Amanita twitched at the sound of Tallbush’s voice, but Bitterroot bolted and ducked behind her, shaking like he was Discord, Tirek, and Chrysalis wrapped up into one. As it stood, he looked tired and had bad bedhead and his clothes were crooked.
“ ’Tis the middle o’ the night,” he grunted. His horn lit, he started walking forward. “Seriously, what’re you’uns-”
He stumbled as his hoof bumped against one of the boards Bitterroot had pulled down. He looked at it, frowning.
“We need to leave,” Bitterroot hissed in Amanita’s ear. “We need to leave now.”
Tallbush followed the trail of boards to the wall. He spotted the windows.
“Where would we go?” Amanita asked. “Everyone in the town’s-”
Tallbush’s eyes grew huge. He looked at Amanita and Bitterroot, agape.
“Better than facing that.”
With a sigh, Tallbush hung his head. “So ye ken, dae ye? You’uns read the journal. You’uns ken about the Deormont.”
Amanita blinked. “What?” She wasn’t sure whether Bitterroot or Tallbush had prompted that reaction.
“The Deormont. The One Beneath the Mountain.” Tallbush pointed at one of the windows. “That.”
“Yeah,” Amanita said. Might as well be honest, make the whole tower collapse on her timetable rather than someone else’s. There was no way they could hide it now.
“Ah.” Tallbush’s grin was one of resignation. “Well, then.”
Amanita didn’t say anything. She realized she was planting her legs in something resembling a combat stance. She barely knew how to fight, but she could throw a punch if Tallbush came at her. Maybe he’d try to kill her. Maybe he’d run and rouse the town.
Maybe she should just kill him now. The soil in Pyrita’s grave was still loose. Kill him, hide the body in there, and-
…Why wasn’t he moving?
Amanita and Tallbush looked at each other. Neither had budged an inch. Tallbush didn’t look particularly enraged or horrified at the secret getting out. Mostly, he just looked tired.
“Go on,” he said.
Amanita pulled her legs a little closer together. “And do what?”
Tallbush shrugged in defeat. “Kill me fer bein’ a cultist?”
Cultist. But what sort of a cult called themselves a cult? Which meant, hopefully… “Are you one?”
“Aye.” The grin was back. “Our preacher. The voice o’ the Deormont. The dukes an’ duchesses o’ Tratonmane always are. Passed down frae the firs’ days o’ the town tae today. I’m the founder’s great-great- …great-great-grandson.”
…Or not.
“I-is that all?” Bitterroot asked. She poked her head around Amanita like a filly looking around her parent’s legs. “B-because you sure l-look like more than a preacher.”
“I do?” Tallbush looked at one of his legs. “What’re ye talkin’ of?”
“Right,” Bitterroot mumbled. “No one else can see…”
“See what?”
“A-are you more than a p-preacher or not?” asked Bitterroot. “Are you even- even a pony?”
“Ach, call me everwhat ye wish,” said Tallbush. “Priest, medium, prophet, vicar, hierophant, everwhat. I’m naught but a pony who’s the Deormont’s voice on Equus.”
“Eh-heh.” Bitterroot kept nervously glancing slightly upwards. “That explains the whole… archangel deal.” She gestured vaguely at the nothing above his head.
“Dear land, what in Tartarus’s TARNAL TUBA are you’un talkin’ about?!”
Bitterroot flinched away and clapped her hooves over her ears. “Please don’t scream,” she didn’t quite whimper.
Tallbush made a Face at Amanita; she swallowed and replied, “She- She sees you as otherworldly. Shining light, symbolic appearance, all that.” (Bitterroot nodded jerkily.) “Angelic. You know: a godly messenger.”
“Hmm.” Tallbush flicked an ear. “Ain’t wrong, really. Jes’ a pony, but I reckon I’m a messenger, aye.” He looked at one of his hooves and turned it over, like there was something secret just below the skin.
But once he returned his attention to her, they still didn’t move. They still didn’t move for several long moments.
“What’re ye goin’ tae dae?” Tallbush asked.
“What’re you gonna do?” Amanita asked.
Tallbush blinked and twitched backward. “What?”
“Well… we didn’t know. You were keeping this from us-” Amanita gestured at the boards. “-so you didn’t want us to know. Now we do know. Now what?”
“…Y’ain’t goin’ tae dae arythin’?”
“Not until you do something.”
“…Such as?”
“I…” Amanita was increasingly feeling like she didn’t have the whole picture. She risked pulling her hooves together so she could stand up straight. “I… don’t know. Something to keep your secret?”
Tallbush tilted his head, a look of utter confusion on his face. “What sort o’ ponies dae ye presume us tae be?”
“A cult?”
“Well- Aye, but- How much about us dae ye ken?”
“That there’s something under the mountain you worship. And that’s about it.”
“The Deormont, aye.” Tallbush snorted. “Canterlouts,” he muttered, “always stickin’ yer muzzle…”
Amanita flinched when Bitterroot nudged her; she’d almost forgotten she was there. “We need to go,” Bitterroot said urgently.
“Not yet,” hissed Amanita. She’d been on the wrong side of assumptions. Maybe there was one going on here that she could stop. She dropped onto her haunches. “Okay,” she said to Tallbush. “I think we’re talking at cross purposes. What in Tartarus is going on here?”
“Ach, why not,” Tallbush muttered. He sat down himself. “Ye read how it started?”
“The Fuel Vassalage Commission wasn’t properly paying ponies for coal or giving them supplies.”
“Canterlot still ain’t doin’ that.” Tallbush snorted. “Nastiest place in the nation, an’ jes’ gettin’ blankets’s close akin tae pullin’ teeth… Canterlot sent our foremothers out here, tae this- cold-as-blixen holler, an’ forgot about us once they got their cusséd coal,” he spat. “The Deormont did nae sich thing. An’ it dinnae ask fer much.”
Amanita’s spine crawled as she asked, “And what does ask for?”
“Crops,” Tallbush said immediately. “Rye, apples, kale, others. Ain’t picky. The Deormont’s power comes frae the earth, so’s we give it back what we grew with its gift. We’ve everly more’n plenty.”
“…No equine sacrifices?” Amanita risked.
For a second, Tallbush looked like he was going to punch her lights out. “Never,” he snapped. “We’re desperate. But we ain’t monsters. The second the Deormont starts askin’ fer us tae hurt other people, we’re leavin’. ’Tis in the town charter.”
Amanita flinched back at the venom in his voice. She was treading dangerously close to a nerve, she knew. “Sorry,” she said quickly. “I- Sorry.”
“If’n that’s what comes tae mind, ye can see why we keep mum,” scowled Tallbush, pawing at the ground. “When I lick it tae Waypoint, I sometimes hear stories o’ groups an’ towns like ours. Allays cults. Nair end well. Push against the edges o’ the world, an’ that’s all ye need fer e’eryone tae hate ye. Aye, we keep tae ourselves.” He looked Amanita straight in the eye. “Guessin’ ye understand, death doctor.”
Amanita chuckled nervously. “Yeah. I get it.”
Silence. The two looked at each other. Bitterroot was still trembling silently behind Amanita. Tallbush was sitting there like he was tired in a way that a full night’s rest couldn’t cure. His tail kept twitching and his ears were droopy. For someone claiming to be the leader of a cult — in his own words — he sure looked normal and unglamorous.
“Do you really need to keep it up?” Amanita asked. “It’s been- It’s been centuries, we have a new princess-”
“Ye’ve seen Midwich, aye?” Tallbush snapped, getting to his hooves. He started taking slow steps towards Amanita. “Freezes yer insides straight out o’ ye. Got the worstest woods in the country hemmin’ us in. Can hardly raise enough plants tae live on. Dinnae e’en get Her Majesty’s precious sun! Ferget Canterlot. Even if it made o’er us, without the Deormont, there ain’t Tratonmane! This town’s my home, an’ all the reasons it ain’t my grave-” He jabbed Amanita in the chest. “-are bein’ o’ the Deormont.”
He started pacing, flicking his tail, holding his head low and his ears back. “An’ that ain’t all. Ye ken how long most ponies lived in Equestria two hunnert year ago? Fifty years. And that was wi’ most of ’em livin’ in warm places. Fifty. But when our foremothers started worshipin’ the Deormont, nopony died o’ disease, hunger, or old age here for more’n forty year. If’n ye were below seventy, all the thing that could kill ye was the forest.”
He looked back at Amanita. “We dinnae get sick. Dinnae starve. Strong right up ’til the moment we turn up our hooves. Thanks tae the Deormont, we built Elysium in Tartarus. The Deormont’s given us everything we’ve asked o’ it. An’ Celestia?” A bitter, barking laugh. “Ain’t even finished payin’ the first generation.”
That was all it was, wasn’t it? Life. Nothing more. Celestia had promised Tratonmane a life, then failed to deliver, for one reason or another. They just wanted what they were owed. And they were still delivering coal and lumber. There was something fascinating about their dedication to a once-worthy cause that had abandoned them. They were certainly taking the situation better than she would have.
So they deserved better.
Amanita took a deep breath. “Okay. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to talk to Code and we’ll figure it out from there-”
“O’ course,” Tallbush muttered.
“But I’ll also do my best to convince her to leave you alone.”
Tallbush blinked. His ears twitched. “Would ye?”
“I’ve been given the benefit of the doubt before,” Amanita said. “It’s only fair that I give it to somepony else.”
For a moment, nothing. Then Tallbush smiled the smile of someone so incredibly relieved that everything seemed funny. “Thankee. I- Thankee.”
“Can we take the journal back to show Code?”
Some of the relief left Tallbush’s face. “What? Nay.”
“She needs the full-”
“Aye, but the cusséd thing’s nigh on three hundered year old and I dinnae want ye damifyin’ our holy book. We’ve copies.”
Soon, the original journal was back in its drawer and Amanita had stuffed two copies into the pockets of her furs after checking that they matched. The three ponies left the hall. Amanita and Tallbush nodded at each other, then she and Bitterroot headed for the inn while Tallbush went deeper into Tratonmane.
Amanita looked after Tallbush’s silhouette vanishing into the dark. “You think this is a good idea?” she asked Bitterroot.
“It’s what we’re doing, so that kinda doesn’t matter anymore,” Bitterroot replied.
Amanita glanced at her. Bitterroot still looked rattled, caught in a hundred-yard stare (not quite bad enough to be a thousand-yard one) and her wings tight and her steps trembling. “Tallbush?” Amanita asked.
“Tallbush.”
“Still just as bad?”
Bitterroot nodded. “And you were just- casually chatting with him, and…”
“Did you see it on anypony else?”
“No, just him.”
“So if he’s the… voice of the Deormont or whatever and you’re only seeing him… do you think your other hallucinations are related to the Deormont?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Sigh. “I want to get to sleep.”
They walked through the snow.
“We should never go anywhere new together,” said Amanita. “The next week will be really freaky.”
“Agreed.”
“And there’s a good chance you’ll die.”
Bitterroot snorted. “If that’s what it takes to get me to sleep, slit my throat now.”
“…Is… that a request?”
“…Not yet, at least.”
When they reached their room at the inn, Code and Charcoal looked so peaceful sleeping that Amanita almost didn’t want to wake them up. But wake them up the two ponies did, and soon they were sitting on their beds, yawning and smacking their lips. “I trust,” Code said in a voice of restrained murder, “that you have a good reason for waking us up.”
“Everyone in Tratonmane’s part of a cult worshiping something in the mine,” Bitterroot said.
Silence. Charcoal’s jaw dropped, then Code nodded. “That is a good reason. Explain.”
“Also, that might not actually change anything, because I’m not sure this cult is harmful,” Amanita added.
“…Not unheard of. Expand.”
And expand Amanita and Bitterroot did. They ran over everything relevant, even the grave robbing (Charcoal was half mortified, half still in the process of waking up and unable to be mortified). They talked about the journal and their talk with Tallbush. They showed the copies of the journal Tallbush had given them. They talked about their own thoughts. They gave them everything they knew.
“…and I… feel like I should believe them,” Bitterroot said, “but… they’re worshiping some chthonian beast, but… that’s with all the baggage Tallbush pointed out, and… I don’t know what to make of it.”
Code nodded. She closed her eyes. She took a deep breath in through her mouth. She let it out through her nose.
And she smiled.
“A tutelary,” she almost laughed. “A tutelary. Celestia, I’ve wanted to see one…”
“Er…” Amanita looked at Bitterroot and Charcoal in confusion. Bitterroot looked just as confused, while Charcoal was slowly turning into the excited form of shocked.
“Small gods,” Code said preemptively. “Spirits of the earth and of places.” She opened her eyes. “They… exist differently than us. I don’t understand it well myself. We rarely get much of a chance to study them, and it’s hard to decipher the… data we get when we do. It’s hard for us to comprehend each other, our states of being are so different. But if ponies could form a bond with one…”
“From what I know of tutelaries, it’d have to be cost- caused by the land itself,” said Charcoal, “and from the sound of it, Midwich was perfect for that…”
“And Tratonmane can communicate with it!” said Code, jumping off the bed. “Or at least Tallbush.”
“Of course it’s him,” scoffed Charcoal, “he’s the duke, he’s the one ponies appointed to be responsible for Midwich, so he’s the one responsible for the Deormont, and that’s by accident-”
“Indeed. Do you think the duke can always communicate with the Deormont?”
“As long as Tramontane honors them, yeah, because if they don’t, then they’re not responsible for the land… Did we just recreate the Mandate of Elysium?”
“I think it’s the reverse, the Mandate of Equus-”
“Hey!” Bitterroot whisper-screamed. “Are we- Are we safe? This- This is-”
“Do you remember Waypoint?” Code said. “They thought Tratonmane was odd, but that was it. They didn’t have any sinister stories or traumatic tales of occult goings-on here. Just, ‘Midwich is odd’. Tutelaries aren’t the type to pay much attention to the deaths of physical individuals, anyway. Tratonmane would gain nothing from killing us.”
“And even if we were going to run, what would we do?” Charcoal said cheerily. “Hijack the train? Who would drive it?”
“I… probably could,” mumbled Bitterroot. “I know trains.”
Code did a double-take, then groaned and said, “Whatever the case, either we’re safe, or we’re going to have the entire town descending on us and we’re doomed. Either way, I’m tired, and I’d rather die on a full night’s sleep. Get back to bed.”
Code and Charcoal both climbed back into their beds. Amanita and Bitterroot looked at each other. “I hate it when big things start at night,” Bitterroot mumbled as she walked to her own bed.
Part of Amanita wanted to protest their actions and try to hammer out something now, but weariness was creeping into her body. She could’ve fought it off, but she wouldn’t be in a state for any sort of honest discussion. Going to sleep was about all she could do.
Except for reading. She looked at the copy of the journal Tallbush had given her and fanned through the pages. Curiosity just barely overtook exhaustion and she settled into her bed with a tiny ball of shimmering hornlight, just enough to read by.
Time for some theology.
I took the sheaf of grain back to the cavern and burned it, as commanded. As I did so, I communed with the land.
Things were made known to me. I cannot say how. This thing inside the mountain, it is woven throughout all of Midwich. It is not trapped here any more than I am trapped in physicality; our states of being are different. It can aid us if we aid it. I remain unsure of the exact mechanism, but we can harness its power as Plow did. It promised me a sign tomorrow as proof. It appears to not be all-knowing, since Plow’s crops were proof enough.
When I exited the mine, the air wasn’t so cold.
Ice Moon 5, 737
This morning, three colossal bears walked into Tratonmane and lay on the ground. The townsponies were terrified, as they ought to be. I walked up to the bears and slit their throats one by one. They put up no resistance. We used the furs for blankets and their fat for oil. It is a windfall compared to what we have.
I talked with Plow and we determined to tell Tratonmane as a whole. They deserved to know. If any wished to leave, we would let them. I could not condemn them for my rash actions.
Yet when we did so, the response was eager. Finally, something that kept its promises! They were flush with questions I sadly could not answer. Perhaps there was pent-up hate and anger that their pride refused to let them voice that this being now provides an outlet for. Some were apprehensive, but more in concern for my safety, not in my potentially committing dark magic.
As Duke Tratonmane, this town is my responsibility, so I shall bear the risk. I shall continue speaking with it in such ways I can. No one else shall have to, although I shall not stop them if they wish to try.
I pray these divine promises may be kept.
Ice Moon 11, 737
I have not eaten in four days. I have given all of our food to Lilac, for her strength and the foal’s.
But I do not waste. I asked for the energy of Midwich to sustain me, and it has been so. The dark seems lighter and the chill’s bite is softer. Hunger gnaws at me, but I am not ravenous. It is merely uncomfortable, not painful.
Our plants are flourishing, a year of maintenance accomplished in a week in a climate that should not support them. Sickness has been banished. Fish have swam upstream to provide us with extra food. The air in the mine is cleaner. Even our wounds seem to heal more quickly. All of Tratonmane’s spirits have been lifted. Even in the dark, this place is becoming enjoyable.
I have continued communing with Midwich. We are so different that exchanging ideas is a struggle, but I am slowly learning how to communicate with it. I know it wants things, but those things have meaning on a metaphysical level, not a physical one. My burning of grain was taking our cultivation of Midwich and releasing it, on some level. I am talking with a unicorn in an attempt to make heads or tails of it.
I know that I am tempting fate by being hopeful. But I feel fate has already had its twist, so hopeful I remain.
Ice Moon 19, 737
I am a father and Lilac is a mother. Mountain Juniper is the first foal born in Tratonmane. Even as malnourished as her mother was, she is strong enough to walk. Praise Midwich.
Lilac remains healthy and strong. I suspect she would be out collecting lumber if not for Juniper nursing. Praise Midwich.
Storm Moon 2, 737
We received our supplies. As lackluster as ever, not that that matters anymore. I also received a response to my letter. I didn’t even open it before I threw it into the fire. We are living in Midwich without their help.
Juniper is healthy and growing into quite a hoofful already. Thankfully, Lilac and I have help from some of the other parents in Tratonmane. It takes a village, after all.
Yesterday, I had a breakthrough in the cavern, and I was spoken to in plain Ponish. Tratonmane’s relationship with the entity has been not merely reaffirmed, but extended beyond even our lifetimes. I remember it clearly:
So long as you remain beneath my wings, you shall not depart before your time. The miasma of the earth shall not harm you, nor shall the beasts of the wood. The land shall be plentiful for you and you shall not want or suffer, nor shall your descendents. The ravages of illness shall not touch you. You are mine. I am yours. We are ours.
Canterlot may condemn me. Canterlot may say I am consorting with things beyond my reckoning. Canterlot may say I am throwing my life to the whims of an unknowable thing in exchange for earthly power. I cannot say they’re wrong. If they wish to capture me, I shall go quietly.
But they shall have to come get me. And if they do, they shall see what their neglect has wrought.