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Organised by
RogerDodger
Word limit
2000–8000
Telos
Alone at the station, the white mare sat, waiting, hearing
The songs the others sang and the stillness of their silence.
Not content, she listened, for there was another song to be heard
And this one sang of the reasons for ghosts, demons, and old memories
And of all the lines of the world, and the need of sleep and dreams
And an of unknown wanderer, bright and brilliant, wrongly pursued
And of a light at the end, and then nothing more
The train…moved.
“…and of course, the one day I get sentry duty in the palace happens to be the same day as the Captain’s wedding…”
“So did you find her?”
“Not in the strict sense of the term, no. “
“That’s not an answer, Dusk”
“…she kind of ended up finding me”
“And how, pray tell, did that happen?”
“Geeze you’re inquisitive today. Look, I’ve mentioned the wedding right? So the shield breaks down, and none of us are really expecting it. We’d had our fair share of rampant deities-“
“- tell me about it. I join the Guard and it turns out I suddenly find myself needing to know the plural of apocalypse-”
“- but that sort of thing’s normally out of our league. Princess business.”
“Cocooned, huh?”
“The whole city was crawling with them. Nothing we could’ve done. Nothing you could have done, if you were there.”
“So are you two a thing now, or not?”
“Don’t you remember how they called in all of us, to make sure there were no changelings left in the palace guard? She was gone by the time we got released.”
“You’re avoiding the question, Dusk. For the second time I might add.”
“Since when were you so interested in my love life?”
“Since when were you so interesting in avoiding the question?”
“Fine. Yes, I’m taking her out for dinner tonight, provided the train ever gets to Canterlot. Happy?”
“And that’s all I wanted to know. Was that so hard? Gotta agree with you though, what’s the deal with the passenger train? Last time I checked, protocol didn’t involve the transport of Class V’s on civilian transport”
“No clue, you’re the unicorn here. I think they’re trying to keep the whole thing hush-hush. Goddess’ sake, we’re literally handing it over to the mare who’s using it at the station”
“Though to be fair, somepony capable of using that thing is probably security enough”
“True”
“Oh my word, m’am. I am so sorry…”
“Heh. Poor Tacit, getting senile in his old age”
“You could show a bit more deference to a senior officer, Pauldron”.
“He’s retired. Senior? Oh, absolutely. My officer? Not for a long time now”
“Regardless, the point stands. You’ve know what he went through. He deserves at least that much respect.”
“Easy, Dusk. Easy. I know that”
“I have to wonder sometimes. Y’know, you could try actually thinking before you open your mouth every once in a while”
“Hey Dusk?”
“…yes, Pauldron?”
“What’s the reason for mountains?”
“I didn’t mean thinking that much”
“Well, this is what you got. Answer the question”
“What, you skipped geography as a colt?”
“No, no, not how they’re made. Their purpose, Dusk . Their rationale. Their raison d'être”
“Are you absolutely certain you’ve had nothing to drink?”
“Dusk, I’m hurt that you’d–“
CRRRRRRCK
“What was that?”
“Gimme a sec, Dusk”
A faint humming, a flicker of something static, a shiver of light.
“Anyone there?”
“Not that I could feel. Probably just a piece of luggage moving, nothing to ruffle your feathers about”
“You stay here, alright? I’m just going to give it a look”
Silence
A door opens
A head pokes through, remembered, recalled.
“Dusk’s checking it out now, Sir. Just a bit of cargo moving around. Nothing to worry about.”
Eyes narrow, jaw clenched, bones bitter
“Very well”
A head removed.
Door closed.
Silence
A muffled thump in the distance.
The sound of something long and wooden lifted from its resting place.
“Dusk? Dusk, was that you?”
Hooves step slowly, softly, silently
“Celestia damn it Dusk…”
A head poked through a door, followed by a body.
Something behind him.
Turning around, too slowly, not swiftly enough
A second thump.
Silence.
The train moved.
Although that was not, precisely speaking, correct.
Given its proximity to Canterlot the train was, in fact, travelling at a constant velocity, and hence it was equally correct to state that Equestria moved around the train. Tacit was, for all intents and purposes, completely stationary.
Except that the train had left the station, and was presumably arriving shortly at a destination. If one considered Equestria was moving around the train, where was Equestria’s destination? Where was its point of origin?
Tacit shook his head, moving forward as he-
He’d left the door unlocked. He never left the door unlocked. Well, specifically, he normally locked the door, the summation of such being that the door was not left unlocked. He was fairly certain that he had, in fact, locked the door.
And yet here they were.
Tacit stepped carefully into the carriageway, closed the door and waited for the click of the lock, before continuing on his way. It was a simple task, being a train guard, and like most simple tasks gave the mind ample opportunity to wander.And even that, after a time, became mechanical.
The mind had a mind of its own…
Snow-capped mountains rose up in the distance as the train approached. And Tacit thought of mountains, and remembered.
He remembered the mountains, the caverns, the nights. And how before then he’d never felt the shadows, but in those moments he’d felt them, and was endarkened.
The old pain, old darkness forgotten from dreams too real, endless corridors all the same. In each and every one they stood, tall and faceless. Who were they? Around them the memory-gems sped through endless conversations. He remembered, recalled, parents, their voices. Not his parents. That was important. He remembered. Who were they? Words snarled by crystals, words that his parents –no, their parents he remembered that now, – had never uttered. Couldn’t have uttered. Not the ones he knew. He remembered.
They were never meant to die like that. To cease to fly, to fall and freeze. A flicker, a flutter, time stuttering to a stop and then that, too, stops, silence as the world resumes its motion but they’re gone, not silent or still but gone, and wait long enough and you’re never really sure if they were ever even here so why do you think that they’re gone?
You can’t know the future, they said, too hard, can’t be done, but the past is just the present reversed as the future is forward so how could you know that either? Thoughts can be changed, memories erased, eroded, and then you died that second death, the death of what you were and were to be until you weren’t even sure what was you or if you ever had been.
But not him. He remembered. He remembered the pain pounding, pulsing, a life of frustration finally to fall, to freeze. ‘Terrible’, they said, ‘imagine them, traitors’, they said, ‘’for the best’ they said, so simple to erase what you couldn’t atone for, to pin your sins on the soul of another.
It wasn’t for them, but they were dead, so what did that matter to the rest?
And he remembered-
“As we round the bend, those on the North side of the train can take in the views of the famous Crystal Bore”
The familiar announcement went some of the way to jerking Tacit back to the here and now. A sudden and unexpected fall through the air onto a young mare in front of him did the rest.
Quickly pushing himself off the emerald-green unicorn, the guard's mouth went into autopilot while his brain temporarily resigned captaincy and went to the restroom.
“Oh my word, m’am, I am so sorry. Are you alright? I don’t know what I was thinking. Well, that was the problem really. I was thinking too much. Oh, your coffee! I am terribly sorry.”
He took a breath and his mouth, finding the brain still in absentia, continued.
“Falling over my own legs. As much as that’s excusable at my age, I should have looked where I was going m’am-“
The mare, who had up until this point been ignoring him, abruptly turned to face him. His brief hesitation gave his mind a chance to catch up and boot his mouth out of the pilot seat.
She stared at him with an almost bemused expression.
“No worries. Really. It was lukewarm at best”
Good? Good. Yes. Good.
“Don’t worry about it” she added, patiently.
He let out a deep breath.
“That’s…good. Well, I’ll be on my way”
The old stallion continued his trundle down the carriage as the train passed by a grove of pines, shadows flickering like mad dancers across the aisle.
Because we want to, in the end. That’s the only reason there ever is.
CRRRRRRCK
Oh bother.
The background murmur in the carriage had ceased, heads turned in worry.Tacit sighed, moving briskly to the rear end of the carriage.
Why was the door unlocked?
He-
Never mind.
He stuck his head inside, catching the gaze of the solitary unicorn Guard, who wryly waved off the question before Tacit could open his mouth.
“Dusk’s checking it out now, Sir. Just a bit of cargo moving around. Nothing to worry about”
Tacit paused for a moment, briefly intent upon reminding the unicorn of how one addressed one’s seniors thank you very much, but stopped himself. That was beneath him.Let it be and remain there.
“Very well” he responded.
Tacit pulled his head out, making sure to shut the door behind him.
Murmured susurrations were passing through the carriage. Heads turned towards him as he turned back around.
“Nothing to worry about folks. Just a problem with some cargo. All fixed now”
A moment of silence as the myriad conversations switched gears, before the carriage was once again filled with a backdrop of voices.
Tacit gazed back at the rear carriage, catching the sunlight playing across his reflection in the glass panelling.
And he heard, faintly.
“Is that a spot of brown I spy?”
Spy.
I spy, I the spy, the whirring of the gems, the lies. A tear, I cry, out of fear of distant darkness, the dark within and the dark without end.
They don’t understand, you see, say we live in the present, should look to the future (which can’t be done, they said, it’s ‘for the best’) but we live in the past, a step behind, time’s too fast, acting now to change what will soon become what we’ve done in the hope that when we’re done then what’s then now is brighter but it’s black, and blank, and gone-
And he remembered, what use is a candle when you have a sun? What use are all the little flames, save to blur the lines between wrong and bright, and then they, too, go, and all you’re left with is the endarkening night. It’s ‘for the best’, they say, to burn brief and right, and then you’re gone, the darker the flame, the brighter the shadows and the shadows shone, though it was ‘for the best’.
And he remembered standing at the end of it all, in front of Her Radiance, hoping
That the darkness inside of him was ‘for the best’
Before he let his light shine.
No, that wasn’t right, she’d never known. How could he remember something that had never happened? He couldn’t. Wouldn’t. She hadn’t known. Had she? He-
He didn’t know.
He’d forgotten.
SCRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-
Tacit’s train of thought derailed as a high pitched whine filled the air, rising in cadence. He turned in horror, staring at the brightening glow emanating from the back carriage.
He recognised that.
Someone was breaking the teleport wards. How? That wasn’t possible.
Tacit spun on his hooves, sprinting for the rear compartment as light filled the room. He slammed his eyelids shut but the it seared through mere flesh and blood, burning a pattern in his retinas, his mind.
- IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Everything went white.
The train…moved.
Wait, what?
Emerald’s mind caught up with the conversation.
This was an action that was almost immediately regretted by all parties involved.
“What? You couldn't possibly have-“
“No, I wish I was lying... I just...” the stallion she was sitting across from sighed dramatically, gesturing with his forelegs. “You know, I’d just made surgeon. This was it. We were Canterlot’s elite. The world was ours”
“Seriously though?” said Emerald with a fair degree of incredulity. “Where did you even find that spell?”
“To be fair, it was really her fault” said Ardent Scalpel, his muzzle in a wide grin. “She’d found it in an old textbook, in the Starswirl the Bearded wing-“
Emerald resisted the urge to snort in derision she finished drying off her coat.
“Remind me why your sister has access to that again?”
“She doesn’t, but that’s never stopped her”
“And she was looking for…?”
“Not a clue, and given what she found, I didn’t ask”
Emerald snorted in derision. “You’d think that when your sister’s one of the most powerful unicorns this side of Equestria, you’d learn not to play pranks on her. I’m looking forward to meeting her”.
“It wasn’t such a big deal” he protested.
“Your sister turned you into a mare, and that’s not supposed to be a big deal?”
Ardent crossed his forelegs, assuming what she supposed he thought passed for a pouty expression.
“Hey, you make it sound worse than it was. It was only for a few hours-“
“Weren’t you just talking about how you took it upon yourself to serenade the entire neighbourhood?” asked Emerald.
Ardent had the decency to look slightly embarrassed.
“Well she’d always wanted singing lessons-”
“-at midnight?”
“Did I mention the cider? I’m fairly sure I’ve mentioned the cider.”
“You’re incorrigible” the mare responded, laughing.
“And lovable. Don’t forget lovable” replied Ardent.
Emerald gave him a tired smile, leaning back into the seat. Ardent, always a little slow to catch on, piped up.
“Tired?” he queried.
“I was up working all night. Being tired the following day is the usual consequence of that, last time I checked.”
“Well, I tried to help you”
Emerald shook her head in mock disdain. “You”, she said, “should stick with fixing ponies, and stay far away from anything else”
“I didn’t see a problem with it” he responded with a playful tone. “The numbers were fine”
“Seriously?” Emerald retorted. “It was the equivalent of walking into a flower store, breaking a vase, picking up the largest shard you can find and going round smashing every single other vase in the store with it”
“What if you’re after vase shards, hmm?”
“It doesn’t matter because all the flowers are dead!”
“It’s a – “
“Just…forget it” said Emerald in exasperation, cutting him off. “I don’t know why I even bother sometimes”
Ardent simmered quietly for a few moments as the train moved onwards, mountains rising in the far distance.
“Alright miss smarty-mare. What”, said Ardent, pausing for dramatic effect, “is the reason for mountains”?
Emerald laughed. “They’re objects, Ardent” she replied.” They don’t mean anything. They don’t have a reason. The just are.”
“You see, that’s where you’re –“
“As we round the bend, those on the North side of the train can take in the views of the famous Crystal Bore”
The loudspeaker announcement went some way towards shutting up Ardent. The elderly carriage guard falling on top of her did the rest.
“Oh my word, m’am, I am so sorry. Are you alright? I don’t know what I was…“
Emerald tuned out the aged stallion as a growing feeling of warmth under her hooves made itself known. Looking down, she observed that the traitorous mug had seen fit to hurl its contents across the carriage floor.
“…falling over my own legs…”
What?
Huh. He was still talking.
It was just an object. It didn’t mean what he thought it meant.
“…so let me, m’am, apologise for-“
She supposed she should answer him.
Emerald abruptly looked up at the elderly stallion, trying not to smirk as his voice died in his throat.
“No worries. Really. It was lukewarm at best”
The stallion's face shifted through several expressions before settling on somewhere decidedly south of relieved.
“Don’t worry about it” she added.
He let out a deep breath. “That’s…good. Well, I’ll be on my way” he responded, before turning around and doing just that.
Emerald let out a breath of her own.
CRRRRRRCK
What was that?
Emerald looked up, Ardent’s look of concern mirroring her own. He spoke first.
“That…did not sound good”
Don’t think about it.
Emerald let out a breath. “I’m sure it’s… nothing” she responded.
Either it’s nothing, or…
No. She’d know if somepony was using it. They’d all know.
Don’t think about it.
“Nothing to worry about folks. Just a problem with some cargo. All fixed now”
The guard's booming voice carried from the back of the train.
Hearing a snort to her left, Emerald looked over to see Ardent’s bemused expression.
“My fair lady, forgive me for mine inquiries, but would that be a spot of brown I spy?” he asked snidely, in his best imitation of a Canterlot noble.
Refusing to rise to the bait, Emerald gave Ardent a tired smile before closing her eyes, and resting her head against the window. Ardent, finally getting the hint, gave a sigh and leant back in his seat, fiddling idly with his empty coffee cup.
She drifted off.
SCRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-
Emerald started as an ear-splitting whine filled the air. She went to glance at Ardent, but had to close her eyes as a piercing light filled the room. It wasn’t just bright. It wasn’t just brilliant. It wasn’t just blinding. It shone through blood and bone, blazing straight through the walls of the train, straight through her eyelids.
The keening heightened pitch, her head feeling as though someone was slowly ramming her horn back inside her skull.
-IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Everything went white.
The train moved…
…and he couldn’t believe it had been that easy.
Decloaking and sweeping spells were standard precautions for intercity freight and transport. Trains, airships, boats, they all had them. Of course, Class V constructs were classified that way for a reason. They had a tendency to disrupt ambient magic in the vicinity. Relatively harmless to most living creatures, if handled properly, but unbound thaumological fields, well…it was safer not to trust them around little things, like your ordinary run-of-the-mill detection matrices...nothing too important.
As for the security, he could only assume that they simply weren’t expecting anypony to come after it. Honestly though, three guards? Was that really the best they could do? A pony could almost feel insulted.
Echo looked around the narrow passageway between carriages he was presently standing in.
DON’T TRAVEL BETWEEN CARRIAGES
What was that supposed to mean?
His horn flared (invisibly) as he quickly checked the integrity of the cloaking spell (because you could never be too careful), then cast a small silence field around himself, before giving the door a gentle nudge open, and stepping (silently) into the first carriage. A mare to the right of him turned her head, and his heart froze for a moment, before he realised she was looking through him to the opened door, and he relaxed. The odd head turned his way, but nobody really payed it any attention.
Nobody ever did.
He started down the carriage, albeit it a little awkwardly. If his plan were hypothetically to have a design flaw, – and this was purely hypothetical- it would probably be that invisibility spells actually made you invisible. Which, whilst great for say, sneaking on trains, was bucking terrible if you wanted to walk in a straight line. Being blindfolded was one thing. Walking invisible was like being blindfolded, and then projecting your surroundings onto the inside of the blindfold, and…
…that one seemed to have gotten away from him.
“As we round the bend, those on the north side of the train can take in the views of the famous Crystal Bore”
The announcement startled Echo for a moment and he stopped, the elderly stallion behind him accidentally tripping over Echo’s invisible hindlegs. Hastily stepping forwards and out of the way of the sudden mess of limbs, Echo lit up his invisible horn, heart pounding, only to notice that the train guard had fallen muzzle-first onto a unicorn mare in the aisle seat
The grey stallion stood up, shaking his head as he did so, and turned to the mare. “Oh my word, m’am, I am so sorry. Are you alright?” he asked. The mare, clearly more worried about the drink she’d spilt, was searching around the floor for the now empty mug.
Shaking his invisible head, Echo snorted silently as he turned around and continued his slow walk to the far end of the carriage, the old guard's profuse apologies clearly audible behind him.
It raised an interesting question, that. Whilst the mare wouldn’t have dropped the mug if the guard hadn’t fallen on her, she also wouldn’t have dropped it if she’d been holding it a little tighter, or paying a little more attention. And the guard wouldn’t have fallen in the first place if Echo hadn’t been distracted by the announcement. And-
Echo blinked, realising that he’d reached the end of the carriage aisle.
Glancing behind him to make sure he had enough time before the guard caught up, Echo focused. The first thing he did was cast an immediate-vicinity ‘ghosting’ spell around both him and the door. It would act as the thaumic equivalent of his invisibility spell – any sweeping or detection magic originating external to the field would pass straight through, as if nothing were there.
Now safe to cast without threat of detection he focused again, this time creating an illusory duplicate of the door occupying the same space as real one. Finally, he cast the same cloaking spell that surrounded him on the real door, which promptly vanished from sight, leaving only its illusory counterfeit in its place. Echo reached out and grabbed the real door’s invisible handle, stepping through the doorway before shutting it behind him again. Making sure it was properly closed and in the same position as the illusion, Echo dismissed his work of the past few seconds.
Wincing slightly at the pain as he let his horn die out, Echo walked cautiously past the two oblivious guards.
“Hey Dusk?”
“…yes, Pauldron?”
“What’s the reason for mountains?”
Silly question, that.
Echo continued down the hallway, passing through an open door into the rearmost carriage. Inside the center of a room filled with drape-covered boxes stood a large, black box the shade of midnight, ornate silver clasps holding on a lid covered with runic script. Craftsponies could be so dramatic sometimes.
Echo walked up to it, feeling a brief shiver in the air around him as his invisibility wards vanished, and his horn flared as he undid the clasps holding the lid on-
CRRRRRRCK
There was a crack of as a wave of thaumic energy exploded out of the casing and quickly petered out against Echo’s reactive shield, leaving behind the faint smell of ozone.
Echo muttered several choice words under his breath.
In hindsight, he probably should have extended the silence field to the container before opening it. In hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have opened the container in the first place. Hindsight was a wonderful thing. He sighed as voices echoed from the hallway behind him.
“What was that?”
“Gimme a sec, Dusk”
Echo stood there, as he felt the magic probing, and nearly laughed as it passed straight through him without so much as a ripple. He felt the magic aura wink out, and the voices picked up again.
“… just going to give it a look”
He was still invisible. Good.
The grey pegasus entered the room and walked straight passed him, spear held at the ready. Echo stood stock-still until the guard had his back to him, and then promptly hit him in the back of the head with a blast of aetheric force. The pegasus fell to the floor with a dull ‘thump’.
“Dusk?”
Oh joy. The other one.
“Celestia damn it Dusk, if this is another one of your games…”
Echo stood there, waiting. The second guard one entered the room, stopping in his tracks at the sight of his unconscious companion. Echo charged up his horn and flung a second blast of aetheric force at the unicorn, who must have sensed it, somehow, because he started turning just before it hit him.
He crumpled to the ground alongside his friend. Echo took a moment to breathe, before turning around and walking towards the center of the room.
And stopped.
The container had been flung wide open, a pulsing, pale light emanating from within.
That, whilst unexpected, was nothing to get carried away about.
What had Echo wholly terrified was the pony standing next to it. A bright, shimmering, flickering pony, whose whole body seemed to pulse in time with light spilling from the artefact like a luminescent heartbeat. She - and it was definitely a she - stood next to the vessel, peering in with a look of fixated curiosity.
The voice in the back of Echo’s mind insisted that a) she hadn’t been in the room when he entered, and that b), there was absolutely no way that she could have gotten into the carriage within the last five seconds without him noticing, and that therefore, c), there was no way that she could, in fact, be there.
“Look again”, his brain insisted.
“We are”, his eyes responded. “Think again”.
Echo looked closer at her, and the impossible mare looked up at him, meeting his gaze with a smile. He waited for her to speak, or to give some other indication of his presence, but she just stood there. Staring at him. Echo took a tentative step to the left, watching her eyes follow him. Getting increasingly uncomfortable, and seeing no alternative course of action, Echo broke the silence.
“Who are you?” he asked.
She stood there, motionless, the same expectant look on her face.
“You’re not possible” he said, trying to illicit a response.
Echo started as the glowing mare suddenly took a step towards him, her head tilted thoughtfully.
“And yet” she said, in a strange sing-song voice, “Here we are”.
The train moved, but there was so much more.
She smiled, opened her eyes, and then opened her eyes again. And the train moved, standing still as the air moved around it through which she moved moveless within the train. And the wind danced, and sung, and its song was of the sky and the end of the world, and the faraway forests, where wild words were sung softer, subtler, not silent but still. And the sun, too, sang, and -
She closed her eyes, and looked around her.
She supposed the word was busy. Busy, like when you were halfway through the dish you’d made a dozen times and you knew you should’ve started on the onions before you put the water onto boil because this happened every time and now you had to do five things at once and where were the onions you’d definitely bought them ARDENT WHERE ARE THE ONIONS and what were you doing look out for the knife-
Yes. Busy. The carriage was busy. Everything, these ponies. So much in their world.
The door in front of her opened and a pale-grey unicorn stepped out and froze as someone looked through him. And she looked at him again through half-closed eyes and he was bright, like the flowers that killed you if you ate them. Nobody saw him, because he couldn’t be seen. Nobody saw her because she wouldn’t be seen. It made all the difference.
She started down the carriageway, and she stepped.
“And lovable. Don’t forget lovable.
She snorted. He didn’t talk to her. He never did.
The emerald-green unicorn turned towards her.
“It’s just an object” the mare stated matter-of-factly. “It doesn’t mean what they think it means”
She agreed.
And she stepped, and she stood side by side with the old guard at the carriage’s end, and he turned to face her.
“Because we want to, in the end” he said, with an air of finality. “That’s the only reason there ever is”.
That one wasn't quite true. You weren't your eyes; you lived behind them.
And she stood there, waiting for him to open the door like a gentlecolt and she stepped through, waiting for him to leave. He did. The young guard stood there, staring at her.
“There are no lines to cross” he murmured. “Only the one’s we’ve all drawn in our heads. And they’re everywhere”.
She disagreed.
And she stepped once more, down the carriage, standing as he finally opened the casing, and the light spilled out. So brilliant, the colours, not like him, no harm but a promise to be kept. She flickered into form, willing herself to be seen, and turned to face him.
“Who are you?”
She stood there, waiting.
“You’re not possible”
And that was her cue.
“And yet”, she said –
- “Here we are”.
Echo blinked, staring at her, and found that he wasn’t entirely sure what to make of the situation. The plan, in his mind, had been rather straight forward. Get on train (tick). Get to artefact(tick). Get off train (pending). Two unconscious guards and an eerie, glowing mare were not part of the plan.
Said mare now staring off into the space behind him, a distant look on her face. “What do you think of the mountains?” she asked.
“I don’t”
“Yes you do. You think they don’t matter, that they don’t have a purpose,but you’re wrong. They have whatever purpose you give them.”
And that, he decided, was getting a little too weird. He took three steps towards the construct, his hooves clicking on the wooden floor, and found that he didn’t want to take it. Not really. What he truly want to do was take the time to appreciate it. He took a step backwards, all the better to admire it, honestly, and-
- he really hated suggestion charms. He looked up at the mare, who hadn’t taken her eyes of him the whole time and was still smiling, and stamped a hoof against the floor in frustration.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
“What do you want?” the mare replied.
The voice in the back of his head silently noted that they were starting to sound awfully like two pre-school foals having an argument over who got the last biscuit. Being the highly rational being he was, he ignored it.
“What I want” he said, his teeth clenched, “is for you to stop with this little game of yours, and let me take that”
“That’s the what, yes” she said impatiently. “And the why?”
“I’m wanted by certain ponies for something I didn’t do, and if I don’t get this for them, they’re going to come after me, ok? And then bad things happen.”
“So you want to take it so ‘bad things’ won’t happen” she said, and he could practically see her slotting in the inverted commas.
“Yes” he said,pointedly ignoring them.
“But that’s precisely what would happen if you do take it. Ponies will die. Not here, not now, but you know that. It’s just that the ‘bad things’ weren’t going to happen to you, and that somehow makes it better. Because you think what happens afterwards wouldn’t be your fault. That’s dangerous.”
“None of this is my fault – “
“ -her coffee on the floor” the mare interrupted. “Nobody to blame but herself, but you know it’s not true. Its fine, you say, not your fault but you’re lying. Twist the words right, and they will show their true form”
“Stop doing that. This-“he said, angrily gesturing to the two guards unconscious on the floor “-isn’t my fault. I didn’t choose any of this. I don’t have another choice. It’s-”
“-for the best?” she finished, sounding hurt.
He paused for a moment, struggling to gather his thoughts. “What does it matter?” he asked, frowning. “If I don’t take it, someone else will.”
“Yes”, she said, looking down at her shimmering self. “Yes, they will”.
“What do you want?”
“For you to decide why you’re doing this. At the moment, you’re telling me one thing, and telling yourself another.”
“Why is that so important to you?”
“Because that’s what stops the two of us from being objects” she responded, now glancing down at the still forms of the two guards. “The purpose we give ourselves. That’s why we’re dangerous.”
“They’re fine” he hastily responded. “Just unconscious. I was careful.”
“I know. You care about the consequences of your actions more than than you know” she said, smiling now. “Ponies just need to be reminded of that, sometimes. They forget that what they do, and who they are, shouldn’t be so separate.”
He didn’t contest that. He watched her, flickering now as if she was the light, and his eyes started to itch.
“You’re trapped in there, aren’t you?” he said, finally. “That’s how you’re doing this. That’s what that thing does. It lets you look into other ponies’ minds.”
The bright mare laughed, shaking her head in amusement. “Weren’t you listening?” she responded. “I’m not stuck in that. Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not even on this train”
“I’m not sure I understand” he said, furiously resisting the urge to blink.
She paused, looking thoughtful for a second, and then stopped. “I think you do, actually. And that means my time’s up.” She grinned at him. ”Might want to hurry along, because I don’t think those two are going to be too happy to see you.”
His eyes were burning at this point and he shook his head, rubbing his eyes with a foreleg he blinked his vision back, and-
- and he was alone in the carriage, with two unconscious guards and a glowing box. And the voice in the back of his head, that had been listening to the whole exchange noted that yes, what he was proposing was all well and good but teleporting with the artefact was one thing. Teleporting without it would mean breaking the teleport wards on the train first, and that would be messy. And he hated messy. He looked down at the pegasus on the floor, who was just beginning to stir, sighed, closing his eyes.
And he focused.
SCRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-
And the white mare sat and waited for him,
Knowing not where he was, but where he was going
Not when he’d arrive, or who he’d arrive with
But maybe, just for once, the why
And that was, for now, enough.
The songs the others sang and the stillness of their silence.
Not content, she listened, for there was another song to be heard
And this one sang of the reasons for ghosts, demons, and old memories
And of all the lines of the world, and the need of sleep and dreams
And an of unknown wanderer, bright and brilliant, wrongly pursued
And of a light at the end, and then nothing more
The train…moved.
“…and of course, the one day I get sentry duty in the palace happens to be the same day as the Captain’s wedding…”
“So did you find her?”
“Not in the strict sense of the term, no. “
“That’s not an answer, Dusk”
“…she kind of ended up finding me”
“And how, pray tell, did that happen?”
“Geeze you’re inquisitive today. Look, I’ve mentioned the wedding right? So the shield breaks down, and none of us are really expecting it. We’d had our fair share of rampant deities-“
“- tell me about it. I join the Guard and it turns out I suddenly find myself needing to know the plural of apocalypse-”
“- but that sort of thing’s normally out of our league. Princess business.”
“Cocooned, huh?”
“The whole city was crawling with them. Nothing we could’ve done. Nothing you could have done, if you were there.”
“So are you two a thing now, or not?”
“Don’t you remember how they called in all of us, to make sure there were no changelings left in the palace guard? She was gone by the time we got released.”
“You’re avoiding the question, Dusk. For the second time I might add.”
“Since when were you so interested in my love life?”
“Since when were you so interesting in avoiding the question?”
“Fine. Yes, I’m taking her out for dinner tonight, provided the train ever gets to Canterlot. Happy?”
“And that’s all I wanted to know. Was that so hard? Gotta agree with you though, what’s the deal with the passenger train? Last time I checked, protocol didn’t involve the transport of Class V’s on civilian transport”
“No clue, you’re the unicorn here. I think they’re trying to keep the whole thing hush-hush. Goddess’ sake, we’re literally handing it over to the mare who’s using it at the station”
“Though to be fair, somepony capable of using that thing is probably security enough”
“True”
“Oh my word, m’am. I am so sorry…”
“Heh. Poor Tacit, getting senile in his old age”
“You could show a bit more deference to a senior officer, Pauldron”.
“He’s retired. Senior? Oh, absolutely. My officer? Not for a long time now”
“Regardless, the point stands. You’ve know what he went through. He deserves at least that much respect.”
“Easy, Dusk. Easy. I know that”
“I have to wonder sometimes. Y’know, you could try actually thinking before you open your mouth every once in a while”
“Hey Dusk?”
“…yes, Pauldron?”
“What’s the reason for mountains?”
“I didn’t mean thinking that much”
“Well, this is what you got. Answer the question”
“What, you skipped geography as a colt?”
“No, no, not how they’re made. Their purpose, Dusk . Their rationale. Their raison d'être”
“Are you absolutely certain you’ve had nothing to drink?”
“Dusk, I’m hurt that you’d–“
CRRRRRRCK
“What was that?”
“Gimme a sec, Dusk”
A faint humming, a flicker of something static, a shiver of light.
“Anyone there?”
“Not that I could feel. Probably just a piece of luggage moving, nothing to ruffle your feathers about”
“You stay here, alright? I’m just going to give it a look”
Silence
A door opens
A head pokes through, remembered, recalled.
“Dusk’s checking it out now, Sir. Just a bit of cargo moving around. Nothing to worry about.”
Eyes narrow, jaw clenched, bones bitter
“Very well”
A head removed.
Door closed.
Silence
A muffled thump in the distance.
The sound of something long and wooden lifted from its resting place.
“Dusk? Dusk, was that you?”
Hooves step slowly, softly, silently
“Celestia damn it Dusk…”
A head poked through a door, followed by a body.
Something behind him.
Turning around, too slowly, not swiftly enough
A second thump.
Silence.
The train moved.
Although that was not, precisely speaking, correct.
Given its proximity to Canterlot the train was, in fact, travelling at a constant velocity, and hence it was equally correct to state that Equestria moved around the train. Tacit was, for all intents and purposes, completely stationary.
Except that the train had left the station, and was presumably arriving shortly at a destination. If one considered Equestria was moving around the train, where was Equestria’s destination? Where was its point of origin?
Tacit shook his head, moving forward as he-
He’d left the door unlocked. He never left the door unlocked. Well, specifically, he normally locked the door, the summation of such being that the door was not left unlocked. He was fairly certain that he had, in fact, locked the door.
And yet here they were.
Tacit stepped carefully into the carriageway, closed the door and waited for the click of the lock, before continuing on his way. It was a simple task, being a train guard, and like most simple tasks gave the mind ample opportunity to wander.And even that, after a time, became mechanical.
The mind had a mind of its own…
Snow-capped mountains rose up in the distance as the train approached. And Tacit thought of mountains, and remembered.
He remembered the mountains, the caverns, the nights. And how before then he’d never felt the shadows, but in those moments he’d felt them, and was endarkened.
The old pain, old darkness forgotten from dreams too real, endless corridors all the same. In each and every one they stood, tall and faceless. Who were they? Around them the memory-gems sped through endless conversations. He remembered, recalled, parents, their voices. Not his parents. That was important. He remembered. Who were they? Words snarled by crystals, words that his parents –no, their parents he remembered that now, – had never uttered. Couldn’t have uttered. Not the ones he knew. He remembered.
They were never meant to die like that. To cease to fly, to fall and freeze. A flicker, a flutter, time stuttering to a stop and then that, too, stops, silence as the world resumes its motion but they’re gone, not silent or still but gone, and wait long enough and you’re never really sure if they were ever even here so why do you think that they’re gone?
You can’t know the future, they said, too hard, can’t be done, but the past is just the present reversed as the future is forward so how could you know that either? Thoughts can be changed, memories erased, eroded, and then you died that second death, the death of what you were and were to be until you weren’t even sure what was you or if you ever had been.
But not him. He remembered. He remembered the pain pounding, pulsing, a life of frustration finally to fall, to freeze. ‘Terrible’, they said, ‘imagine them, traitors’, they said, ‘’for the best’ they said, so simple to erase what you couldn’t atone for, to pin your sins on the soul of another.
It wasn’t for them, but they were dead, so what did that matter to the rest?
And he remembered-
“As we round the bend, those on the North side of the train can take in the views of the famous Crystal Bore”
The familiar announcement went some of the way to jerking Tacit back to the here and now. A sudden and unexpected fall through the air onto a young mare in front of him did the rest.
Quickly pushing himself off the emerald-green unicorn, the guard's mouth went into autopilot while his brain temporarily resigned captaincy and went to the restroom.
“Oh my word, m’am, I am so sorry. Are you alright? I don’t know what I was thinking. Well, that was the problem really. I was thinking too much. Oh, your coffee! I am terribly sorry.”
He took a breath and his mouth, finding the brain still in absentia, continued.
“Falling over my own legs. As much as that’s excusable at my age, I should have looked where I was going m’am-“
The mare, who had up until this point been ignoring him, abruptly turned to face him. His brief hesitation gave his mind a chance to catch up and boot his mouth out of the pilot seat.
She stared at him with an almost bemused expression.
“No worries. Really. It was lukewarm at best”
Good? Good. Yes. Good.
“Don’t worry about it” she added, patiently.
He let out a deep breath.
“That’s…good. Well, I’ll be on my way”
The old stallion continued his trundle down the carriage as the train passed by a grove of pines, shadows flickering like mad dancers across the aisle.
Because we want to, in the end. That’s the only reason there ever is.
CRRRRRRCK
Oh bother.
The background murmur in the carriage had ceased, heads turned in worry.Tacit sighed, moving briskly to the rear end of the carriage.
Why was the door unlocked?
He-
Never mind.
He stuck his head inside, catching the gaze of the solitary unicorn Guard, who wryly waved off the question before Tacit could open his mouth.
“Dusk’s checking it out now, Sir. Just a bit of cargo moving around. Nothing to worry about”
Tacit paused for a moment, briefly intent upon reminding the unicorn of how one addressed one’s seniors thank you very much, but stopped himself. That was beneath him.Let it be and remain there.
“Very well” he responded.
Tacit pulled his head out, making sure to shut the door behind him.
Murmured susurrations were passing through the carriage. Heads turned towards him as he turned back around.
“Nothing to worry about folks. Just a problem with some cargo. All fixed now”
A moment of silence as the myriad conversations switched gears, before the carriage was once again filled with a backdrop of voices.
Tacit gazed back at the rear carriage, catching the sunlight playing across his reflection in the glass panelling.
And he heard, faintly.
“Is that a spot of brown I spy?”
Spy.
I spy, I the spy, the whirring of the gems, the lies. A tear, I cry, out of fear of distant darkness, the dark within and the dark without end.
They don’t understand, you see, say we live in the present, should look to the future (which can’t be done, they said, it’s ‘for the best’) but we live in the past, a step behind, time’s too fast, acting now to change what will soon become what we’ve done in the hope that when we’re done then what’s then now is brighter but it’s black, and blank, and gone-
And he remembered, what use is a candle when you have a sun? What use are all the little flames, save to blur the lines between wrong and bright, and then they, too, go, and all you’re left with is the endarkening night. It’s ‘for the best’, they say, to burn brief and right, and then you’re gone, the darker the flame, the brighter the shadows and the shadows shone, though it was ‘for the best’.
And he remembered standing at the end of it all, in front of Her Radiance, hoping
That the darkness inside of him was ‘for the best’
Before he let his light shine.
No, that wasn’t right, she’d never known. How could he remember something that had never happened? He couldn’t. Wouldn’t. She hadn’t known. Had she? He-
He didn’t know.
He’d forgotten.
SCRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-
Tacit’s train of thought derailed as a high pitched whine filled the air, rising in cadence. He turned in horror, staring at the brightening glow emanating from the back carriage.
He recognised that.
Someone was breaking the teleport wards. How? That wasn’t possible.
Tacit spun on his hooves, sprinting for the rear compartment as light filled the room. He slammed his eyelids shut but the it seared through mere flesh and blood, burning a pattern in his retinas, his mind.
- IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Everything went white.
The train…moved.
Wait, what?
Emerald’s mind caught up with the conversation.
This was an action that was almost immediately regretted by all parties involved.
“What? You couldn't possibly have-“
“No, I wish I was lying... I just...” the stallion she was sitting across from sighed dramatically, gesturing with his forelegs. “You know, I’d just made surgeon. This was it. We were Canterlot’s elite. The world was ours”
“Seriously though?” said Emerald with a fair degree of incredulity. “Where did you even find that spell?”
“To be fair, it was really her fault” said Ardent Scalpel, his muzzle in a wide grin. “She’d found it in an old textbook, in the Starswirl the Bearded wing-“
Emerald resisted the urge to snort in derision she finished drying off her coat.
“Remind me why your sister has access to that again?”
“She doesn’t, but that’s never stopped her”
“And she was looking for…?”
“Not a clue, and given what she found, I didn’t ask”
Emerald snorted in derision. “You’d think that when your sister’s one of the most powerful unicorns this side of Equestria, you’d learn not to play pranks on her. I’m looking forward to meeting her”.
“It wasn’t such a big deal” he protested.
“Your sister turned you into a mare, and that’s not supposed to be a big deal?”
Ardent crossed his forelegs, assuming what she supposed he thought passed for a pouty expression.
“Hey, you make it sound worse than it was. It was only for a few hours-“
“Weren’t you just talking about how you took it upon yourself to serenade the entire neighbourhood?” asked Emerald.
Ardent had the decency to look slightly embarrassed.
“Well she’d always wanted singing lessons-”
“-at midnight?”
“Did I mention the cider? I’m fairly sure I’ve mentioned the cider.”
“You’re incorrigible” the mare responded, laughing.
“And lovable. Don’t forget lovable” replied Ardent.
Emerald gave him a tired smile, leaning back into the seat. Ardent, always a little slow to catch on, piped up.
“Tired?” he queried.
“I was up working all night. Being tired the following day is the usual consequence of that, last time I checked.”
“Well, I tried to help you”
Emerald shook her head in mock disdain. “You”, she said, “should stick with fixing ponies, and stay far away from anything else”
“I didn’t see a problem with it” he responded with a playful tone. “The numbers were fine”
“Seriously?” Emerald retorted. “It was the equivalent of walking into a flower store, breaking a vase, picking up the largest shard you can find and going round smashing every single other vase in the store with it”
“What if you’re after vase shards, hmm?”
“It doesn’t matter because all the flowers are dead!”
“It’s a – “
“Just…forget it” said Emerald in exasperation, cutting him off. “I don’t know why I even bother sometimes”
Ardent simmered quietly for a few moments as the train moved onwards, mountains rising in the far distance.
“Alright miss smarty-mare. What”, said Ardent, pausing for dramatic effect, “is the reason for mountains”?
Emerald laughed. “They’re objects, Ardent” she replied.” They don’t mean anything. They don’t have a reason. The just are.”
“You see, that’s where you’re –“
“As we round the bend, those on the North side of the train can take in the views of the famous Crystal Bore”
The loudspeaker announcement went some way towards shutting up Ardent. The elderly carriage guard falling on top of her did the rest.
“Oh my word, m’am, I am so sorry. Are you alright? I don’t know what I was…“
Emerald tuned out the aged stallion as a growing feeling of warmth under her hooves made itself known. Looking down, she observed that the traitorous mug had seen fit to hurl its contents across the carriage floor.
“…falling over my own legs…”
What?
Huh. He was still talking.
It was just an object. It didn’t mean what he thought it meant.
“…so let me, m’am, apologise for-“
She supposed she should answer him.
Emerald abruptly looked up at the elderly stallion, trying not to smirk as his voice died in his throat.
“No worries. Really. It was lukewarm at best”
The stallion's face shifted through several expressions before settling on somewhere decidedly south of relieved.
“Don’t worry about it” she added.
He let out a deep breath. “That’s…good. Well, I’ll be on my way” he responded, before turning around and doing just that.
Emerald let out a breath of her own.
CRRRRRRCK
What was that?
Emerald looked up, Ardent’s look of concern mirroring her own. He spoke first.
“That…did not sound good”
Don’t think about it.
Emerald let out a breath. “I’m sure it’s… nothing” she responded.
Either it’s nothing, or…
No. She’d know if somepony was using it. They’d all know.
Don’t think about it.
“Nothing to worry about folks. Just a problem with some cargo. All fixed now”
The guard's booming voice carried from the back of the train.
Hearing a snort to her left, Emerald looked over to see Ardent’s bemused expression.
“My fair lady, forgive me for mine inquiries, but would that be a spot of brown I spy?” he asked snidely, in his best imitation of a Canterlot noble.
Refusing to rise to the bait, Emerald gave Ardent a tired smile before closing her eyes, and resting her head against the window. Ardent, finally getting the hint, gave a sigh and leant back in his seat, fiddling idly with his empty coffee cup.
She drifted off.
SCRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-
Emerald started as an ear-splitting whine filled the air. She went to glance at Ardent, but had to close her eyes as a piercing light filled the room. It wasn’t just bright. It wasn’t just brilliant. It wasn’t just blinding. It shone through blood and bone, blazing straight through the walls of the train, straight through her eyelids.
The keening heightened pitch, her head feeling as though someone was slowly ramming her horn back inside her skull.
-IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Everything went white.
The train moved…
…and he couldn’t believe it had been that easy.
Decloaking and sweeping spells were standard precautions for intercity freight and transport. Trains, airships, boats, they all had them. Of course, Class V constructs were classified that way for a reason. They had a tendency to disrupt ambient magic in the vicinity. Relatively harmless to most living creatures, if handled properly, but unbound thaumological fields, well…it was safer not to trust them around little things, like your ordinary run-of-the-mill detection matrices...nothing too important.
As for the security, he could only assume that they simply weren’t expecting anypony to come after it. Honestly though, three guards? Was that really the best they could do? A pony could almost feel insulted.
Echo looked around the narrow passageway between carriages he was presently standing in.
DON’T TRAVEL BETWEEN CARRIAGES
What was that supposed to mean?
His horn flared (invisibly) as he quickly checked the integrity of the cloaking spell (because you could never be too careful), then cast a small silence field around himself, before giving the door a gentle nudge open, and stepping (silently) into the first carriage. A mare to the right of him turned her head, and his heart froze for a moment, before he realised she was looking through him to the opened door, and he relaxed. The odd head turned his way, but nobody really payed it any attention.
Nobody ever did.
He started down the carriage, albeit it a little awkwardly. If his plan were hypothetically to have a design flaw, – and this was purely hypothetical- it would probably be that invisibility spells actually made you invisible. Which, whilst great for say, sneaking on trains, was bucking terrible if you wanted to walk in a straight line. Being blindfolded was one thing. Walking invisible was like being blindfolded, and then projecting your surroundings onto the inside of the blindfold, and…
…that one seemed to have gotten away from him.
“As we round the bend, those on the north side of the train can take in the views of the famous Crystal Bore”
The announcement startled Echo for a moment and he stopped, the elderly stallion behind him accidentally tripping over Echo’s invisible hindlegs. Hastily stepping forwards and out of the way of the sudden mess of limbs, Echo lit up his invisible horn, heart pounding, only to notice that the train guard had fallen muzzle-first onto a unicorn mare in the aisle seat
The grey stallion stood up, shaking his head as he did so, and turned to the mare. “Oh my word, m’am, I am so sorry. Are you alright?” he asked. The mare, clearly more worried about the drink she’d spilt, was searching around the floor for the now empty mug.
Shaking his invisible head, Echo snorted silently as he turned around and continued his slow walk to the far end of the carriage, the old guard's profuse apologies clearly audible behind him.
It raised an interesting question, that. Whilst the mare wouldn’t have dropped the mug if the guard hadn’t fallen on her, she also wouldn’t have dropped it if she’d been holding it a little tighter, or paying a little more attention. And the guard wouldn’t have fallen in the first place if Echo hadn’t been distracted by the announcement. And-
Echo blinked, realising that he’d reached the end of the carriage aisle.
Glancing behind him to make sure he had enough time before the guard caught up, Echo focused. The first thing he did was cast an immediate-vicinity ‘ghosting’ spell around both him and the door. It would act as the thaumic equivalent of his invisibility spell – any sweeping or detection magic originating external to the field would pass straight through, as if nothing were there.
Now safe to cast without threat of detection he focused again, this time creating an illusory duplicate of the door occupying the same space as real one. Finally, he cast the same cloaking spell that surrounded him on the real door, which promptly vanished from sight, leaving only its illusory counterfeit in its place. Echo reached out and grabbed the real door’s invisible handle, stepping through the doorway before shutting it behind him again. Making sure it was properly closed and in the same position as the illusion, Echo dismissed his work of the past few seconds.
Wincing slightly at the pain as he let his horn die out, Echo walked cautiously past the two oblivious guards.
“Hey Dusk?”
“…yes, Pauldron?”
“What’s the reason for mountains?”
Silly question, that.
Echo continued down the hallway, passing through an open door into the rearmost carriage. Inside the center of a room filled with drape-covered boxes stood a large, black box the shade of midnight, ornate silver clasps holding on a lid covered with runic script. Craftsponies could be so dramatic sometimes.
Echo walked up to it, feeling a brief shiver in the air around him as his invisibility wards vanished, and his horn flared as he undid the clasps holding the lid on-
CRRRRRRCK
There was a crack of as a wave of thaumic energy exploded out of the casing and quickly petered out against Echo’s reactive shield, leaving behind the faint smell of ozone.
Echo muttered several choice words under his breath.
In hindsight, he probably should have extended the silence field to the container before opening it. In hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have opened the container in the first place. Hindsight was a wonderful thing. He sighed as voices echoed from the hallway behind him.
“What was that?”
“Gimme a sec, Dusk”
Echo stood there, as he felt the magic probing, and nearly laughed as it passed straight through him without so much as a ripple. He felt the magic aura wink out, and the voices picked up again.
“… just going to give it a look”
He was still invisible. Good.
The grey pegasus entered the room and walked straight passed him, spear held at the ready. Echo stood stock-still until the guard had his back to him, and then promptly hit him in the back of the head with a blast of aetheric force. The pegasus fell to the floor with a dull ‘thump’.
“Dusk?”
Oh joy. The other one.
“Celestia damn it Dusk, if this is another one of your games…”
Echo stood there, waiting. The second guard one entered the room, stopping in his tracks at the sight of his unconscious companion. Echo charged up his horn and flung a second blast of aetheric force at the unicorn, who must have sensed it, somehow, because he started turning just before it hit him.
He crumpled to the ground alongside his friend. Echo took a moment to breathe, before turning around and walking towards the center of the room.
And stopped.
The container had been flung wide open, a pulsing, pale light emanating from within.
That, whilst unexpected, was nothing to get carried away about.
What had Echo wholly terrified was the pony standing next to it. A bright, shimmering, flickering pony, whose whole body seemed to pulse in time with light spilling from the artefact like a luminescent heartbeat. She - and it was definitely a she - stood next to the vessel, peering in with a look of fixated curiosity.
The voice in the back of Echo’s mind insisted that a) she hadn’t been in the room when he entered, and that b), there was absolutely no way that she could have gotten into the carriage within the last five seconds without him noticing, and that therefore, c), there was no way that she could, in fact, be there.
“Look again”, his brain insisted.
“We are”, his eyes responded. “Think again”.
Echo looked closer at her, and the impossible mare looked up at him, meeting his gaze with a smile. He waited for her to speak, or to give some other indication of his presence, but she just stood there. Staring at him. Echo took a tentative step to the left, watching her eyes follow him. Getting increasingly uncomfortable, and seeing no alternative course of action, Echo broke the silence.
“Who are you?” he asked.
She stood there, motionless, the same expectant look on her face.
“You’re not possible” he said, trying to illicit a response.
Echo started as the glowing mare suddenly took a step towards him, her head tilted thoughtfully.
“And yet” she said, in a strange sing-song voice, “Here we are”.
The train moved, but there was so much more.
She smiled, opened her eyes, and then opened her eyes again. And the train moved, standing still as the air moved around it through which she moved moveless within the train. And the wind danced, and sung, and its song was of the sky and the end of the world, and the faraway forests, where wild words were sung softer, subtler, not silent but still. And the sun, too, sang, and -
She closed her eyes, and looked around her.
She supposed the word was busy. Busy, like when you were halfway through the dish you’d made a dozen times and you knew you should’ve started on the onions before you put the water onto boil because this happened every time and now you had to do five things at once and where were the onions you’d definitely bought them ARDENT WHERE ARE THE ONIONS and what were you doing look out for the knife-
Yes. Busy. The carriage was busy. Everything, these ponies. So much in their world.
The door in front of her opened and a pale-grey unicorn stepped out and froze as someone looked through him. And she looked at him again through half-closed eyes and he was bright, like the flowers that killed you if you ate them. Nobody saw him, because he couldn’t be seen. Nobody saw her because she wouldn’t be seen. It made all the difference.
She started down the carriageway, and she stepped.
“And lovable. Don’t forget lovable.
She snorted. He didn’t talk to her. He never did.
The emerald-green unicorn turned towards her.
“It’s just an object” the mare stated matter-of-factly. “It doesn’t mean what they think it means”
She agreed.
And she stepped, and she stood side by side with the old guard at the carriage’s end, and he turned to face her.
“Because we want to, in the end” he said, with an air of finality. “That’s the only reason there ever is”.
That one wasn't quite true. You weren't your eyes; you lived behind them.
And she stood there, waiting for him to open the door like a gentlecolt and she stepped through, waiting for him to leave. He did. The young guard stood there, staring at her.
“There are no lines to cross” he murmured. “Only the one’s we’ve all drawn in our heads. And they’re everywhere”.
She disagreed.
And she stepped once more, down the carriage, standing as he finally opened the casing, and the light spilled out. So brilliant, the colours, not like him, no harm but a promise to be kept. She flickered into form, willing herself to be seen, and turned to face him.
“Who are you?”
She stood there, waiting.
“You’re not possible”
And that was her cue.
“And yet”, she said –
- “Here we are”.
Echo blinked, staring at her, and found that he wasn’t entirely sure what to make of the situation. The plan, in his mind, had been rather straight forward. Get on train (tick). Get to artefact(tick). Get off train (pending). Two unconscious guards and an eerie, glowing mare were not part of the plan.
Said mare now staring off into the space behind him, a distant look on her face. “What do you think of the mountains?” she asked.
“I don’t”
“Yes you do. You think they don’t matter, that they don’t have a purpose,but you’re wrong. They have whatever purpose you give them.”
And that, he decided, was getting a little too weird. He took three steps towards the construct, his hooves clicking on the wooden floor, and found that he didn’t want to take it. Not really. What he truly want to do was take the time to appreciate it. He took a step backwards, all the better to admire it, honestly, and-
- he really hated suggestion charms. He looked up at the mare, who hadn’t taken her eyes of him the whole time and was still smiling, and stamped a hoof against the floor in frustration.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
“What do you want?” the mare replied.
The voice in the back of his head silently noted that they were starting to sound awfully like two pre-school foals having an argument over who got the last biscuit. Being the highly rational being he was, he ignored it.
“What I want” he said, his teeth clenched, “is for you to stop with this little game of yours, and let me take that”
“That’s the what, yes” she said impatiently. “And the why?”
“I’m wanted by certain ponies for something I didn’t do, and if I don’t get this for them, they’re going to come after me, ok? And then bad things happen.”
“So you want to take it so ‘bad things’ won’t happen” she said, and he could practically see her slotting in the inverted commas.
“Yes” he said,pointedly ignoring them.
“But that’s precisely what would happen if you do take it. Ponies will die. Not here, not now, but you know that. It’s just that the ‘bad things’ weren’t going to happen to you, and that somehow makes it better. Because you think what happens afterwards wouldn’t be your fault. That’s dangerous.”
“None of this is my fault – “
“ -her coffee on the floor” the mare interrupted. “Nobody to blame but herself, but you know it’s not true. Its fine, you say, not your fault but you’re lying. Twist the words right, and they will show their true form”
“Stop doing that. This-“he said, angrily gesturing to the two guards unconscious on the floor “-isn’t my fault. I didn’t choose any of this. I don’t have another choice. It’s-”
“-for the best?” she finished, sounding hurt.
He paused for a moment, struggling to gather his thoughts. “What does it matter?” he asked, frowning. “If I don’t take it, someone else will.”
“Yes”, she said, looking down at her shimmering self. “Yes, they will”.
“What do you want?”
“For you to decide why you’re doing this. At the moment, you’re telling me one thing, and telling yourself another.”
“Why is that so important to you?”
“Because that’s what stops the two of us from being objects” she responded, now glancing down at the still forms of the two guards. “The purpose we give ourselves. That’s why we’re dangerous.”
“They’re fine” he hastily responded. “Just unconscious. I was careful.”
“I know. You care about the consequences of your actions more than than you know” she said, smiling now. “Ponies just need to be reminded of that, sometimes. They forget that what they do, and who they are, shouldn’t be so separate.”
He didn’t contest that. He watched her, flickering now as if she was the light, and his eyes started to itch.
“You’re trapped in there, aren’t you?” he said, finally. “That’s how you’re doing this. That’s what that thing does. It lets you look into other ponies’ minds.”
The bright mare laughed, shaking her head in amusement. “Weren’t you listening?” she responded. “I’m not stuck in that. Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not even on this train”
“I’m not sure I understand” he said, furiously resisting the urge to blink.
She paused, looking thoughtful for a second, and then stopped. “I think you do, actually. And that means my time’s up.” She grinned at him. ”Might want to hurry along, because I don’t think those two are going to be too happy to see you.”
His eyes were burning at this point and he shook his head, rubbing his eyes with a foreleg he blinked his vision back, and-
- and he was alone in the carriage, with two unconscious guards and a glowing box. And the voice in the back of his head, that had been listening to the whole exchange noted that yes, what he was proposing was all well and good but teleporting with the artefact was one thing. Teleporting without it would mean breaking the teleport wards on the train first, and that would be messy. And he hated messy. He looked down at the pegasus on the floor, who was just beginning to stir, sighed, closing his eyes.
And he focused.
SCRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-
And the white mare sat and waited for him,
Knowing not where he was, but where he was going
Not when he’d arrive, or who he’d arrive with
But maybe, just for once, the why
And that was, for now, enough.