#NPC: Spinning Topaz (Guard 3)

[askponevernites]

Getting in Trouble: [Silvar]

NOTICE OF REBOOT:

The following post is preserved for archival purposes only. It is no longer canon. The Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth’s tale has been postponed.

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The Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth had followed the river, sticking as close as she could to the sparse stands of fungal trees along the way, until, to her relief, she met another place surrounded by a wall. As she stepped through the gates, one of the two armored guards nodded to her and said: “Welcome to Silvar.”

She nodded back, but said nothing, then stepped around him and slipped into the alley opposite-of-south. The narrowness was more comforting and it didn’t smell nearly as bad as the fenced-in place to the south where several jaundiced, non-pony quadrupeds were milling listlessly. A comforting tree sat on its own in the corner, and she leaned against it for a short while before moving on.

The alley opened out to the street in front of a gate, with its own pair of guards, that led opposite-of-south into more city. There were a variety of mushrooms lining either side of the cobble path. She approached carefully, and bent her head to have a nibble of one of the more fragrant caps, but then the ground was suddenly receding from her, cloaked in a bright red haze. (The Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth did not have a word for yellow.)

“Miss, please do not eat the ruffled mooncaps,” said the guard nearest her. The red haze was coming from the spiral-grooved horn on the unicorn’s forehead. “They’re ornamental and extremely poisonous.”

The Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth stared at her blankly for a moment. She knew what poison was; the Shepherd could get sick or die from poisons, so he had to be careful what he ate. But she wasn’t like the Shepherd. Fate had allowed her to survive drinking the Wolf Matron’s poisonous milk, and in turn she’d been transformed by it, made immune. To the Pilfered Young, the Forest That Is a Mountain was abundant with delicious toxic berries and mushrooms, each carefully crafted and meant for only them.

That was why, when the guard asked The-Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth if she understood, she nodded. That was why, when the guard let her back down, she took a big bite out of the ruffled mooncap.

“OH FOR LUNA’S SAKE! ARE YOU TRYING TO DIE?” The unicorn picked her up again, continuing on with a string of angry-sounding words, most of which the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety Ninth found completely unfamiliar. “HEY CROWNSCAR!”

A pegasus with extensive scarring on his face stuck his head out of the window of a nearby building. “WHAT’S THE RACKET, SPINNY?” There was no functional reason for him to yell so loudly back; the distance between them was only a few pony lengths.

‘Spinny’ telekinetically shook the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth slightly for emphasis. “I’ve got a little madwoman eating the mooncaps on purpose. You got any curing elixirs on hoof?”

“I’m not a madwoman, I’m the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth of the Wolf Matron’s Thousand Pilfered Young and I will be just fine! Release me this instant!”

“I do,” Crownscar said. “Bring her on in.”

“I don’t require your assistance, you thousand-times-tricked buffoons!” The Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth flailed her limbs as angrily as the gesture was ineffective, until she managed to kick off one of her boots in the direction of Spinny’s head.

Reflexively, Spinny used her magic to stop the boot before impact, but she didn’t have the focus to levitate two objects when one of them was a struggling pony, and she inadvertently dropped the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth, who scrambled off to the south, hanging a hard left around the corner of the building.

She didn’t make it terribly far. The road opened up into a vast center square, and she froze long enough in agoraphobic terror that Crownscar had time to burst out of one of the doors ahead of her.

“Hey, kid, it’s okay,” he said calmly, as if he hadn’t just been in a great rush to cut her off. “Come on inside and sit for a bit. If you really don’t get sick from bad mushrooms, I won’t waste a potion on you, but you gotta prove it.”

She hesitated. Spinny was right behind her by then. Running didn’t seem safe. “I do not acknowledge your coercion as hospitality.”

“That’s fine.” Crownscar took the boot from Spinny and, with one wing on her shoulders, herded the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth into the building.

She begrudgingly took a seat in the chair nearest the door (although she didn’t know the word chair yet, she understood what a seat was, and every bit of slightly higher ground counted to her) and accepted her thrown boot without comment.

Crownscar said watched her put the boot back on and frowned. “You have claws.”

“So I do,” the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth said. Her glare tracked Spinny until the unicorn went out of sight to return to her post. “What of it?”

“Not something I’ve seen before.” He eyed a strange box on the wall briefly. “You said something about a wolf and pilfered young.”

“The Wolf Matron’s Thousand Pilfered Young,” she repeated.

“And you’re the nine hundred and ninety-ninth.”

“Yes.”

“Where are the others?”

“The Forest That Is a Mountain.”

“Never heard of it.”

She said nothing.

“… You have a name?”

“I’m the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth,” she repeated. Even through asking directly, he’d come to the end of what information he was entitled to.

Despite that, Crownscar seemed unsatisfied. “You call that a name?”

“It is my name.”

“Well, Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth, what do you plan to do, once this foolishness about mushrooms is over?”

“Once your foolishness about mushrooms is over?”

“Sure, kiddo.”

She said nothing.

Crownscar sighed. “Do you have any family down here? The Empire doesn’t usually send teens your age down.”

Unlikely. The Horsebreaker had died many growth cycles ago, and was so far down the list of Fathers in importance that he’d yet to be replaced. The Forest That is a Mountain was waiting for him to be well and truly forgotten by the sapient horses of the multiverse before gambling on his narrow specialization again. It was possible that other demons of the Forest That Is a Mountain came to Tartarus, either to Pilfer supplies or strike bargains with unwary summoners, but they wouldn’t stay long, and might not know to look for her – or how to look for her, in some cases.

She said nothing.

Crownscar took the hint, and resumed what must have been his usual activities – cleaning weapons, restuffing dummies with chunks of coarse, stringy mycelium, repairing training arrows – while keeping an eye on her and regularly asking her if she was in pain anywhere. He tried once to prod her stomach, but backed off after getting a scratch from her. A little while after that, he started to wobble, and staggered to a cabinet as quickly as he could. He withdrew a dark glass bottle, pulled the stopper out with his teeth, and guzzled down the contents so fast it gave him a brief coughing fit. “You’re not a pony.”

“As I told you, I’m the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth of the Wolf Matron’s Thousand Pilfered Young.”

“You never explained what that means.” He tipped out the mushy dregs from the bottom of the potion bottle and rubbed them on the scratch for good measure. “But I’m guessing that part of it is that poison is your friend.”

Hellebore had heard the Shepherd say something similar once. She decided to respond: “That is one way to phrase it.”

Crownscar began wrapping his injury with a roll of thin rough cloth from a bag in the same cupboard as the potion. “I’ll ask you again: What do you plan on doing here in Tartarus?”

“Why are you asking, if you didn’t get an answer the first time?”

“Because I’m still deciding what to do about you.”

She understood the threat embedded in that sentence. “I’m planning to find a way home.”

“Back up to the surface?”

“No, back to The Forest That Is a Mountain. Your ‘Surface’ is completely wretched.”

For some reason, Crownscar started laughing. Then he abruptly stopped, and his face turned completely serious. “And what happens after you get home?”

The Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth’s gaze dropped to the floor. She’d have to beg the Wolf Matron’s forgiveness. She’d cost the Forest That Is a Mountain the life of the Childsnatcher – the most important of the Fathers – and then managed what no member of the Pilfered Young had ever done before and left the Forest That Is a Mountain. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t wanted to leave or known that leaving was what she’d been doing; the path of her fate had hurt the Wolf Matron’s, and there were going to be consequences. She didn’t want to talk about that. But that wasn’t really the question Crownscar was asking, was it? “… I never should have left.”

Something in the set of Crownscar’s shoulders softened. “I can’t get you home, but if you need a bit of coin, I can give you work.”

It wouldn’t be the first time the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-Ninth exchanged goods for toil, and it wouldn’t likely be the last. “What manner of work?”

“I’ll give you fifteen coins if you mop the blood off the floor of the pit.”

“I don’t know what ‘mop’ means.”

Crownscar chuckled a little. “Okay. I’ll show you.” 

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