Chapter Six: One Terrible Boss

Brick was kind enough to lend her a hooded jacket to walk home in. The oversized thing draped around her like a trench coat and hid her face from anyone who would recognize 'Bless' coming out from one of the seediest bars in Last Harbor. The last thing she wanted was her night-life to follow her home. This in spite of all the stupid decisions she made when fear was absent.

She made her way through the back garden. She didn't want to see another Equis, let alone have a conversation.

"Hello guys."

She gave a quiet and creaky greeting to four ravens balanced on points along the back garden gate. One gave a polite nod of her beak and gave a gurgle-croak. This made her smile weakly. Equis were complicated, but these creatures were pure and simple. A fresh rat and a shiny bauble was all they needed in life.

She gave her own polite bow and made her way inside and down the basement stairs. She draped the hooded coat across a wooden chair and wiggled her hands free of those tight fingerless gloves that lived on her for over twelve hours now.

She took a moment to enjoy the cool air on her palms before getting to work. A fear in the back of her mind was pushing her to double check her equipment. Any flaw, any miscalibrated component could be catastrophic when you're messing with forces beyond reality. Magic, despite some individual misconceptions, was the definition of 'beyond reality'. Magic was the violation of natural law, hince, it came from some other place.

She took a tool and unscrewed four long bronze screws from the corners of the glove's metallic plate in order to unmount the units. She then laid the plates on her angled work table a distance apart. Each plate was pulled apart into thinner plates, each of the ten subsections a few millimeters thick. Each had an array of crystalline gears in complex formations, some with tiny glass vacuum chambers with slivers of colored stones floating within.

With tweezers and the world's smallest hammer she plucked a blue 'crystal bulb' from one of the many plates and tapped a copper coated end. The little crystal inside quivered as if it were made of liquid. Arcane stared at it and let her gift confirm this little thing was mimicking Astral energy. It wouldn't do if this thing was off-frequency, or Goddess help her, turned it into Celestial magic.

The all-too familiar tone of an elderly stallion clearing his throat came from her left. She didn't respond or even look away from her task until a thin yet wide bronze plate was placed on her table.

She scrunched her nose as the sickly mint smell of arthritis cream wafted off the device. She eyed it suspiciously. Like her tap gloves, this thing had long slots where fuses were mounted. Four out of six fuses on this device were melted through, along with the slots they were mounted into. It seemed these didn't just blow, they overheated violently.

"When you have the time."

His words were few, something that was pretty rare for RavenCroft. She raised her head and looked over at the old stallion as he slowly climbed the stairs. He seemed more spent than normal, practically close to death.

She sighed and returned to her own task. There were no flaws, no energy translator nodes needing recalibration. They were in top shape and ready for use. Of course they were. She already knew that, but she didn't trust she knew that. Anxiety can be that way.

Once her tap gloves were reassembled and put to the side she turned to the thing that obviously needed some love.

The back-mounted tap unit wasn't her invention. In fact, this particular unit hadn't seen her work table before. Thankfully, it seemed perfectly standard as these things go. Four screws held together five thin plates with a fairly familiar array of gears and crystalline bulbs. The notable difference was an array of gears designed for a somewhat clever trick. A Celestial crystal was put in a delayed circuit with a Mundane crystal operating at a slightly higher frequency than your standard Mundane signature. Mundanes draw their magic through their limbs. With this device a Mundane could draw their powers through their back. It probably couldn't make wings or give them flight, but it was a functional work-around.

There was just one glaring problem. Any tap had their drawbacks. Mundane to Astral taps required a Mundane price and an Astral effect. The Mundane price was nutrients and vitality, the Astral effect was the loss of mental focus. Arcane obsessed over her mother's spell books since she could read, and spells were designed specifically to reduce mental strain. As for a Mundane to Celestial tap? The price was Virality, and the effect was Emotional stability. Celestials were trained from birth to control their emotions so their abilities didn't go out of control. How in the hell could a Mundane Stallion with PTSD hope to control his power under those conditions?

Simple answer? He couldn't.

"What the heck did you do?"

She quietly spoke out loud as she looked over the extensive damage. Some of the gears closer to the fuse slots were black, some warped by heat. In many instances she had to guess what gear it was by the one next to it. After an hour of frustrating guesswork she was forced to walk over to a shelf of books and flip through a thick catalog of schematics to find the intended patterns. If she were honest to herself, this felt humiliating.

Four hours flew by before she would close up the device and call it fixed. It was only then, after the technical issues were solved, did she think of the more philosophical ones. Why was RavenCroft's tap overloaded? What did he do with it to push it so far? More importantly, what was the long term effect of abusing something like that?

She already knew the answer, or at the very least felt the answer deep in her gut. 'Hex' did things just as terrible, just only on the job. It usually came down to self defense. Even when Arcane felt little to no emotion it never seemed right to kill unless absolutely necessary. Morality was arbitrary, bendable depending on situations. Logically speaking, the moment one starts killing without a damn good reason, life itself is no longer of value. Truth be told, Arcane wanted to kill more when she had emotions, she was just afraid of losing control.

She didn't have evidence RavenCroft used his tap to kill someone, she just knew the old stallion and what her years of experience was telling her. She trusted that more than anything or anyone.

She took RavenCroft's tap and walked over to the large crystal that served as their generator. She held out the bronze plate and felt a quiver run up her arm. The resonance of that large, seemingly liquid, mass began to make the tap unit quiver as well. The six fuse slots in the tap began to glow and quickly grow brighter. Soon came a metallic and mineral smell of burning. Little pops could be heard inside as crystalline gears shattered and ground against their partners. By the time she pulled her hand back, the tap was worse than when she received it.

She needed some fresh air. Without looking at the plate a second time she simply dropped it into a waste basket and quietly practiced her next lie.

"Sorry, it was beyond fixing."

-

She wasn't in any mood to see him. She walked up to the first floor and approached the large curved desk in the main foyer instead. There sat a white celestial mare with red in the corner of her glazed eyes.

The receptionist smiled despite the painfully obvious sign of recently crying, which was the way of good customer service. She greeted Arcane with the customary 'Good Morning'. Arcane would have just preferred a 'Hi'.

"Good morning.. Um.. DownFeather. I was wondering if you could pass a message to the boss. I'm taking a week off for a trip home. My dad needs help back on the farm. I may need some more days, depending on her health."

Her quiet and bashful voice was handy for covering up lies. She always sounded guilty, felt guilty. Lie or truth, no one could ever tell if she had a credible reason.

DownFeather gave a noisy snort as she pulled a collected bit of snot back in before it could drip free. Her smile dimmed despite her best effort. All Arcane received was a weak and raspy few words.

"Sure, Bless. I'll pass it down."

She was compelled to ask despite knowing how much of a mistake it would be. She knew, deep down, but she knew nothing for sure.

"Are you alright?"

Three words broke the professional damn that began with deep cracks. DownFeather lurched forward with eyes closed tight as if it would hold back the tears. Her sobs echoed around the foyer and turned the heads of the three patients waiting in seats behind Arcane.

The fur on the back of her neck stood on end as she looked around to see eyes looking on. Arcane rushed behind the desk and pulled the mare onto her hooves.

"Come, dear, it's alright."

She spoke softly as she led the receptionist down the hall and to the first door to the left. The room was quaint but well furnished. An antique counter top with sink, a modern refrigerator, large table, and antique two-seater couches along the walls.

Arcane closed the door to the employee break room and sat FeatherDown onto one of the couches. She pulled the mare close and Pat her back much like Arcane's mother did for her so long ago. Tears threatened to surface at the corners of her own eyes out of pure empathy.

"They found her all… she was in pieces. Her eyes. She was near the Everfree. They think it was birds of some kind but I've never seen a bird that would do that."

"Birds?"

She let Feather cry it all out, the mare's voice devolving into sobs and muttering. She didn't need to know anymore than that.

Fate has a way of deciding our names, and there was a very specific reason his name was RavenCroft.

DownFeather continued to sob out her words, some lost in mumbles. Bless held her tight as tears ran down her own face in empathy for this mare's pain. Only then did her blood run cold, fear and rage fighting for a place in the center of her mind.

"Vanilla."

DownFeather tried to scream out the name 'Vanilla Sky', but it came out as little more than a sorrowful croak. Images of the Mare's pastel gold face flashed in her eyes. Arcane could remember kissing her, holding her under covers. She could now imagine her face now, empty sockets and the ravages of a thousand small mouths.