deluge was still with me and led her skyward, a safe distance above the storm.

Wordlessly I turned to her, extended my forelegs, and willed the lightning free.  A thin, white-hot bolt, barely tinged with blue, leapt between them with a quiet boom, but I let it fade before it could fully coalesce.

“If I let it go longer, it becomes solid,” I told her.  “But yeah...wasn’t expecting that the first time.”

She ignored my addendum, and we both turned away from the storm, gradually descending towards the guards.  “Solid?  So you can like...make a spear?  Out of lightning?”

“No.”  I twisted them around my hooves.  “They’re not mine—all I can do is form a garrote, or just shock someone.  The one they were made for was able to form all sorts of blades and throw them, if sh—they wanted to.”

“So...you stole them?”

“Not...exactly.”  The conversation was steering uncomfortably close to black waters that I’d rather stayed uncharted.  She didn’t inquire further, so after a little bit I took a different tack.  “So what happened to you?  I take it you grew up pretty wealthy, so I’m not sure how you ended up, y’know...here.”

She sighed, nodded, and thankfully let the subject drop.  “I did.  It’s why Eve hates me.  She wouldn’t even talk to me if she weren’t on duty right now.”

“She hates you for being wealthy?”

She nodded.  “Sort of.  I turned down my dowry when Meridian and I got engaged.  It was more than enough to set just us two up for life; Mer’ would’ve shared some of it with Eve for sure.  It never felt right,” she blurted, before I could ask.  “Having all this stuff that I never earned.  Money, chariots, mansions, servants, airships.  It’s what my parents built, what they earned.  Not me.”

Deluge landed on a safe cloud and tucked her wings in; I did the same, and she kept talking.

“I was raised in high society, as you’ve figured out, but all that...pomp and circumstance.”  She leaned over the cloud’s side and spat viciously.  “It’s all so self-indulgent, ostentatious.  Everything that’s needed or must be done, buried in red tape and subtle formalities so that a select few might profit.  Mom understood my complaints; Dad tried to, but couldn’t.”

She pulled a puff of cloud out, absentmindedly twisting it.  “So I ran.  One night, Mom packed me the necessaries, and I escaped with Flea, the mailmare.  She brought me to her hometown, which she called Relay, where she was learning how to be a shipping pony, and I met Meridian there.  He was working as Firescale’s apprentice, at the time, and the blacksmith took me in.  I’d met him before—my parents regularly visited him—but he never held it against me.  I keep in touch with Mom now and then, but Dad...I don’t think he’s ever forgiven me.  He’s probably disowned me, actually.”

A little shower of rain drizzled from the cloud she was playing with, dropping towards the earth, falling out of sight. “It’s probably better that way.  He expected more of his little Deluge than just another weatherpony.  But yeah, that’s why Eve hates me.”  She laughed coldly.  “Though it did take a while to drop all my formality habits...Mer’ helped a lot with that.  Standing on ceremony is...not something he’s good at.”

“He agreed to name you Deluge, and he was disappointed when you wanted to be a weatherpony?”

“I changed my name.”

She slipped off the cloud, and I followed suit.  When landed next to the guards, all them immediately turned to us.  I skipped the Silhouette act; Eve had enough reasons to be suspicious of me without that.  With luck, the others would have forgotten about it in light of recent events.

“We know,” Deluge preempted them.  “Potential fight with a dragon.”

“Hopefully not,” Eve said.  “We’re in no shape to fight one without the rest of our unit.  Normally I could hide us but...well.”  She threw up a hoof helplessly.  “You two have magical signatures I’m not used to, and I’ll not have either one of you mauled on my watch.  Even if I do hate you, Miss Deluge.”

I had to admire Eve’s continual insistence that she hated Deluge, yet her professionalism in spite of that.  But there was a more pressing issue, and that was how much of myself I would have to expose in order to take down a dragon; using my bands would be a near-guaranteed solution and an instant giveaway.

“You could always leave them behind,” Azimuth said dryly.

Swan glared at him.  “Like Tartarus we are.  I’ll keep an eye out, Eve keeps us hidden, and we can make it to the others just fine.  Easy.”

There followed an awkward silence.

“And if we’re found?” said a quaking Julienne.

The archer laid a reassuring hoof on her friend, but it was me who answered.

“Then we improvise.”

Azimuth sighed in resignation.  “Not again.”