Part II

Deep in the capital, tucked away in an alley not oft frequented, was a quiet little library known as The Whispering Pages. Run by a skeleton crew of three, the Whispering Pages saw very little activity, hidden away as it was. Those that came to it—usually scholars and the like— went for a reason: to research, to study, and more often than not, for the past year she’d worked there, they came to ask Rivermoon questions. 

Of all the ponies ever employed at the library, Rivermoon was by far the strangest one. She was the first to open shop, only because she was always at the store an hour before even the owner arrived, and she was the last to close out, staying up reading long after most of the city had gone to bed. 

The strangest thing about her, however, was the full-body cloak she refused to remove. Usually, the owner would have never hired a pony whose face he could barely see, but he’d known her as a foal, known her family all his life, and all things considered, even if her name had been cleared, it would be best for business that her face remained obscured. 

It was the owner who’d suggested she use the name Rivermoon. 

He didn’t regret hiring her, though, not at all. 

It mattered little who came to the library; there was little she couldn’t do to assist them. There was no subject she was not knowledgeable in, no book she did not know, no topic she could not speak of. But, more than anything, more than the already excellent conversationalist she was—ponies came to the library simply to speak with her!–she was a remarkable listener. 

One could babble on for hours about the most inane of subjects, the type of things that would bore just about anypony to death, but Rivermoon would patiently sit there and listen, attentive to the point of asking questions when appropriate. 

“How do you do it?” asked the owner once. 

“I’ve had practice,” she replied politely. 

He worried about her, truth be told. When she’d first arrived, he’d been worried for himself—he wasn’t a king, but still!—but the more time passed, the more he got to know her better than he did when she was a filly, the more he worried about her state of mind. If she wasn’t reading and she wasn’t assisting a customer, she was sitting somewhere staring off into the distance, the aura emanating from her almost oppressively somber. 

He sometimes asked her what she was thinking of, to try and lighten the mood. Clothes, she’d said once. Singing, she’d said another time. Digging graves, she said recently. 

“Digging graves! Why’re you thinking about that?”

“I’ve dug two.”

He stopped asking after that. 

Later that night, while she read and he cleaned, he got to thinking. Well, her brother was one. He remembered hearing about it, how she went to the forest to bury him herself. But the other? Her parents had died while she was away, from heartbreak and horror and shame in turn. She didn’t have any other family he could think of, so who else could—

Just like that, he realized who it was. 

He remembered reading it in a scroll a good friend had smuggled from the castle. 

Somewhere far away, a little ways away from a village nopony really knew, the pony formerly known as Twilight Sparkle had buried the creature she’d killed. 

The creature was disposed of about an hour after it had been slain. 

There was no procession. No ceremony or honoring, and no grave, either. The guards, afraid of touching such an unholy thing, had only escorted Twilight to the nearby forest so she could dump the body somewhere only scavenger animals would find. 

Just as the Lady had predicted once upon a time, her fate was to be that of a rotting corpse among the grass and the muck. 

“Leave your sword with it,” the guard captain instructed, the blade still stained with what they thought was the creature’s blood. “It might as well be a cursed object now.”

When they headed back to the village, they had the decency to give her time to adjust to having her sight back. It came and it went, the process clearly not something that would be done in a matter of hours.

It was hard for bitterness not to be among the many emotions warring inside her. She’d been fine. She didn’t care about having her vision back, happy if it came back, and happy if it didn’t. But this? To have it back at such a cost? There was no happiness there.

Once they were back in the village, the captain told Twilight she would come with them to the capital. She still had to stand trial, but the creature’s manipulation and trickery, and her brave slaying of the beast, would do her great favors. They would all vouch for her. 

Twilight listened and nodded, bitterly realizing everything was playing out just like the Lady had expected. 

(Months later, Twilight would accept that the only way the Lady could have walked out of there involved Twilight slaying every guard standing in their way and condemning her own soul in the process. She would have done it, of course. She knew this. The Lady had known it, too. And if their roles had been inverted, she wouldn’t have waited nearly that long to start the possession.)

“We’re leaving at seven in the morning sharp,” she was informed. 

It was at exactly four in the morning, just as the guard outside her bedroom door succumbed to her sleeping spell, that Twilight Sparkle packed a container of water and cloths into a saddlebag, climbed out her window, borrowed a shovel from the neighbor’s shed, and then galloped back towards the forest. 

Hours before, as she’d sat there listening to the guards celebrate their victory, Twilight had been consumed with bitterness towards the Lady. Burning, searing, grieving anger at the terrible choice the Lady had made. 

She hated her, Twilight felt. In that moment, she was sure she would hate the Lady for the rest of her life, and the only reason she was risking her coat burying her was just to fulfill her promise.  

But then she found her Lady’s corpse just where they’d left it. Saw the Lady’s coat stained with mud and blood, looking frail and small and dead, and how quickly Twilight’s hate vanished, how shamed she felt. 

Twilight rushed to her, kneeling beside the creature and nudging her with a hoof. “My Lady?” When the corpse did not move, Twilight tried again, gently leaning down and nuzzling the creature, her voice breaking and tears clouding her eyes. “Lady Rarity?”

After a moment, when all Twilight could hear was the sound of her own choked breaths, she forced herself up, trying to be aware of her time. 

She lifted the Lady first with her hooves, but when the Lady’s head hung down like a ragdoll, so easily and without resistance that Twilight truly feared her head would snap clean off, she quickly encased the Lady in magic. Once she was safe, Twilight picked up her shovel and set off to find somewhere, anywhere, that had dirt soft enough to dig. 

It took Twilight an hour to clean the body.

It was hard when she’d not much water and she kept having to stop to take a minute to compose herself, to not make matters worse by crying over the Lady and turning dirt into mud. Whenever she took a break, she’d get to work on digging, having found a little moonlit clearing that reminded her so much of the Lady’s forest that Twilight wanted to weep over that, too. 

Maybe it was meant to be. Maybe it was fate. Maybe the Lady’s soul would be pleased to be buried in a place so like her old home, not alone but kept safe, protected and away from cruel ponykind. 

The digging of the grave took a while, too, the unicorn plagued with questions and thoughts no pony should ever have to ask herself. Terrible things like ‘will animals scavenge her body?; irrational things like ‘how is she supposed to breathe underground?; and blindingly painful ones such as ‘I never told her how much she mattered to me’.

It was such a stupid thing to think. It was so silly, so ridiculous, when, logically and sensibly, Twilight’s every action for years now were indicative of love and affection to anyone with eyes. But there, staring down at the empty grave, all Twilight could think about was how she never once said it. 

She’d just assumed the Lady knew. 

What if she didn’t? 

And now it was too late. 

How could she never have said it? 

When the time finally came, Twilight jumped down into the grave and then carefully levitated the Lady down with her, taking her in her forelegs and laying her down herself. She looked so at peace, her forehooves crossed over the sword hiding the wound in her chest. 

Twilight leaned down and kissed her forehead. 

When she returned to the village about thirty minutes later, just a little before half past six, Sugar Song was waiting for her. 

“I’m sorry, Twilight.” 

Twilight didn’t know what she was sorry for. Sugar Song didn’t elaborate, and when later that night, a neighbor asked for her opinion on it all, she did not mention helping Twilight climb up the bedroom window, and even less did she mention how she’d held the unicorn as she quietly wept, and wept, and wept. 

If one were to ask Twilight Sparkle—or Rivermoon, rather—how she fared her first year back in the Capital, the most sincere answer she could offer was that she had no idea. 

Try as she might, she could not recall her first year back. She could state what was evident, such as she had a home, and found employment, and clearly had managed a life for an entire year, but the details, the minutia and day-to-day? 

Some ponies worked through their grief. Others, like Twilight, lost entire years of their lives to it, only knowing it had been real thanks to fragmented memories of a pain so extreme that trying to recall it felt like trying to grasp fire. 

It wasn’t a rare occurrence for a library patron to seek her out, following up some long-forgotten conversation she was certain was not one had with her, only for her to find evidence of it in her journal entries after they’d insisted enough she pulled them out to check. 

“You really don’t remember? We really did talk about it!”

“I believe you, Professor.”  

Seated behind her desk, a stallion eagerly standing by, Twilight leafed through her journal, trying her best only to skim and not read thoughts best left forgotten. 

The conversation in question was as difficult as any conversation surrounding the Lady usually was. Long ago, the patron, an inquisitive scholar obsessed with conspiracy theories, had gotten it into his head that surely, maybe, the Creature had been a failed creation of the king himself who’d come back to seek revenge. So, desperate for information from a place he knew kept secrets, he’d sought out ‘Rivermoon’.

“We spent the entire day looking into it!” he insisted. 

It was just as he finished talking that she found what he wanted. She landed on a page with a single word written on the top, underlined thrice. 

CHIROQUUS

An undead batpony-like beast that preyed on the blood of others, this was the closest creature Twilight had ever found to whatever the Lady was. Just like her, it drank the blood of other living beings, but unlike her, it did not go through any manner of grotesque transformation, and certainly less did it heal its victims. 

She remembered pieces of that particular day as she read through her notes and relayed them. She remembered digging through the library’s occult section, and she remembered the professor showing her terrible articles—both in content and accuracy—he’d found on the Creature and how it acted and thought. What she remembered most of all, though, was that the very next day was the one and only time she’d taken a day off so she could stay in bed crying while poor Fluttershy checked in on her just about every hour. 

Deciding right there and then that she would not go through that again, she politely told him what books to find and wished him good luck.

“It’s not for me,” he added when he returned an hour later, books in tow. 

“It’s not?” She tried not to sound concerned, only curious. 

“I met the strangest fellow at the Jade Tavern. He was asking just about anyone who would listen!” He pushed up his glasses. “Wanted to know where he could find it, can you imagine?” 

“It? The Creature? It’s dead.” 

“You don’t know that,” he replied, and it was lucky for him his nose was so stuck in a book that he did not see the look Twilight gave him. “But that’s what I told him, and he said he wanted to try and find one like it.” 

“There isn’t anything like it.” 

No one and no thing would ever be like her.

(She was quietly proud of herself for not viscerally reacting when he agreed with her only because the king had made the creature, of course.)

“But it made me think of our research,” he continued, oblivious, “and I thought I might as well get a refresher in case I run into him again.”

It was just as he was leaving that she called out to him. 

“Where did you say you saw him?” 

“The Jade Tavern! You know the one, right by that bakery on Seventh Street.”

Later that evening, she’d never seen her boss so happy to be asked if she could clock out two hours early. 

Twilight didn’t allow herself to think of the Lady, much less enquire or openly talk about her. 

She told herself it was to honor the Lady’s sacrifice. To talk of the Lady or even just entertain thoughts of her might put Twilight at risk and make others think she was still under her spell. The truth was that she just didn’t want to think about it more than she already did. She wanted to move on. She had already moved on. 

And yet, years of instinctively monitoring anything that had to do with the Lady were not so easily unlearned. Despite her best efforts, her beating heart was that of a lady’s guard, not a scholar or librarian. 

She’d found the stallion much faster than she’d expected, mostly in part because he was not very quiet. A well-aged earth pony with a blue coat and matching gray mane and beard, Twilight watched as he paraded himself and his entire explorer get-up from table to table, jovially starting conversations and talking about the creature as if it wasn’t taboo. 

He was an adventurer, he told a mare; he’d just finished a big expedition, he explained to a stallion; he was searching for fantastical creatures, he insisted to the bartender; and his name was North Ridge of the Undiscovered West, he told Twilight when he introduced himself. 

“There is no ‘Undiscovered West’,” she pointed out. “It’s just the west.”

“Well, I haven’t been there yet, so it’s undiscovered to me!”

“Then how can you be of the west if you’ve never been there before?”

“You ask so many questions!”

“Because you don’t make sense.”

“My wife used to say that, too!” He laughed heartily at his joke and then plopped himself down at her table uninvited with such gusto, it was galling and impressive in equal measure. As were his quick-fire questions. “And you are?”

“Rivermoon.”

“And your profession?”

“Librarian.”

“And the reason you hide your face like you’ve got the plague?”

“…Excuse me?”

Again, he laughed heartily. “You don’t have to tell me! I only ask because I’ve gotten all sorts of plagues. My wife—Frost Flower—used to say my sense of humor was my biggest one.” He paused, thoughtful. “But then she laughed herself dizzy at all my jokes, so really, who knows.”

“…Right.”

He kept talking. 

In the span of about seven minutes, she was forcibly relayed his entire life story, including the fact that he had a serious heart condition and was thus on a mission to find the fabled kingslayer that had allegedly healed ponies before the aforementioned kingslaying. 

“It’s dead,” Twilight pointed out. 

“It doesn’t have to be that specific kingslayer! There might be more out there! And if there aren’t, I don’t believe the kingslayer is dead. ”

“You don’t?”

North shook his head. “I read the articles. It was stabbed in the heart? Any adventurer worth their salt knows the only way to ensure a fantastical undead creature is good and properly dead is by lopping its head off. And not just creatures! You want to make sure anything’s dead?” He swiped his hoof from left to right, and Twilight remembered how she watched the king’s head roll away from his body. “Off with their head!”

Twilight said nothing, staring down at the table. And thinking. Considering. 

But the Lady is dead. 

“I’m leaving tomorrow to the village it and that guard were hiding away in, in fact!” he continued. “See if I can’t find its body—if it’s there!”

“It will be,” Twilight said, firm, even as the doubt she’d pushed away for over a year now finally found entrance. 

“My, you say that with so much certainty!” His tone lowered. Not a threat, not a warning, just an observation. His eyes met hers. “Like you buried it yourself.”

“Excuse me?” Twilight asked, trying to pass off alarm as offense. 

“I’m sure you’ve noticed I’ve a young soul,” he continued, examining the salt shaker he was playing with on the table, idly spinning it like a top. “I’ve no indoor voice to speak of, I announce my plans to complete strangers, I’m generally loud. I figured if I came here enough times, asking enough questions about the kingslayer to enough ponies, then eventually, sooner or later—” The salt shaker stopped. His eyes once again met hers. His voice was barely above a whisper. “Twilight Sparkle would come to me.”

Twilight stood up, and again, deep alarm was passed off as burning indignation. “My name is Rivermoon,” she informed him, curtly. “Don’t associate me with murderers. If I’m dissuading you from trying to find its body, it’s because anyone with half a brain should know better than to mess with things they don’t understand.” She’d risked her coat long enough, so she turned to leave. “Have a nice evening.”

North barely seemed bothered. “I don’t think you were possessed, for the record.”

She stopped, despite herself. “Sir—”

“My wife and I were married for thirty-three long years,” he said. “And I loved her dearly. A wonderful zebra, smartest I’d ever met, bravest I’d ever faced, and snorted louder than a trombone when she laughed. I miss her every day. I see it in my eyes when I look in the mirror. I hear it in my voice. Her absence.”

“I don’t care, sir,” Twilight replied, harshly.  

“I’m sure you don’t! But my point is that I have lived without my wife for five years now, and I’m about to make some very outlandish assumptions right now, bear with me, but—” He leaned in ever so slightly. “A widower recognizes another.” 

He leaned back, smiling placidly. 

“Kings? Dear girl, I’d have killed gods when it came to my wife.”

“I’m only going with you as far as the village.”

Inside the empty Whispering Pages, North Ridge listened and nodded attentively as Twilight spoke. 

“You are not coming with me to her grave, either. I’ll—” She faltered. She couldn’t believe she was entertaining the notion. “I’ll look it over and let you know what I find.”

“Good, good! Excellent.” He leaned in. “So, was it a pact? It’s the only thing that makes sense. ‘Kill me rather than let them take me, and let’s clear your name while we’re at it’ sort of thing?” She glared at him. “I only get glared at when I’m either annoying or right. Bit of A, bit of B?” At her icy silence, he offered a charming smile. “So! As for payments, Miss Twilight?”

“Rivermoon.”

“As for payments, Miss Rivermoon?”

“Twenty bits per day.”

He gasped. “Twenty?! Dear girl, you may be no evil murderer, but you sure are a shameless thief!”

“Twenty-five now.”

“What! What’s the five for?”

“Trauma-tax.” 

He harrumphed. “Oh, I see. I see. Well, all right. That’s fair. So, to confirm, you’ll go with me to the village, you check over your—” Her eyes narrowed. “Your good friend’s resting place, and you tell me if she’s there or not.”

“Right.”

“And if she’s there, then I go pray my hide off that the Gods miraculously cure my condition.”

“Sure…?”

“And if she’s not there? What then?”

Twilight’s stare hardened. “She will be, sir.”

She had to be. 

Twilight couldn’t even conceive of what she’d do if she wasn’t. 

It took them about four days of practically non-stop walking to reach Twilight’s old home. 

North Ridge had talked most of the time, going on and on about his life as a self-proclaimed adventurer. To his credit, whenever Twilight was paying attention, she found him surprisingly entertaining and knowledgeable, but most of her time was spent thinking of other things. 

Things like, for example, the fact that once upon a time, Lady Rarity travelled the same path they were on all by herself, carrying a barely conscious half-dead Twilight on her back. 

What would she do if she wasn’t there? What would she do if she was there? 

She’d never visited the grave for a reason. At first, she told herself it was because of anger and pride, refusing to honor the Lady after she’d so easily given up on herself. But that was a lie.

Every day, every week, every month that went by, Twilight Sparkle endured the Lady’s death over and over again: she died every time Twilight’s neighbor left her window open when fixing clothes with her sewing machine; she died every time Twilight walked past the park and saw fillies braiding each other’s manes; every time somepony hummed songs of old; every time mares twirled around in beautiful clothes; and every time sheer habit brought Twilight’s hoof to rub twin scars on her neck. 

Why would she visit the Lady, when the Lady already haunted her every step? 

Just as she’d said, she did not go anywhere near the village. There was nothing and no one for her there, and considering she’d be quickly recognized, North would have an easier time gathering whatever information without her distracting half the place. 

Instead, slow as molasses, stalling every way she could, Twilight Sparkle dragged a shovel through the forest, looking for markers she remembered until she felt her entire chest burn with pain at the sight of a familiar moonlit clearing in the distance. 

Oh, stars, she thought, leaning against a tree on the edge of the clearing, trying to compose herself.

She’d buried the Lady in the middle of it, she remembered, and had found three stones to leave as markers. She’d carved the Lady’s name on one, the word ‘healer’ on another, and the third she left blank because to write down a date of death was unbearable. 

She remembered putting them on top of the grave in a little triangular formation, burying them several inches into the earth so they wouldn’t be so easily moved by wind or animals, taken to somewhere they didn’t belong such as, for example, the very edge of the clearing, right by Twilight’s hoof. 

Wide-eyed, Twilight stared at a rock bearing the Lady’s name. 

If before she’d moved like every force in the realm was weighing her down, now Twilight all but launched herself straight to the middle of the clearing, a nightmare beginning when she found the base of the tree disturbed, like something had half been dug out. 

Two scenarios stretched out before Twilight Sparkle, both nightmare-inducing in equal measure. 

The first was that animals had scavenged the Lady’s remains. 

The second was that Twilight had buried Lady Rarity alive. 

“Oh, stars,” she said, her shovel falling to the ground. “Oh, stars,” she repeated, stepping back from the hole, her stomach churning in abject horror. “Oh, stars above,” she whispered right as her back hit a tree. 

Her sanity quickly unraveling, she turned around and pressed her forehead against the tree, grasping onto it for some kind of support because the only way of knowing what happened was by digging out the rest of the grave, which was difficult when Twilight felt like she was about to be sick, or die, or both all at once. 

“Twilight,” she whispered, grasping at some semblance of something, “breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe.”

She closed her eyes, trying to ground herself, remembering some exercises the Lady—who was either in a wolf’s stomach or, oh gods—had taught her when Twilight woke from nightmares. 

I believe it starts with things you can see, but considering your predicament, let’s skip that and start with four things you can touch, my heart. 

The tree. Her saddlebag. Her chest. The dirt. 

Fabulous! Now, three things you can hear. 

The wind. Her own breathing. An owl. 

See, darling? You’re looking much better already. Now, two things you can smell. 

The cold, crisp wind. The moss on the tree. 

And last but not least, one thing you can taste—no, not your own HOOF, for stars’ sake! Do you have any idea where that’s been, you silly mare? 

Tears. Salty and warm, running down her cheek at the memory of her Lady. 

She took a steadying breath, and finally opened her eyes, staring into the tree. She studied it closely, just while she calmed down. She examined the bark, examined the dirt, and it was just then that her anxiety and stress completely stopped when she noticed a marking on the tree, covered by moss. 

“…What?”

It was a symbol that could only be described as a strange amalgamation of the letters T and U, as if they’d been smushed together. Then, she realized, just a little under it, also covered by moss, were even more symbols, these resembling other letters smushed together, like U and G and T. 

Her horror forgotten when faced with such a thing, she reached into her saddlebag and extracted a cloth, using it to wipe away the moss and reveal entire patterns of repeating symbols scratched out into the wood. 

It was a word?

TUUIU6HT

“Tuuiusixt?”

She looked at the other patterns, and the words scrawled out in a completely messy fashion, like a foal’s scribble, and found a different iteration. 

TWIU6HT

She stared and felt her blood run cold. “That isn’t a U.” 

That was an L and an I, and she stepped back realizing that most of the lower half of the tree, places a pony could reach, was covered entirely in messy scrawls of her own name. Over and over and over again. 

She glanced at the next tree and rushed to it as soon as she saw even more markings. This one, too, had her name scrawled about, but now other barely legible words had joined it. Things like HELLO, and GODS, and to Twilight’s simultaneous bewilderment and relief, what she could barely make out as WRETC??D KING. 

“Lady…” It tumbled out first as a whisper. And then it came out fully formed as a panicked call, Twilight whirling around on the spot. “Lady Rarity?!”

No one answered. 

“Lady Rarity?! Where are you?!”

Again, no one answered. So, Twilight went to the next tree, finding more words, scrawlings, and drawings as indecipherable as the letters, smushed and contorted as if written by a foal who could barely pick up a quill. What happened to her? Was she in pain? Was she so damaged she could barely write? And how old were these? So many were covered in moss, that could mean—Oh, gods, oh gods, oh gods. 

And then she stopped cold at a message written out on a tree in clear legible calligraphy. 

KNIGHT, it said. 
SHE WAITED FOR YOU FIVE MONTHS
SHE WOULD HAVE WAITED ETERNALLY IF WE LET HER
REST EASY, SHE IS UNDER OUR CARE NOW

We? Twilight thought, wildly, out of her depth, her entire life upended once again. Who the hell is ‘we’?

It came out like confession. 

The penitent slumped against a tree, face in her hooves, words and feelings she’d bottled up pouring out like blood from an open wound.

The priest standing by, digging out the grave just to make sure, quietly listening to a tale much grander and tragic than he’d ever expected.

The confessional, a lonely haunting forest, where secrets were kept safe, buried six feet under except for the one time they rose from the grave.

“Well.” He planted the shovel inside the empty grave and wiped the sweat off his brow. What a story. What a tale. Monsters were real and they dressed like kings. “She’s definitely not here.” He stood up on the tip of his hooves and peered out at his poor companion. “How’s your stomach? Still feeling sick?”

“I should have come back,” Twilight said, dazed. “I should have come back, why didn’t I—”

“She was dead,” North said, firm but not unkind. “You had no reason to believe she was anything but rotting. Frankly, after that whole spectacle she put you through, I’d expect that to be the end.” 

“She left messages for me,” Twilight exclaimed, looking over at him. 

“Those aren’t messages. They’re completely deranged!” He climbed out the grave and walked towards a tree, inspecting the markings. “Did she write them with her eyes closed? Maybe she went insane.”

Twilight’s face found its spot buried between her hooves. Her eyes still stung from crying. “Don’t say that.”

It never ended. The overwhelming relief of the Lady being alive had only lasted a second before it was replaced with an anxiety Twilight had felt only in the aftermath of killing King Violet. But that had only lasted a few hours, and then it was over. 

But this? This was going to last gods knew how long. 

“Rest easy, she is under our care now…” North was now in front of the cryptic message, stroking his beard as he examined it. He then walked towards Twilight, planting himself before her. “New plan! I’ll just have to find her and these mysterious caretakers. I’ll write to you if I find her.”

“…What? Write to me?” Twilight stood up, looking at him like he was mad. “I’m going with you.” 

“You are? Well!” He narrowed his eyes. “If that’s the case, I want to renegotiate your pay.”

“My pay? I don’t care about getting paid!” 

“You don’t? Amazing! I was about to run out of coin.” He stepped forward and gave her back a hearty clap. “Welcome aboard, kingslayer!”

If one could travel most of the realm in a year, Twilight and North Ridge found a way. 

She tried to take notes and keep a travelogue, at least at first. But after the first one was swept away while fording a river, and the second one was burned in the campfire when crossing the high mountains, and a lindwyrm ate the third, she gave up.

Would anypony else have believed half of it, if they’d ever read any of it? There were blank spaces in all maps of the realm, within and outwith it. Her own mental map was a little less blank now. But only a little.

They took tea with blemmyes, deep in the valley which the shy, headless creatures called home. North Ridge blethered away to their chieftain, who seemed to be a very old friend, while Twilight tried to figure out how exactly they were drinking their tea without heads and couldn’t help but fail.

They conferred with Breezies in their tiny kingdom, with Twilight shrinking herself and North Ridge to make a proper introduction, and the less she dwelled upon the sheer threat a hungry spider had posed at one point, the happier she would be.

They marched for two days and two nights without rest through the Ghostwoods, where it wasn’t safe to sleep.

They saw things she’d only seen mentioned in books. They saw things the books hadn’t even suspected. They made polite conversation with quite a few of them. 

And yet, the Lady’s location remained painfully elusive, to Twilight’s heartbroken dismay, as well as North Ridge’s declining health. 

By the ninth month of travelling, Twilight had grown used to his pained groans waking her up at the crack of dawn. By the tenth, she’d learned to accept that recurring stops to rest were no longer optional. By the eleventh, when the once sturdy strapping stallion now looked as frail as a stick that a simple breeze would snap, Twilight knew finding the Lady was now a matter of life and death. 

Not that it hadn’t ever been. Not that Twilight wasn’t aware with every passing day that her life would never resume until she found her Lady alive and well. 

But still. 

It was just as the twelfth month rolled around—a full year of searching—that hope came in the shape of a mare at an inn. They’d been staying there for about three days, hoping that a longer rest might bolster North for their upcoming trek up a mountain, but as Twilight watched him struggle to eat his soup, she agonized over a choice. 

If he didn’t miraculously improve, she couldn’t see how he’d survive the trip. He would have to stay behind, not to wait, but to die. 

But could she leave him behind? Another pony she couldn’t save, another being she’d grown to love parting ways, devastation in their wake? Could she stomach another hole in her already gaping heart? 

But what if she stayed? Then she’d watch him die, and the thought of digging a third grave was almost too unbearable to stand. 

He’d refused when she’d offered to help him eat and had instead instructed her to look at some maps on a different table and chart their course. She’d done it days before already. She knew he knew this, but she still obeyed, knowing full-well it would be easier on them both if he didn’t see her trying not to cry. 

She used to be better at it. She was reasonably certain the Lady had seen her cry only twice—both times involving Twilight begging for her Lady’s life. 

But now she was tired. She was hopeless. She would persevere because she simply did not know any other way, but gods, she was tired of it all, wishing she could get in bed, close her eyes, and that she were back in their little home, blind to it all, peacefully listening to gentle humming over the sound of a sewing machine. 

“Rivermoon! Have you eaten yet?” 

A mare had approached her. Buttermilk. A very pretty pegasus. Another passerby, just like them, staying for a time at the inn. Twilight had overheard her mentioning to the innkeep that she only meant to stay there for one night, but she kept delaying her leave, and Twilight suspected it had all to do with her companion. 

“I used to be a nurse,” she’d told Twilight the second night, offering the unicorn some pain-relieving salves. “Please, these should help him. I can apply them, if you think he’ll be all right with it?”

Twilight still remembered his bashful smile as she tended to him, delighted as a schoolcolt, dispensing the worst jokes Twilight had ever heard in her life. It was the most light she’d seen in his eyes in weeks. 

“Twilight, Twilight!” he told her later that night as she helped him into bed. Gentle and careful, so painfully aware of the fact she could feel his bones against thin skin. “She said she would reapply some tomorrow. Could you bring me some flowers from outside to give her?” 

“Maybe I should be applying it,” Twilight chided, laughing. “If you get any more excited, she might finish you.” 

“Oh! Oh, to be killed by such a lovely mare! What a dream!” 

“North! What would your wife say?” 

“Oh, that’s easy. She’d say it’s about time she had me back!” 

Buttermilk placed a bowl of soup next to the maps. Twilight’s stomach growled just looking at it. “Rivermoon, eat, please.” 

“I will,” Twilight promised. “I’m almost done.” 

“What’re you looking for?” Buttermilk joined Twilight at the table and glanced at the maps and the highlighted spidersweb of paths already taken. “North said you’re looking for some kind of fantastic creature! I thought maybe he was delirious, but…” 

“Not a creature,” Twilight clarified after a moment’s hesitation. If before she was hesitant even to try and describe or talk about the Lady, this was no longer the case. She had to exhaust all possibilities, even if she sounded insane. “A… a healer, I guess.”

“A healer?” Buttermilk glanced over at North, still working away at his soup. It was clear she felt great pity for him. “For North?”

“I know what you’re going to say.” Twilight kept her eyes on the map, as if it might tell her where the Lady was if she stared hard enough. “That there’s nothing nopony can do for him. That nopony can cure what he has. But there is.”

Twilight met Buttermilk’s eyes. There was a strange intentionality to her gaze. A curiosity that felt… different. Not judgmental, but certainly judging. 

“Is there?”

Twilight looked away. “Yes. It’s a… a mare. It’s not a pony. Or, well… it isn’t anymore. It’s like a batpony, I guess, but without the wings. It drinks—” The fear cut her off. The Lady was gone, and nopony this far across the realm would even recognize Twilight, but… but the fear. She pushed on. “It drinks blood. Or so we read,” she quickly added. 

“…It drinks blood,” Buttermilk repeated. 

“But it cures ponies, too. It takes on whatever disease they have. It could cure North.”

Buttermilk hummed thoughtfully. She didn’t seem particularly perturbed by Twilight’s assertions, nor did she look like she thought Twilight was mad. When eventually she spoke, she seemed to be treading carefully.

“That kinda sounds like the kingslayer.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Twilight replied at once, without even considering the consequence of saying such a thing until Buttermilk frowned. 

“…Yes, it does.”

“No, it doesn’t,” she repeated, firm. To hell with it. “The kingslayer wasn’t a creature, it was a royal guard.”

Buttermilk’s eyes widened briefly. ”Don’t you know of the creat—”

“Of course I know of the creature, Butter. Who doesn’t know of the creature?” Twilight replied, quickly. No other patrons were around, but she still lowered her voice. “The one falsely accused of manipulating the guard to kill King Violet.”

“You think she was falsely accused?” 

There was no offense in her voice. There was surprise, definitely, and a little skepticism, but not the abject indignation Twilight would expect. 

“I do.” There was a stammer in her voice. Slight, but there. 

Buttermilk leaned in. “Why?”

“I just do,” Twilight repeated, uncomfortable. 

“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “I thought it was because of meeting it.”

“What?” Twilight whisper-gasped. She glanced towards North Ridge, betrayed. “Did he tell you?!”

One, two, three seconds passed, and Buttermilk smiled very politely. “No, it was just wishful thinking. Or, well, had been wishful thinking.”

Oh, gods, thought Twilight, and again as Buttermilk leaned in. 

“You met it?” Twilight was surprised that, rather than abhorred or aghast, the pegasus seemed fascinated. She must have clocked Twilight’s complete discomfort because she added, “The secret is safe with me, I promise.”

Okay. All right. Okay. Oh, gods. 

Onwards. No way out but forwards. 

“Yes,” Twilight whispered. “I met her.”

“Her!”

Twilight gestured with her hoof. “Shhhh!” 

“When did you meet her?” Buttermilk asked, the fascination still there but now laced with the… again, not judgment, but… but as if she were assessing Twilight. 

“A long time ago,” Twilight lied, barely able to hold back the panic lacerating her all over. Onwards, onwards, onwards, the only path she knew. “Before the—Before the King. I was sick, and she healed me. Just like she did dozens of other ponies. That’s why I don’t believe she killed King Violet. She wouldn’t just kill him, even if she—if she had a real reason, or. I don’t know.”

Buttermilk hummed. “So… that means you met the guard, too, didn’t you? Twilight Sparkle.”

“Yes,” said Twilight Sparkle. “I met her.” She looked back to her maps. “Anyway, we need to find something like the creature.”

Buttermilk was quiet a moment before gently pushing the soup bowl towards Twilight. “Eat. Mapping can wait.” She then got up, stretching her wings. “I’ll go check on North.”

“Wait, Buttermilk,” Twilight said, urgently. “What I told you stays between us, please.”

Buttermilk smiled warmly. “Of course! I would never want you in trouble.”

“Not me,” Twilight replied. “I don’t care if I get in trouble. I care about the creature. If there’s one out there, I don’t want it to end up dead like—” She caught herself on the verge of using the Lady’s title. “—the forest one. The less ponies even think it might exist, the safer it’ll be.”

Buttermilk contemplated Twilight for what felt like forever until eventually, she asked. 

“You care so much. Why? Because it healed you?”

“She didn’t just heal me,” Twilight replied, softly, sincerely, the pain in her heart fresh once again. “She saved my life.”

It wasn’t a lie. 

It was about twenty minutes after North had fallen asleep that somepony knocked at their door, and Twilight opened it to find Buttermilk, dressed as if ready to travel.

“You’re leaving?” Twilight asked, surprised. 

“Not for long. I’ll be back, I promise.” 

“Where are you going?” 

Buttermilk licked her lips, slowly, in thought. “I think I might be able to do something for North. The miracle he needs, but I’m not sure,” she added quickly at Twilight’s hopeful expression. “The… The treatment, I guess, we’d usually do for somepony so sick would be just to make the end better, not stop it completely.” 

“What’s the treatment?” 

Buttermilk smiled politely. “Nurses’ secret.” She glanced past Twilight into the room, towards the sleeping bundle on the furthest bed. “He needs to make it five days. I should be back before then. Okay?”

“…Okay,” Twilight replied. “I’ll make sure he’s still here.” 

“Great. See you soon, then. And…” 

“…And?” 

“And be packed just in case.” 

Twilight and North Ridge had been in the middle of a slow game of chess when Buttermilk came back, knocking on their room door with manic energy. 

“Buttermi—” 

“Are you packed?!” Buttermilk cut off, out of breath. She peered into the room, and then outright barged in, inspecting North over. “How are you feeling?” 

“Better!” he exclaimed, weak but in good spirits. “Particularly now that it looks like we’re not going to finish the match I was losing.” 

“What’s going on?” Twilight asked, taken aback. 

“We need to—” Butter cut herself off and rushed out into the hallway, gesturing somepony over. “Hurry.”

When a white pegasus stallion stepped into the room moments later, brow knitted into a deep frown, Twilight felt herself stiffen, her body on instinct readying to protect a creature that wasn’t even there. 

A guard, you see, recognizes another guard. 

In the way the stallion strode in, his eyes scanning the room to take in every pony, every point of entry, every barrier, every possible threat. The way he deliberately stood where he could see all of the above at once. His blue mane too, cut short for convenience. Last, and probably not least, glancing at the light cloak he wore, she could spy the glint of mail barding underneath and glimpse sheathed spurs by his hooves. 

He paid her particular attention for a moment, just as she did him. No wonder. They both knew to keep an eye on the most dangerous creature in the room.

After a fraction of a second, he nodded and then looked towards North Ridge, assessing him.

“This is the patient?” 

“North Ridge,” clarified the older stallion. “And to whom do I owe the pleasure?”

“Swashbuckler.” the stallion replied curtly before turning towards Buttermilk. “Are you sure about this? You won’t get another Hail Luna. You do realize that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Buck, I know that,” she replied, sounding slightly annoyed. “But Mender agreed. End of discussion, please.”

Buck considered her words for a long time. “Fine, then.” He turned back towards North, glancing at Twilight as he spoke. “His guard has to stay here.”

Buttermilk frowned. “Buck. Come on.”

Twilight stepped towards her charge, stern. “I go wherever he goes.”

“Then neither of you go—”

“She said both of them could come,” Buttermilk insisted. “Stop being an ass.”

“I’m not being an ass. I’m keeping us safe. We have rules in place for a reason, and just because Mender has a soft spot for you shouldn’t mean you get to keep bringing anyone you feel bad for.” That said, however, he glanced at Twilight and North one last time before marching off. “I’ll be outside. Make sure they know what they’re in for.”

As soon as he was gone, Buttermilk took a breath. Then spoke. “You’ll need to be blindfolded. You can’t see how we get to the village. We brought a cart for North.”

He nodded. “Thank you.” 

“Wait, no, hold on,” Twilight interrupted. “Blindfolded? Why do we need to be blindfolded? Why can’t we see where this village is?”

“To keep everyone in the village safe.” 

“Safe? Why safe?” Twilight continued. “Safe from what?” 

“From ponies.” She smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been honest with either of you. My name isn’t actually Buttermilk.” 

“It isn’t?” asked North. 

“No, actually.” The mare giggled. “It’s Incantation! And…” She rubbed the back of her neck. “There’s one last teensy little thing.” 

Twilight didn’t know what came first. Her own startled gasp or North’s delighted one as before her very eyes, much like the Lady, the mare before her physically transformed. She changed, but not into a creature with boils and scabs and falling coat, but a ponylike bug with bright arctic blue wings and holes pockmarking her body. 

Incantation grinned. 

“I’m not actually a pony, either.”

It was staggering how easily Twilight fell back into being blinded. 

Swashbuckler and Buttermilk—Incantation, rather—thought she’d be struggling to follow after the cart while blindfolded, but they’d stopped trying to guide her quickly enough. Walking in the dark felt completely natural to her. It only took her a dozen minutes before her senses adjusted, her gait becoming slower and steadier, her ears alert for any noise, any cue. 

In any other situation, she’d have never agreed to a blindfold, but North’s life was on the line, and Incantation allowed her to keep her dagger as a show of good faith. 

They walked for what felt like hours. She was sure they made their way through a forest, and they encouraged her onto the cart when they had to cross a river. They’d also walked around in a big circle for thirty minutes to try to disorient her, which she knew because they were exceptionally bad at lowering their voices. 

Allegedly, their destination was their village, where Twilight assumed more of their kind lived. 

Changelings. 

She’d first read up on them back at the Whispered Pages, in the very same books she’d hoped to find information on the Lady. They were not unlike her, really. It was just that rather than feeding on blood, they instead feasted on love and affection. 

Suddenly, Twilight wasn’t so convinced that North Ridge was hallucinating when he’d said ‘Buttermilk’ seemed delighted with his flattery. 

“We’re almost there,” Incantation eventually announced, a mercy for Twilight’s aching legs. 

“You will meet with the council first,” Buck said next, his tone curt. 

“Will we get to see this council?” Twilight asked. 

“…No,” Incantation replied, pained, and then hastily added, “for a reason. A good reason.” 

“Why?” She tried not to sound as annoyed as she felt. “We already saw what you look like.” 

“Rivermoon, let’s not question those helping us,” North chimed in, his voice terribly weak. 

“…All right.” 

They continued on their path, Twilight leaning against a rope meant to guide her, and sure enough, about ten minutes later, she heard other voices in the distance and then up close, whispers and remarks and hushed exclamations coming from what sounded like foals. Or was it hatchlings? 

“Oh, he looks sick sick,” said one, and “Is that a sword?!” exclaimed another, and “Is Mender going to fix him?” asked another before an older voice shushed her. 

Eventually, they stopped again, and a feminine voice not belonging to Incantation spoke. 

“Welcome, travelers. I’m glad you’ve made it safely. You weren’t followed, I hope?”  

“Thank you, Elder!” Incantation exclaimed. “And no, we made sure of it.” 

“Is this the patient?” said the Elder, her voice right near Twilight and the cart. Another moment’s pause, and then her voice sounded distinctly concerned, “Oh. Incantation, a word?” 

The voices came again, further away, whispers Twilight could half make out. Something about North being very sick, and doubts over whether this Mender could do anything for him. Chastising about giving false hope, and that they didn’t treat creatures so near the end. 

“Elder, please,” Incantation insisted, her voice pleading. “Mender said she would look him over. She wouldn’t have said that if she didn’t want to at least try! And—” 

“River,” came his soft whisper, drawing her attention from the conversation. 

Twilight moved towards the cart, reaching out and resting a hoof on North’s withers. 

“If they end up killing us, I hope you’ll forgive me in the next life.” 

Despite everything, she laughed. “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” she whispered back, even if she wasn’t so sure of it herself. 

“Okay!” Incantation exclaimed, Twilight moving away from the cart and looking in the general direction of her voice. “Mender is coming now.” 

“Don’t speak unless spoken to,” Buck warned. 

Another dozen or so minutes, and more voices chimed up, until they stopped completely. 

“Mender, thank you for doing this,” Incantation said. Twilight stood up straight, ears perked up. “I know you don’t usually make exceptions.” 

And then Mender spoke, and Twilight felt every muscle in her body lock up. 

“Let me see the patient.” 

Her voice was like sand. Grating and coarse and raspy. 

Incantation spoke quickly, her voice coming closer, explaining what was wrong with the stallion in details of varying accuracy Twilight couldn’t bother to correct because she was too busy using her every ounce of willpower not to tear her blindfold off. 

It was her. That was her voice. It was her, it was her, it had to be her. 

“That’s enough explaining, dear,” said the Lady, because it was her, it was her voice, Twilight would recognize it anywhere as if she’d heard it yesterday, as if she didn’t hear it in her dreams every damn night. 

Did she not see Twilight? How could she not react? Did she not see Twilight was right there? Why was she not acknowledging her?

Was it not her? 

Could there somehow be another creature like the Lady? 

“Oh my.” She was so close now, she was right next to Twilight and her beating, thrumming heart, desperation pulsing through her veins. “But you’re very sick, aren’t you?” 

“You can speak, North,” Ink quickly whispered. 

“Can I?” he croaked. “That’s nice to hear, it’s my favorite thing to do. An honor to meet you at last, Mender.”

“You’re all bones,” continued Mender, a softness to her voice that felt so painfully familiar Twilight wasn’t sure how long she could last with the godforsaken blindfold. 

“Well, I do love milk!” 

Mender laughed, and it was cackling, and delighted, and Twilight inhaled sharply. 

It was her. It had to be. And it was only the fear of finding out it wasn’t that stopped Twilight from moving a single muscle. What was she going to do if it wasn’t her? How many times could she endure losing the Lady again? 

“And the companion?” asked Mender. 

Twilight froze. 

“Yes, yes, Rivermoon,” Ink exclaimed, and now she was right next to Twilight. Why was she not being acknowledged? Why was she— “You… You, uh… Remember what I told you? About you and… Before before.” 

“That I treated her?” 

“Mender,” Swashbuckler whispered, alarmed. 

It was her. 

“Oh, but it’s fine. They were going to find out who I am regardless, dear.” 

And she wasn’t even acknowledging her. 

“I’d like to examine her,” said Lady Rarity after a moment. “It’s not often I can see the results of my work.” 

Twilight swallowed. What did that mean? What did that mean? She was right there, she was—

“River.” Ink placed a hoof on Twilight’s withers. “Is it okay if Mender touches you? Not for anything bad! It’s just—” She paused, and then Twilight felt stabbed as she explained, “she’s blind.” 

The world fell away. 

It vanished, all of it, and Twilight included. Every part of her, every sense, every breath, everything became nothing save for her mind becoming a dull buzzing noise. She must have nodded. She must have reacted in some way, because nothingness became everything, shot into crystal clarity, her breath catching in her throat when two hooves delicately pressed against her cheeks, gentle, and tender, and examining. 

Tears filled her eyes. 

The markings on the trees, deranged and incomprehensible made sense now. 

She’d left a blind Lady Rarity waiting for her for six whole months. 

Sitting by her own sunforsaken grave in the middle of a cold and lonely forest, writing messages to pass the time. 

For six months. 

“You feel healthy,” the Lady continued, her hooves lowering to touch Twilight’s side, examining her body. “It seems I did a good job with you.” Hooves rose and almost gingerly touched the base of her horn. “A unicorn?” 

“My bodyguard,” said North, and even in sickness, his voice was steady, calculated. He knew, too. He knew. He’d realized. “The finest one I’ll ever have.”

“Yes.” The hooves lowered again and now they rested against Twilight’s thundering heart. “Unicorns do tend to make good guards.” 

“Mender?” asked the Elder. Twilight nearly cried out when the hooves vanished, when she heard the Lady step away. “Your assessment, please?” 

There came a long pause. And then a carefully worded answer.

“I think I can save him. I’ve seen cases like him before—years ago, of course—but with them, it was… Well, I would just make the end easier. But…” The Lady was near Twilight again, near the cart, presumably ‘looking’ North Ridge over. “Perhaps if I spread out the treatment over a few months, that just might work.” 

A cacophony of protests erupted almost immediately. Months? But that was out of the question. It was mad. They couldn’t be allowed to stay there for months! They couldn’t be expected to keep Rivermoon and North Ridge blindfolded for months! It was too risky, ponies were not to be trusted to that extent, their families would come looking for them, and—

“We don’t have any family left to speak for,” North Ridge helpfully chimed in. “All the family we have is right here, for both me and Rivermoon.” 

“Well, I think they can be trusted,” replied the Lady in that tone she so often used when she thought she was right.

“They can,” Ink insisted. 

Buck spoke at once. “Elder?” he asked, his inflection strained. 

“I will leave it to Mender’s judgment,” said the Elder. “This affects her more than any of us.” 

“I realize what I’m asking,” said the Lady. “And I think they can be trusted. Besides, it would serve us well to see the extent of my capabilities, don’t you think?” She didn’t wait to hear their thoughts. “Please remove their blindfolds, and let’s continue this somewhere else.” 

“I’ll remove your blindfolds now,” Buck informed, his tone barely hiding his thoughts on the matter. “If you are startled, it’s in your best interest not to voice it.” 

The Lady laughed. “Or at least make it interesting!” 

Twilight blinked against her blindfold. The entire time she’d known her, the Lady had never once been so cavalier about her condition. Not once. And now she was joking about it?

She heard Buck helping North out of the carriage. There was a moment of silence, and then his voice erupted, delighted. 

“Why, Lady Mender! But you’re stunning!” There was not an ounce of insincerity in his voice. He meant it with his whole dying heart. “What an amazing creature!” 

“Ahhh, a flatterer!” replied the Lady, charmed. “A stallion who knows how to treat a mare.” 

“Dear Lady, of course.” 

“Mender is fine, please” she replied politely, just as Twilight felt hooves tug at her blindfold. “I am hardly a lady.” 

The blindfold came off just as soon as she finished talking. 

A long time ago, one fateful night, Twilight Sparkle had encountered a frightening monster living in a forest. The stuff of nightmares, one would have said at the time. And yet, the being that stood before Twilight Sparkle was quite different. 

Her body was the same—diseased, littered with scabs and boils and bald spots—but what was visible of her coat was clean. Tended to. As healthy as one such as she could be. Her indigo mane—once tangled and messy, full of twigs and leaves, so long it dragged on the ground—was clean and coiffed, tied up with an emerald ribbon. 

It was her eyes, however, that Twilight stared at. The piercing sapphire eyes that she remembered were clear as day had changed, too. The focused, frightened, threatening gaze was gone, replaced instead with a softer unfocused look, her once vivid pupils now hazed over with a milky white. 

Years ago, when she was still sightless, Twilight had an image of her Lady. A mixture of her creature-like form combined with the healthier, disease-free one that Twilight would never see. That version of the Lady—a creature, not a monster—was something she thought would be forever confined to her own imagination. 

This was no longer. 

Through a cloud of tears, Twilight Sparkle saw her live and breathe. 

Only her eyes were not the same. Her eyes, and the large scar right over her heart. 

The Elder—a changeling, just as the rest of the village—gestured them onwards. “Shall we?” 

Initially, her eyes set on the Lady, Twilight’s thoughts were consumed with how to reveal herself. She couldn’t do it in front of the changelings, especially considering she didn’t exactly know what the Lady had said about her. Maybe if she asked, the Lady would recognize her voice and that would be a good start. 

The raspy sound of the Lady laughing drew her out of her thoughts. She was talking with Buck, something he’d said that she’d apparently found funny, and it suddenly struck Twilight that…

The Lady looked happy. 

The Lady was happy, apparently, her voice free of the underlying stress and fear Twilight had heard in it for years. Hatchlings crowded around her and Buck, asking her questions and delighting in her answers, not seeing her as a monster to be feared or slayed, but a creature just like them. 

She knew she should feel relieved. She knew this, and as much as there really was a part of her that drowned in relief at seeing the Lady alive and well and thriving, there was a side of her that was burning with… There wasn’t even a word for it. No sensation, no description, nothing was apt to describe what she felt at realizing she had never ever seen the Lady this happy. 

This free of persecution, and cares, and most of all, guilt. 

The guilt over Twilight that, try as the guard might, she was never able to make the Lady absolve herself of. 

How are you supposed to feel when realizing that in order for the one you most hold dear in the world to be at peace, you had to be removed from the equation completely? 

Mender, the Elder said once inside the village’s main hall, would treat North Ridge once a week for however many months curing him took. The Lady would drink his disease away, bit by bit, enough that it should help without coming at a significant cost to herself. 

The sicker a victim was, she explained, the more disease she took on. Intent mattered as well, she added. If she drank for selfish reasons, for example, the changes in her body would be more permanent as a consequence.

“I’m sure Rivermoon can offer her own insight,” said the Lady, amiably. “I meant to say earlier, River, but I’m sorry I don’t remember you. I try not to think of those times.”

Those times? Twilight thought. But those times were the times with me.

“Of when you were near the capital?” North Ridge asked, his thirst for information bringing life back into him. “I hope not! I have a great deal of questi—”

“You will refrain from asking Mender questions about her personal life,” Buck interrupted, harshly. 

“Buck, dear…” The Lady reached out for him, patting him as affectionately as she once patted Twilight. “Let’s not be so severe! I’d be happy to talk about my life here in the village, North,” she said. “But everything before my home here is dead and buried, and I rather prefer it that way, you understand.” 

Oh, Twilight thought, wall after wall encasing her bleeding heart. I understand. 

She still knew how to obey a command. 

“Rivermoon,” asked the Lady. “Will you need any particular accommodations?”

One, two, three moments passed, and Twilight made a choice. 

She shook her head. 

Everyone stared at her—did she not see the Lady was blind?—and then Ink hastily spoke up, “Uhhh, she says no?”

The Lady raised an eyebrow, amused. “Is she sure?”

Twilight nodded this time, just as several present frowned deeply at her disrespect. 

“Hey,” Buck barked, stomping a hoof against the ground. “You will speak when Mender addresses you.”

Twilight stared straight in the eyes as she shook her head once again, unbothered by his murderous look. 

“Now, listen here, you—”

“Please!” North interrupted, raising a thin hoof and silencing the room. “Please forgive my guard. She means no disrespect, she just—Ah—Er—she took an oath of silence!”

Incantation was beyond bewildered, staring at Twilight for an answer. “An oath of silence?”

“Yes, yes,” North continued, stroking his beard. “She’s a, er, very devoted guard, and as a show of solidarity, she’s keeping an oath of silence until I’m either cured or dead.” He grinned. “Whichever comes first.”

“She was speaking an hour ago!” Buck protested. 

“It’s a choice she made on the way here.” Twilight nodded at his assertion and he shrugged. “You see?”

Buck stepped forward, clearly over it. “What kind of guard—?”

“Swashbuckler.” He stopped at the Elder’s voice, and though she said nothing else, he stepped back. “Thank you.” She then cleared her throat and addressed the two visitors. “Since you’ll be with us for longer than expected, we expect you to contribute to our village.”

“Sounds reasonable,” North said for both of them. 

“I’ll let you know how once we’ve decided what you can help us with.” The two visitors nodded, and the Elder exhaled. “Good. That will be all for now.”

“Wonderful,” said the Lady, smiling pleasantly. “Have North Ridge brought to me tonight.”

Two beds, a small kitchen, a desk, and a couch was everything inside the little house the changelings offered the stallion and his guard. He thought that was enough, and she thought it was excessive considering only one pony would be living there for months. 

“You’re leaving. Really?” 

He watched from his bed as she organized their packs, taking out every single thing that belonged to him. 

“Yes. Tonight.”

“Tonight. I see.” His tone of a parent trying to be patient with a restless child was having the opposite effect of what he wanted. “Twilight, I understand you’re hurt, but you might be having a temper tantrum.”

“I am not having a temper tantrum,” she said through gritted teeth, slamming a bundle of his shirts down on the bed. And even if she was, which she wasn’t, but even if she was throwing a fit, after everything she’d done, after everything everypony had put her through, hadn’t she earned the sunforsaken right? 

“…Twilight.”

She dug her hooves over the clothes, into the comforter, wishing it would hurt. 

“I was stupid.” 

She’d been so stupid. What was she expecting? A happy reunion? It was never going to be that, too much had happened, too much pain, too much hurt, too many actions meant to protect but instead having the opposite result. 

The worst part was she didn’t even have the right to be furious over it. How could she resent Lady Rarity for moving on and wanting to forget when, if not for North barging in, Twilight would be doing the exact same?

She breathed in, grasped her emotions and set them straight, and then continued to unpack. Onwards, onwards, onwards. 

“I came here to see if she was all right,” she said with finality, hoping that maybe this time it would be. Please, let it be the end. “And she is, and that’s good, so I’m going home.”

“You’re not even going to talk to her?” he asked. “She would probably want to know.”

“What she wants is not my priority,” she replied, and it wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t a lie. She swore to herself it wasn’t. “I’m not going to talk to her just to hurt us both.”

“You don’t know for sure it will hurt you,” he insisted, the dogged, dying old man. Didn’t he know when to shut up? “Is this really your plan? You came all this way just to leave the same day because you think you might end up hurt?”

“Correct.” She kept her composure. “I’m done talking about this, North.” 

“Twilight.” For the first time, his tone was harsh. “You’re being a coward.” 

She spun around in place, and every word out of her mouth came out snarled.

“And so what if I am?! Maybe I am being a coward! So what?” She stepped forward, towards the frail stallion, and she hoped he remembered that, once upon a time, she’d decapitated a king in cold blood. “Maybe I’ve had enough of trying to do what’s right, trying to be the bigger pony all the time! Maybe I’ve had enough of getting hurt!” Tears clouded her eyes, and her fury tripled at the fact. “Maybe I want to be a coward for once!”

“You’re a good guard,” he replied, “and a good guard isn’t a coward.”

She smiled wryly. “You’re right. I am a good guard. And for once, I’m protecting myself, and if you don’t like that, then I can make sure I’m out of here even earlier than tonight.”

She waited for him to say something. She dared him to say something, to push her again, but he didn’t. When eventually he spoke, it was with a soft voice.

“I confess that would make me quite sad.”

 She turned around, and if at first she pulled out one of his shirts with the rage of a thousand suns, by the time she placed it on the bed, her rage, and her spite, all of it was gone. Only the tears remained, alongside the fear and a newfound shame. 

A moment passed. Then she spoke, not daring to look back at him, coward that she apparently was. 

“I’m sorry, North. I shouldn’t have shouted at you.”

“Sorry? Dear girl, whatever for?” His voice was warm. “I wasn’t even mad. We all need a good shout now and again.” He laughed when she allowed herself to collapse on the bed. “Or some good groanings, that works, too.”

Reassuring her he wasn’t offended, he coaxed her into making them tea from whatever she could find in the sparsely stocked kitchen. It was halfway through drinking it that they were interrupted by frantic knocking. 

“Hello?” came Incantation’s muffled voice. 

“Come in!” North called back. 

The door burst open seconds later, and in came the changeling, her words spewing out like water from a pump. 

“Oath of silence? Huh?!” she exclaimed, beelining towards the two ponies sipping tea in the kitchen. 

“Ah. Yes.” North put his cup down on the counter just as Twilight did hers. He gestured to an empty spot in the kitchen. “Here, here, stand with us.”

“Stand with—No, you’re going to explain what’s going on,” she insisted. “Do you even know how mad Swashbuckler is? An oath of silence?”

“Incantation,” Twilight said, carefully, “I can’t speak in front of her.”

“In front of who? Mender? What do you mean? Yes, you can.” 

“She can’t, actually,” North replied. “To do so would be to disobey your Mender’s direct request.”

Incantation blinked. “…Because you’re someone from her past?” When they nodded, she blinked again. Clearly, she was trying to figure out how to be polite about whatever she had to say. “River,” she eventually, carefully began, “River, just because you were someone she healed doesn’t mean you can’t—… I know she said she doesn’t want to talk about her past, but, I’m sorry, I really like you, and I think you’re great, but I’m sorry to say you’re a blip that didn’t even register.”

Twilight smiled thinly.

“My name isn’t actually Rivermoon.”

“What?”

“You know,” North noted, peering into his half-full cup, “I should make more tea.”

“It’s Twilight Sparkle.”

“What?” Twilight wasn’t sure if it was an actual physical transformation, but the changeling turned several shades paler. She stepped back, not in fear, just pure shock. “As in—As in—As in—”

“Perhaps formal re-introductions are in order, then,” North interrupted when Incantation’s speech capabilities were simply not working out in her favor. “I’m still North Ridge of the Undiscovered West! Unfortunately, no terrible secrets that are relevant for this situation. And this—” He gestured to Twilight. “This lovely mare is my bodyguard. You may know her more famously as the kingslayer.”

“WHAT?!” Incantation tumbled down onto her haunches, her forehooves cupping her mouth. “I’m dead. I’m so dead.” Her eyes were on Twilight, roaming all over her. “How did I not put this together? Oh, my gods. I didn’t just bring somepony from Mender’s past, I brought the biggest part of her past.” Her voice was barely audible. “I’m so dead.”

“No, you aren’t,” Twilight replied, softly. “I’m leaving tonight.” She faltered. And then, because even then she was still stupid and hopeful and stupidly hopeful, she added, “Unless you think ‘Mender’ would be happy to see me?”

“No.” 

Stupid, stupid Twilight Sparkle. She expected it, she’d brought it in, and it still hurt like hell. 

“I mean, I don’t know. I don’t think so,” Incantation continued, hastily. “We’re not supposed to ask about her past, but we’re especially not supposed to ask anything about you. You should leave. I’m sorry.”

“I will.”

Unfortunately, the surprises had only just begun, because less than a moment later, loud knocking assaulted their door. 

“It’s Swashbuckler,” announced the guard from the other side. 

“Oh, my gods,” Ink squeaked, panicked. “Oh, my gods. Okay. Okay. Okay. Don’t panic. Don’t panic!”

“Come in, sir!” North called out. 

The door opened, and in marched Swashbuckler, still as aggravated as he’d been most of the day. He scanned the room, and when his eyes landed on Twilight, his frown deepened. 

“So. An oath of silence.”

“Yep!” Incantation all but yelled, practically standing in front of Twilight as if shielding her from him. “Oath of silence!”

Twilight simply shrugged. 

Buck raised an eyebrow. “I see. Well, that’s going to be a real problem, then.”

“What? Why?” Ink asked. “There’s no problem. Why is there a problem?”

His wings flitted at his side, his eyes burning into Twilight, and then he nearly stopped her heart outright when he explained, “It’s a problem because Mender specifically asked she help out by being her personal guard. She said it would be—” He rolled his eyes. “’A change of pace’.”

Twilight felt faint. Did the Lady know? She couldn’t. 

But what if she did?

“She what?” Incantation gasped, before stammering “Does she have an option?” trying and failing not to sound concerned. 

“Of course, she has an option,” Buck said humorlessly. “We’re not a tyranny.” His gaze flicked to Twilight, just as Ink and North’s did as well. “So. Her guard. Yes or no?”

Twilight felt like she stared at him for ages. Eventually, she nodded. How could she not? After all, if it came from the Lady, well…

She still knew how to obey a command.