April 18, 2025: 3:15 AM

Trust Rudolph (78%)

Her friends weren’t happy about the decision to trust someone they didn’t know. But Ruby ultimately spoke up for her, silencing any further objection. “We’re already trusting Way’s judgment just coming up here. We can trust her judgment about this.”

“Besides—worst thing they would probably do is kick us out,” Peter added. “If we leave this hideout, it’s basically the same as getting caught. The risk-calculations might get worse as time passes, but for now…” He paced around her, eyeing the door, then her horn. “What were you even doing up here? And how…” he reached closer to her, nudging her horn. “What’s making it so bright?”

“Deliberate focus,” she said. She felt a little better about showing Ruby than Peter, but since they were both already up here. The energy of the moment was too intense for anyone to head straight to bed after that. “That pony I met today, he gave me something. I didn’t… didn’t want to talk about it until I was sure it wasn’t bullshit.”

“You two go ahead,” Sam waved one wing at them, his face stretching into a wide yawn. “I’m going back to bed. Staying up all night is for people who don’t have jobs in the morning.”

“You don’t have a…” Ruby began. But he wasn’t listening. He’d already retreated back down the stairs.

“If there’s any chance the cops will be here tomorrow to drag us off, I plan on being well-rested when they get here!” he called, his voice echoing up the stairs.

Some small part of Wayfinder was disappointed—disappointed to share her secret tool to learn the magical power of their race. But that part was small and quickly overpowered. Peter had taught her. It was only fair to share in exchange.

They read for a few hours, by the light of her horn. The lights were still off along with the power—but her horn provided more than enough to read by. So long as she maintained her state of focus, the light remained. But would she be able to maintain it for six hours like the book requested?

They got through the same introductions, and the first few chapters, all the way through until the first spell.

“But where did that come from?” Ruby demanded. “That’s the question that really matters.” She flipped through to the front, where the book included a block of text explaining where it had been printed and by whom. Typical stuff for any publication. “Missing Quill Press, in Manehattan. 17 West Horseshoe Place. Some of those other words were strange too. Everypony. Celestia.”

She shut the book—only for Peter to lift it up from in front of her and go back to looking through the spells.

“I didn’t get a chance to talk to him about it,” she said. “He just said it was a book he’d helped write, and that he wanted more ponies to be able to use their powers.” She took a step closer, resting her foreleg on Ruby’s shoulder. Easier now that her former girlfriend was on hooves like them, and stood shorter than she was. “The origin is academically interesting maybe… but look at some of those things Unicorns can do. Healing, transforming objects, teleportation… if it works, does it matter where the knowledge comes from?”

“Yes,” Ruby puffed out her chest, shoving her foreleg away. “It matters, because no one knows where this infection came from. If the military figured it out, the jarhead we rescued didn’t have anything useful to say. You might’ve found the source of this infection, or someone who knew.”

Her horn flickered, but she lacked the strength to pull the book out of Peter’s magical grip. “For all we know, NEM10 came from the same place this… what did you say his name was?”

“Sunburst,” she said, trying to sound more confident than she really felt. Technically, the pony hadn’t introduced himself. But there wasn’t a long time to talk.

“Sunburst, right. Maybe he brought the disease with him from… wherever he came from. Maybe using that book will spread it farther!”

“We’re already transformed,” Peter said flatly. “And from everything we’ve seen since that happened, the people who are still human won’t make life easy for us. We need every advantage we can get to survive.”

He lowered the book to Way, who tucked it hastily under her leg. If Ruby was suspicious enough of it, would she try to destroy what was inside? “We don’t have to use any of it on people. But think about how useful this stuff could be if we master it, Ruby! If someone breaks a leg scavenging, we could use magic to fix it. We could use magic to communicate, magic to protect ourselves if we run into danger.”

Ruby backed away, towards the steps leading down. “I know you’re passionate about it. Maybe it really is just safe. Neither of you seem like you’re hurting from all that magic practice you did. Just take a deep breath is all I’m saying, okay? Don’t jump in with both feet before we even know for sure where you’ll land.”

You mean our hooves? She resisted the urge to say as much, however powerful it briefly felt. It was much too late at night for her former girlfriend to appreciate the wordplay.

“We’ll be careful,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean we have to ignore it. Maybe this book is a piece of the puzzle we need to stop this disease—or even cure it. Dunno about you, but I’d like to go back to who I was. Some of us lost more than others.”

Ruby turned, flicking her tail in exasperation. “Right now, I’m going to bed.”

She turned and retreated to the basement, leaving the two of them alone in the living room. Wayfinder released the book, settling it onto the ground in front of her, frustrated. “She wouldn’t be so suspicious of him if she’d been there. Sunburst wasn’t threatening. He wanted to help us. All he had to do to screw us over was walk away without sharing this.”

Peter nudged her shoulder. “You’re arguing with nobody, Way. I agree with you. Can we agree in bed where it is warm, please? I can see your breath.”

She grunted, then pointed up the steps. “Rudolph already knows we’re here, might as well just sleep in the master. It won’t be so cold up there.”

He tilted his head to the side. “Not sure the science of that quite makes sense. Isn’t underground more stable than above?”

She floated the book back to her. As she did, the glow in her horn faltered, then went out. It wasn’t so much that she wasn’t strong enough, as the concentration to float something broke her focus on the other spell she’d been using.

I wonder what the limits are on that. Can I push them with more practice?

“Do you want to go up with me or not?” she asked, voice low. “You can sleep in the basement like we planned.”

He raised an eyebrow—harder to see with only the incidental light of her horn, instead of the deliberate shine of the light-producing exercise. “I’m still invited?”

“Yes, but only if you shut up and quit asking. Follow me or don’t, it’s whatever.”

He followed her. He even managed to keep to the rules she’d established for their time downstairs. She’d spent too long sleeping with company to be comfortable by herself. Someone fully transformed was less uncomfortable and strange in other ways, too.

He didn’t touch her through the night. But when she got chilly and rolled over to his side, he let her do it without objection—just a faint grunt of acknowledgement, and he was back to sleep.

Why shouldn’t she have company? So long as he could keep proving he respected her boundaries…

She woke tucked under his foreleg, feeling the warmth of another body she’d been craving for the last month. Finally there was someone who wanted to be close to her, who didn’t recoil when she touched him. Someone who’d hiked up with her to practice magic every day for a week.

The lights came back on a few minutes after eight. She chose not to shower that morning—she was already clean enough—and if she washed, it would take away that mixing of different scents.

Someone wanted her around, and now that reminder would accompany her through the morning.

Her trust in Rudolph proved well-placed, because no police came that day or the next, or the next. The frequency he’d provided even proved accurate, giving them a fresh supply of information whenever someone could wear it and listen.

They learned several of the villagers had been infected, and the police had quickly got all of them to Denver before it could spread. From the general chatter they overheard, it seemed Granite Bluff was winning the war against NEM10.

Unless there were more infected sheltering in their homes, as they were doing. But no disasters came over the next days, or any sign that the disease was spreading out of control.

That second full week at the cabin also drained a significant portion of their food. Nearly all the camping supplies were gone, leaving only some long-term food storage from the basement, and what was left of the animal feed.

With a lot of extra seasoning, she even managed to get grilled fish down when Sam brought it. It didn’t make her sick, but that didn’t mean she was ever going to enjoy it again. If there had been more grain to eat instead, she would’ve preferred more oats.

Occasionally they saw glimpses of ranger or police vehicles passing their windows outside. But neither Rudolph nor any other ranger showed up at the doors to send them away.

In the time before, “magic practice” had been little more than a new-agey feel-good zen meditation, all guesses and speculation about how their powers really worked. Now it was completely transformed. The guide explained exactly how to strengthen levitation, and even suggested various exercises to provide more rigorous training than the magical light.

They made fewer hikes up to the waterfall, not when their efforts had transformed from mystical to practical.

Wayfinder devoured the guidebook, digging into every page and re-reading the whole front of the text at least once each day. It wasn’t like they had a lot of other things to do while trapped in the house. What surprised her most was not how quickly her confidence and powers grew, but how little her friends seemed interested. Peter joined her for magical practice, but now he was the one listening, rather than leading. An hour or so moving objects around or practicing on a spell diagram and he’d drift off to other things.

Ruby was even more confounding. She joined them in the backyard long enough to develop enough to move objects around—but almost as soon as she reached that point, she stopped showing up.

“I know how passionate you are about this, Wayfinder. But we have more important things to worry about than magic tricks. I’m probably the only person on the continent who has everything on NEM10. Zalenka’s research, detailed bioscans and noncausal radiation readings from your boyfriend, a firsthand experience—”

Peter looked up from the kitchen, where he’d been about to switch on the blender. Their dwindling cans of fruit and other more exciting food went a lot further when blended into the grains and other “boring” food they ate.

“It’s not magic tricks, Ruby,” she said, glaring back. “It’s our one advantage when the world took a steaming dump on our heads. Are you really going to—”

“Yes,” she snapped, levitating the laptop under her foreleg. “I could do even more with better hardware, and some friends. I had a professor who knew about this. Did you know NEM10 is a mammalian Girus? And I’m pretty sure I know how it spreads better than the CDC at this point. We’re not the only ones who have to survive this, Wayfinder. There are nine billion other people on this planet. Dunno about you, but I’d like it if they get to stay human.”

She stormed off, leaving Way and Peter in the kitchen.

He switched on the blender then, turning the mixture of unappetizing animal feed into something even worse looking (but better tasting). His powers were getting better too—he didn’t even need to look directly at the blender while he pressed the buttons.

After a few seconds, he switched it off again, and poured her a glass. “There’s something else I wanted to ask.”

“About us running out of food?” she slumped down in front of the kitchen table. They’d adjusted it down over the last few weeks, and pushed the chairs aside in favor of some stolen couch cushions. “I’ve been thinking about that. No… good plans yet. Need more time.”

“Not that.” He poured her a glass, then took the seat next to her. “The feds are getting more aggressive. Emergency session just passed this… mandatory relocation act. Authorizes them to go house to house.” He floated a few sheets of printed paper over so she could see. “From what I’m reading, it’s bad. Lots of the big cities are more infected than humans at this point. Might be worth thinking of our next move before they make theirs. Now that we know they aren’t going to go for the nuclear option, we might think about relocating. Before we run out of food. And in the relocation districts, people are starting to live a normal life again.”

She floated the cup to her lips, then sipped. “You trust the feds not to make things awful for us?”

He shrugged. “I think the ship sailed on stopping this, Wayfinder. Our allies have quarantined the whole country. No way for the rats to flee the sinking ship. Maybe we could get in on the ground floor of whatever comes next.”

1. If we go back, we should go to Denver.
2. Okay, but no big cities. See if you can find a more rural area we could relocate to.
3. I was a boy scout, what if we just picked some empty land and started from scratch?