and
Max is once again sitting in Temperance’s chair. He’s reading a historical text on the various revolutions that shook the the very roots of the Equestrian Kingdoms in their forming. He seems quite engrossed.
The door swings open as he reads, revealing a very tired looking Temperance. The stallion starts for his desk when he realizes that there was a griffon occupying his seat. He pauses, then shuts the door behind him. “Max? Reading up on law again?”
“Yes, been very interested these days. Hello, Temp, how’ve the kids been?” He asked, moving again.
“They’re all doing well, thanks,” Temperance replies, accepting his seat. “How have you been?” he asks, mostly out of an attempt to be polite more than expecting an honest answer that he was doing well.
“Very Intrigued.” Max answered with a grin, a flare in his eye. “Very intrigued. A murder mystery in Duskfields. At a risk at sounding macabre, i’m sort of ... Well, let’s see how ta’ put this. I can put all this law I’ve been studying into practice, Defending Lightning. It’s always good to put something learned to practice.”
At the mention of the murder, Temperance looks twice as tired. He props his chin on his hooves and says, “I hope you have better luck than I have. Lightning won’t tell me anything. Nothing to acquit or condemn him.” He shrugs. “Though I guess it’s none of my business anyway. Maybe if you’re going to go through the trouble and formality of being his legal defense, he might open up to you.”
He mulls over Lightning’s predicament. “He may.” Max shuts the book and sets it aside. “How are you holding up over all this, Temperance? Honestly?” Max asked his friend in a concerned tone.
“Honestly?” Temperance sighs and shuts his eyes. “Not well. At all. I kept clinging to the hope that Duskfields would yet turn out to be a decent, safe place.” He blows out his breath again. “But now? I’ve pretty much given up on that. It’s not my job to investigate the crime, or do anything about it really. Not anymore. Despite that, I can’t help but worry about it constantly.”
Max nods his head and sympathises with Temperance. “I know exactly how you feel, Temperance. We’ve both done more proper good than anypony can expect out here in the badlands. Given, more than any sane pony would. And yet, it feels as though the violence, and the paranoia, and the fear, slowly gripping every pony, it’s a tidal wave we can’t weather. A force that’ll crush you into the ground.” Max exhales heavily. “But fear is just pain leaving the body, in the end. We have to carry on through it. Because who else will? We’re not allowed to bend and break and buckle, you and I. I feel sometimes we have to stay the course solely to let other ponies know; good is not just an ideal. Otherwise, it’ll all slide into chaos.”
“A tidal wave, a force that’ll crush me into the ground.” Temperance opens his eyes. “That’s a good way to describe it, I guess.” He slumps back into his chair. “But I don’t run from a tough job. It’s going to have to get a bit worse before I break.” Max seemed to be handling this surprisingly well, all things considered. If he could be doing this well, maybe there was some hope after all. “Setting a good example is the least we can do I guess.”
Max steeples his fingers together and loses himself in thought. “It’s all we can do sometimes, set a good example. Even when it’s a lie, even when in truth we’re all trapped in Amug’s gray shroud. The ponies need heroes, villains, and a narrative.” He smiles. “We’re constructing a quaint peaceful farming community. That’s the narrative. That’s what we feed them, that’s what they believe. Is it true? Doesn't matter. That’s the lie that keeps it all falling down. It’s what they want.”
Temperance frowns. “I’m not sure if I’m just too much of an optimist or an idiot, but I prefer there be no need for heroes and especially not villains.” He shrugs. “Then again, it’s like you said. Doesn’t matter, does it? What’s going to happen is going to happen. And this time, it turned out like this.”
“A million stories, unfolding in the same curious structure ...” Max continues, as if mulling over something. “Every passing day, I wonder more and more which one I am.”
Temperance considers his next words carefully. “I wonder the same for myself sometimes. It really seems like there’s some malign force driving everything here down some dark story. For some of us more than others, I guess.”
Max looks perturbed. “It’s funny I - I had a vision of th’ most vivid sort ...” He tailed off.
A deathly silence falls over the office as Temperance studies the griffon in the room with him. “You... too? What... did you see?”
the griffon looked at the mahogany office table with a thousand yard stare. “I saw Carnith,
talked to him. He demanded blood. Retribution.” His head shook sullenly as his stare continued. “His skin sloughed off till there was nothing but bone. Then I buried those bones.” He looked up to him. “It was - I - feel - I don't know how to describe what it felt like. I don’t know if there are such words in your tongue for how it felt. I feel there should not, they would be too dour for such a colorful language....”
Temperance looks for all the world as if he’s seen a ghost. That was too similar to what he’d seen. “I... I don’t think there are words in any language to describe it. Not for something like that.” He considers apologizing to Max about Carn yet again, but what good would it do at this point? Aside from looking patronizing? Instead, he says, “That... that worries me though. I saw something similar a few months back. Except it was Maize, telling me to leave and take everypony with me. I, uh, probably shouldn’t say this, but several ponies around have seen things like this. That’s what Serenity told me.” He sighs. “I don’t know what to think.”
Max looks disturbed as well. He wasn’t the only one seeing visions? What could that possibly mean? He was under so much stress of late, he couldn't think of anything that could possibly cause mass hallucinations. A plant, A magic, there must be an example out in the wild somewhere, but whatever the cause he didn’t know it. “I don’t know what to think either. At a loss ...” He shrugs and grumbles. “Well, that’s not entirely true ...”
That got Temperance’s attention. “What do you mean? Do you know something about what’s happening?”
Max smirked. “Pfft,no. I have no idea what in tartarus is going on anymore. But what I do know?” Max grabbed the book and fluttered behind Temperance’s chair and firmly put one of his claws on his shoulders as he opens the book cabinet. He starts massaging almost absent mindedly. “ ... we both spend too much time on the big picture. It can drive you crazy.” Max said dismissively.
Temperance tenses and slips out of Max’s claws. He didn’t take massages from anypony but Morning Dew, sorry. “Uh... I... guess?”
Max sighs as he balls up his empty claws. He shouldn't have done that. Why would he do that? Habit, he dismissively thinks. Just wasn’t the same anyway. He finished putting the book away in the shelf behind Temperance. “... Anyway...”
“Right...” Temperance says, hoping to move on past that. “I guess you may have a point. I don’t know what the big picture is anymore. All I know, is that that griffon from Canyontalon was killed with Crosshair’s bolts, and Lightning Runner couldn’t look any more guilty than he does.” He shakes his head. “We’ve got to get past
that before anything else.”
Max shakes his head dismissively. “Lightning isn’t guilty. I have a confession from Redhat the bolts were in Flamberge’s quarters a day before it happened. He’s innocent.”
Temperance raises an eyebrow. “I don’t understand.” He raises a hoof and makes a little motion with it. “I can’t rightly see
Flamberge killing him. Whoever did it must have put the bolts there. But... why?
Why? I just want to know
why this happened.” He rests his chin in his hooves again. “And if Lightning
didn’t do it, I’m even more frightened because that means we have a murderer still trotting about in town.”
Max trains a blue eye on him. “Okay. Let’s put ourselves in Crosshair’s horseshoes. your husband makes a deal with an army you don’t trust. They leave a soldier behind. How many days could you stand, watching, knowing this soldier is knowingly or not gathering intel on you and everything about your settlement. Now Imagine, with a simple claim of missing bolts, and knowing you’re judge, jury and prosecutor of whoever you pin, how easy it would be to walk away. When you really realize how little is stopping you from getting away with it, how many days would it take before you try and make sure that intel never gets home? It was never a question of why but when.”
“Which is yet
another piece of this puzzle that makes no gods-forsaken sense,” Temperance mutters. “I don’t understand why the griffons would be doing that. We’re
allies.” He groans. “And while I see your point, I
really,
really don’t think Crosshair did this. Or Flamberge. It... it just doesn’t fit. Lightning insists it was for somepony outside the fort... though he could be lying. Probably is. Gods know why.”
“Well, as I’m defending him, I’m just not allowed to see eye to eye there, Temperance.” Max grimaces. “All I do see, is a pony who would secretly love to have another war to fight.”
“Flamberge?” Temperance asks with a hint of disbelief in his voice. “I can’t see him trying to provoke the griffons. Not like that... or did you mean trying to spark a civil war here?”
‘Here, there, doesn't matter. It’s free buy-in for him, as his wife did all the heavy lifting. If he convicts Lightning, they both get off. If he does not? Well, he can throw his wife under.” Max pantomimes moving a chess pawn across his table. “ ... leaving one less loose end on the board when he’s eventually married into nobility. Either way, win win. He gets to be the hero, gets his villains, and he gets the narrative that will fast track his career.”
Temperance chews over it for a moment. This was starting to scare him more than a little bit. “I-I still don’t believe that. Flamberge... no, he wouldn’t do something like that. He has too much to lose.”
Max scoffed. “What? The town he felt above the second he walked into it? Why did this quaint farm town just get shipment upon shipment from weapons from Canyontalon? What is Flamberge preparing for?”
“I don’t know,” Temperance answers honestly. “I’m not part of the military chain of command, so they don’t tell me anything. Whatever it is though, the griffons are in on it. That doesn’t really mesh with Flamberge murdering one of them.” He rolls his eyes. “I don’t think anyway. Who knows what the buck is going on anymore?”
“Well, I’m holding my ground. It’s all I got left. I can’t afford to be unwise anymore if griffons are being hunted down, for a reason or not.” Max said with a determined growl.
“Can’t say I blame you for that,” Temperance says with little emotion. He looks at Max. “I hate to even have to suggest this... but... do be careful, Max. Nopony knows for sure why this happened or who did it. If it wasn’t Lightning Runner...”
Max feels comforted by that. “ Temperance, I feel like I’ve already been in the crosshairs for a long, long time. Starting with the .... event about the gate. If something - something . . . look, we’re in something bigger now. Things are shifting. I would not even be the slightest of surprised if I get crushed in the gears. But i’ll try to be a smart as I can.”
Temperance nods slowly. “That’s all I can ask.” Getting caught up in the gears sounded like a frighteningly likely possibility. “I still hope to prevent anything else from going disastrously wrong, but I just don’t know if I can.”
“I know you can’t.” Max said in a rude, impatient and rather coarse tone.
Temperance stared down into his desk and sank almost imperceptibly into his chair. He certainly
had failed Max, hadn’t he?
“I
know this isn’t ideal, but we tried it the ideal way didn’t we? If really loved you I should have listened. All I’ proved was how much of a fool I was, You were right, of course .... you were always right, should have razed the place ...” Max continued sullenly, as if having an argument with somebody. Certainly not with Temperance, though.
The stallion simply sits and watches Max, in profound confusion. After a moment, he hazards a simple, “Max?”
“I
know Carn, I know!” max slams his fist on Temperance's table. “Of course I know what I’ve done. Of course I did, Carn. Who else would?” His feathers flared up and standing on on edge, his eyes are wild. He pants after his little episode, for a good three minutes, before his breathing eased and his posture melted back into something near the recognisable Max Temperance knew, or at least thought he knew. Max looked almost afraid as he slinked back from his aggressive posture. “ ...”
“Max?” Temperance stands and takes a cautious step in his direction. “Max? Are you alright?”
“I .... “ Max wouldnt dare to use the word ‘fine’ in this context. “I ... need to go, I need to get out of here for a while...” Max muttered as a pathetic attempt to remove himself from the conversation . “I’m trying to take care, Temperance, I really am.”
“Um, alright. Do, uh, take care,” he replies, walking Max to the door. He wasn’t sure what he just witnessed, but it was certainly not a good thing. Part of him wants to go run and grab Serenity right
now and make sure Max wasn’t losing his mind. Or maybe Flamberge and have him put under watch. No... that would just make everything worse...
“That was uncalled for, Temp. I’m sorry for shouting.” Max continued to apologize as he got up.
“Don’t-don’t worry about it,” he assures him. Now, if only
he could stop worrying about it. “Just... just take care. I mean it.”
Max nodded, got up and walked out of the room wordlessly. He did not even want to try and take a chance to rectify his outburst, for fear of his beak causing a bigger mess to fix.
Author
Topic: Duskfields (My Little Fortress) (Read 47867 times)