One walking, one flying, both ponies made their way through the dimly lit streets, flanked by the faces of crammed-together buildings on either side of the road they traveled. Every so often an empty stall in the middle of the road would be passed; or a cart, whether it be loaded for tomorrow's work or not loaded at all or very rarely a cart broken, sat on the side of the road waiting for the owning ponies. That's all this trip was: waiting for the right ponies. Amissus's mind was rattling the 'example' he had written for Twilight around and around without any knowledge of what its meaning or purpose was to him. Rainbow Dash, flying above and a little ahead of him on the dirt and spread-cobble path, was mumbling a one-sided conversation to him. Amissus didn't feel the want to listen, he maybe couldn't listen; the phrase had deafened him perhaps with its want to be understood. He had written it from memory, it had come through him, so why wouldn't he understand it or at least know surrounding context?
The shards of the world are divided amongst four after the tame of anarchy.
That was all the he knew. He didn't know if it was literal, such as a massive earthquake shattering the very ground, or symbolic like most myths are. He meditated on it, it seemed. He rolled it over constantly in his mind, repeating and eventually mouthing it. It was real, it was connected to him. He grew more certain with every mouthing and every repeating thought. It would lead him to his memory.
"Dammit! We made a wrong turn." Rainbow said, looking around the cramped surroundings for the correct path. "Amissus, we have to go back a few blocks."
He paid no mind to her, he only repeated. He was entranced by his own mind. Rainbow landed in front of him and waved a hoof over his eyes.
"Amissus." No reply. "Ams!" She clopped her front hooves together loudly.
"-after the tame of anarchy." He finished saying and said no more. He stared at her blankly, as if he were waking up too early in the morning. He blinked a few times and the spark flew back into his eyes. "Where are we?"
"In the wrong part of town; I completely misread one of the signs."
"So let's go back."
"This'd be a lot easier if we both flew there. No following roads, we'd just see it and go." She said while flapping up to a hover again.
"I like to walk." He told her. As much of a truth as a lie: he didn't know how to fly.
"You have wings: use 'em." She began to spread his wings as she maneuvered above him.
He stiffened as pain shot through his left wing. From tip to base, it was electrified and searing. He held in his impulse of a scream, but his face still wrenched and his body threw itself away from her.
"Oh Celestia, I'm sorry!" She said. "I forgot that your wing was broken!" As the pain gradually became less intense and the stiffness had passed in the seconds that followed, his wing made juddered movements as it closed, shaking from residual pain still. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, it's fine…" He closed his eyes to think of something else to ease the pain. He opened them again to see that Rainbow had landed and looked so-very-sorry and worried that he would be angry. He wanted to be angry, but something kept him from that. He chuckled and said "To be honest, I forgot that it was broken too."
Rainbow joined his small chuckle and relief was seen washing over her face. Amissus, when he had ceased, looked behind her. There, almost side-by-side to Rainbow stood an extremely red mare, glowing in the darkness and dim light, and was pulsating almost. He compared her to the spirit from yesterday: the way they had appeared and the way they glowed were similar. Although something was off about her figure. Flitting his eyes to Rainbow and this red spirit, he noted that their body shapes were the same, their manes were the same, and both were pegasi. Each mare looked exactly like one another with the exception that the spirit was completely red: A red that dissipated any detail of the spirit's body. Its mane and tail weren't multicolor either, only red. Amissus's long stare at the mare incited Rainbow to speak and look at the 'mare.'
"What're you looking at?" She turned her head to him again. "Are you spacing out again like earlier?"
Amissus closed his eyes and pressed them down in an attempt to reset his sight. When he opened them, the mare was pacing behind Rainbow, still looking at him. He refused to acknowledge her presence, actively ignoring it.
"No, no… I really need some sleep."
"I'll say. I'd be put in a strait jacket if I just stared off into the distance like you do. When you space out, you literally go into space."
"Are you saying I'm crazy?" He challenged her light-heartedly. He looked at the spirit, who smiled and nodded rapidly.
"Aren't we all a little crazy?" Rainbow replied as equally light-hearted and laughed. The spirit flattened her smile and seemed unamused, almost annoyed, with her response. Seeing the spirit put off contented Amissus. He didn't laugh though; he stared at the spirit mare that had persisted attention from him so much longer than the spirit from Fluttershy's cottage. Rainbow turned and walked in front of the spirit. The spirit winked and vanished as Rainbow moved out of its way.
Drip
Amissus looked down to the sound and-
Drip-drip-drip
Raindrops began falling slowly around them at first, then speeding up. Rainbow looked up at the starless sky with shock. "We're not supposed to have rain until tomorrow afternoon!" She started to push Amissus back the way they had come. "We'd be really crazy if we stayed out here in the rain."
Soon they both were trotting and backtracking to find the proper way to Sugar Cube Corner in the incoming rain. Still in the back of his mind, like a separate entity in his head, recited:
The shards of the world are divided amongst four after the tame of anarchy.
…
Now full torrent upon them, the rain made no attempt to make Amissus and Rainbow's run for Sugar Cube Corner undemanding and painless. Amissus was becoming winded and Rainbow was flustered without her wings. They ran for blocks on end with no sight of their goal. Amissus, though breathing hard through the falling water, was keeping good pace with the much more in shape pegasus in front of him. Well he was until a filling puddle and his hoof met and he slipped. This wasn't a clean fall. He landed down hard on his left side and he felt a pop and snap of his wing being broken again. His left foreleg folded underneath at a hyperextended angle. He felt the leg stretch too far, causing the emission of a low and painful moan and streaks of red, visible in the lamplight, washing away with the downslopes of the road.
Rainbow slid to a stop and galloped back to the fallen Amissus.
"Amissus! Oh no…!"
Her words didn't reach him: he only heard his breathing filling his ears and raindrops glancing off his face. His eyes were open and he could see clearly, he could see Rainbow through the storm trying to lift him to his hooves; heavy as he was, she lifted him anyway. Guided by her support of his leaning frame's right side, Amissus limped his way with her, splashing in the water that the rain left as it continued to flood the streets. Pain from his left wing and foreleg were tingling as the pressure was taken from them and transferred to their right-side counterparts, pressed against this other pony. It was comforting until he realized that he had a dependency, although physical, on this other pony. With that, he lifted himself from her side and regained the ability to walk separately from her for only a moment: before he stepped with his injured leg, collapsing under him. He threw himself onto his right side to avoid landing on his left, now ultimately tired as he tried to keep his head above the rainwater tide.
"What's wrong with you? We were making good pace!" Rainbow yelled through the storm. She then began to help him back up.
"Let's just get there…" He didn't want to have to stay on her side for longer than need be.
"You're stupid; a stupid stallion!" She yelled through the torrent. "This isn't easy you know! Taking care of you and having to worry that you probably wouldn't wake up! Now you're just causing more trouble than it's worth for us all!" The rain came down harder still, the entirety of the sky pouring on them. Amissus took this chance that this rain gave to let a little bit of what he felt slip out. His tears couldn't be felt over the sensation of being slapped by raindrops and Rainbow's words.
"You're right…it's not worth it." He whispered.
"What?" Rainbow asked, not hearing.
"Are we there yet?" Amissus said, much louder than what he had intended.
"Yes! Up ahead!" She directed his focus towards a darkened building, its sign creaking and pounding against it in the wind. "Pinkie!" Rainbow shouted as they neared it. "Pinkie! Cake!" She shouted again as they pulled themselves onto the stairs and out of the swelling water of the roads.
Amissus, at this point, having been led the wrong direction and then being dragged through a storm, hadn't the energy to help call out to the occupants. He leaned harder on Rainbow as his head sank down in exhaustion. He raised it, a minute of standing later, as he heard the door being unbolted and creaking open. He made his way forward and fell, eyes closed, into the sanctity of the inside of this building: free of the rain and his 'dependency.'
…
The mountaintop wind chilled anypony who dared stay out of the protection of the towers and their complex between. At this altitude, given that the clouds gave way below, one could see clear across the country into the neighboring lands. Some of the soldiers stationed here have said that they could see parades in that capital of the country over. Amissus wasn't convinced by their words, although they were honor-bound words. Six days of travel and a night of cold didn't leave him particularly keen on validating their story from atop a tower, where the wind was harshest and the cold froze water in minutes. Although this trip was dreaded, the destination had both a change of scenery and an escape from the humidity of their city now that it had become the midst of summer, evaporating the many winter rains away and making the entire city everlastingly damp, slick, and choking.
Now they had stopped in the courtyard on this, their second day of an inspection tour that his father insisted that he come along for. The Director was speaking to his father, the few councilmembers that had followed, and Amissus, who kept back to spare himself the boredom. He instead looked off into the distant white peaks and greying valleys frighteningly jutting from the jaded forests hazed with the morning mist. The powerful voice of the Director was booming and sometimes echoed from the landscape. The sun was hidden among the blindingly white clouds sweeping up towards the summit, meaning that only more snow, wind, and, thusly, cold would follow.
Amissus continued to follow the group around the blooming flowerbeds of the mountain flowers, colors cool as the mountain in shades of brilliant blues, purples, gold, and even dull enough colors as the grey of the stone in its many lights. Seeing these grey flowers, Amissus detached himself from the moving clique and stood on the walkway that spread across the flowerbed's grounds, constructed of blue-white hued flagstones. He leaned his head down to inspect the flower more closely: it was a small flower among many similar flowers of varying shades. From far away, the tight bundle of blooms could've been mistaken for a rock. He jerked his head back as gust of wind tugged the entire garden to one side and the grey flowers tore themselves from their many stems, flying fast with the racing wind into the high mountains. As fast as he had noticed it, the flowers were gone in a swoop of fate. He hurried away from the flowerbed towards the inspecting group, leaving hoof-prints in the softened dirt of the flowerbed as he crossed it.
Soon after, the grounds began to turn white and the hoof-prints were filled and eventually covered by snow. Obscured and nil locatable, Amissus's hoof-prints were erased.
…
Quickly opening his eyes, he heard noise pounding on the wooden roof as hammers would. He reached for a weight on his head, a yellow towel nonetheless. Instantly, he used his right leg to push himself standing and began to dry the rainwater out of his coat, looking around as he did. Tables, stools and chairs, a counter and display case, and a largely open area. This looked to him like a sort of restaurant fused with a dancing hall. It was an interesting mix of yellow walls, blue accents, and pinks all around. Continuing to roughly survey the interior, he looked to Rainbow, who was talking to Pinkie Pie. He didn't hear anything and strained to hear. He took the towel and swabbed his ears, releasing the water trapped inside, granting him his hearing.
"-wrong turn, so we had to travel two, if not, three times the distance here." He tuned in as Rainbow finished speaking.
"Wow. That's a walk times three in this rain." The higher pitched voice replied. "I thought you said it wasn't supposed to rain until tomorrow."
"I did. One of the weather teams probably screwed it up. More than likely Grace's team."
"Yeah, she's not very good at following directions. I told her once, about a month ago, how to bake a cake herself, even though I was more than happy to make her one myself. She wrote it down and everything! I went to visit her to see how it went and I could smell that burnt double-icing lemon fluff cake just smoldering. Lucky for her that I brought a backup."
Amissus gave a queer look at Pinkie's story as he dried his mane, stopping midway. He noticed Rainbow roll her eyes at Pinkie and glanced at him. Double-taking his presence, she threw her towel onto a table and took his as he wringed out his tail with it.
"Welcome to Sugar Cube Corner." She told him as she gathered her towel too; wrapping them into a wad and carrying them passed the counter into a back room that he assumed was the kitchen.
"I usually do the introductions…" Pinkie said quietly to him. "But yes, this is the one and only Sugar Cube Corner: 'Treats and eats, parties, and teas.'"
Amissus hobbled to the nearest table and sat down, exhausted and spent, leaning his head back and not in the mood for talk. He stretched his left foreleg and, still hurting, came across his chest. It didn't do much, but it made him feel better to have a sensation in his leg. His wing was still numb, probably still bleeding, and limply folded out down his back.
"You don't look so good!" A new voice, booming, jovial, annoying, announced. Amissus took a deep breath partly from surprise and mostly from impatience with all the talk. "What's the matter? Road hit ya'?" It laughed at the end of its sentence, hard and pressing laughter was what followed.
"For the life of me!" He whispered.
"Oh! That's all it is with ya'! Your life, your past! What about yer' wants? What about yer' needs in the here-and-now?"
Amissus slammed his hoof on the table towards the voice and yelled "Shut it! Leave me in peace!" He saw now and paused at the voice sitting opposite to him. It was a glowing colt, tan and smiling; brown eyes, brown mane, no exciting colors off this young and lively spirit.
"Peace! Ha!" Another voice gave its existence to their conversation. Amissus snapped his sight to the red figure from out in the rain. She jeered "A war going on inside his head and beyond; and all he wants is peace."
"What do you know of it?!" He demanded, now angry that he had been roused from his hardly-kept calm. The red spirit made her way to the other and sat next to him.
She smiled and told him "Less each time you yell." She was toying with him and the colt spirit chuckled.
"You hush." He told the colt. "And you-" He turned to the mare "-what do you mean a war inside my head?"
"And beyond." The colt added. The mare put a hoof to his shoulder and turned to Amissus.
"Simple: You're fighting your insides."
"Insides? You mean my organs?"
"Organs!" the colt laughed as he was shoved slightly by the mare.
"No, we don't know what it is. But it has the power to let you see us and us see you."
"And who am I seeing? Ghosts? Spirits?"
"Second one." The colt said, this time not being shoved.
"Aoylylt." She gestured to herself.
"What?"
"My name is Aoylylt: Ah-oi-lilt." She sounded it out.
"And that?" He pointed angrily and the sneeringly at the still smiling colt.
"Reluahgt. Rel-oo-agt" She sounded his name as well to him.
"Aoylylt…Reluahgt" The names even tasted weird. He tried again. "What do you mean a war?"
"You're fighting yourself, simple."
"No! It's not simple. I have no idea what you're talking about."
Aoylylt shook her head. "You just don't get it."
"Exactly: help me understand."
A flash of lightning through the window landed directly onto their table, leaving a slight blindness with Amissus. When he recovered his sight, he looked to the noise of quick hoofsteps and saw Rainbow rush from behind the counter and to the window.
"We are not supposed to have lightning!" She was scanning all of the outside blackness from many angles the window offered.
He looked across the table to empty seats and rubbed his eyes in both frustration and to rub away some pain from the flash. He stopped as he felt a hoof on his shoulder.
"Who were you talking to?" Pinkie asked, concerned-sounding.
"I don't understand who I was talking to."
Pinkie removed her hoof and stepped away. Rainbow stepped away from the window and sat at the table. She looked up when the rain's rhythm fluctuated and the noise increased for a moment.
"There's no way I'm getting home in this." Rainbow announced softly.
"We only have one guest room and it was meant for him tonight." Pinkie informed them.
"I guess we can…share." Rainbow said, avoiding looking at Amissus.
"Sounds great; a regular sleep-over!"
Amissus shook his head and moved to the seat against the wall at the foot of the table. He leaned back and rested his head against the wall, feeling the rain pounding against it in petty vibration. He looked to Rainbow and then to Pinkie, both looked back at him.
"You guys go ahead. I'm just going to sit here awhile." Rainbow glanced at him for a prolonged period. "I'll join you in a few minutes." He said, gesturing for them to go ahead without him. At that signal, Rainbow stood and joined Pinkie in going upstairs, hidden behind a door behind the counter.
He heard it minutes after he was left alone. A sound like something ancient being opened, that whoosh of the old and forgotten. It whispered to him.
One shattered and left barren. Another angered and put away. And the last beaten down and forgotten. Only the flare and sigil remained then.