She couldn’t remember how long she’d been running.

The mud coated her hooves and climbed her legs. Rain soaked her heavy cloak, chilled with every gust of wind between the trees. Her hat was long gone, blown away even before she’d been forced to abandon her wagon.

The dark sky overhead split with lightning, thunder followed a half second later. The wind gusted again, catching her cloak. She stumbled and fell onto her side.

For a moment she considered just staying there. Her chest fluttered in shallow gasps, steam escaping through her chattering teeth.

In the distance, she heard the baying of hounds.

The sound roused her. She forced her head up. She wasn’t going to let them find her like this.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw something that didn’t belong. Through a break in the whipping branches, luminous against the blackish grey clouds, glowed a faint golden light.

A candle in a window, improbably high above her.

Lightning flashed, silhouetting a steep peaked tower. A parapet lined the wall below it. Her brain snagged on the idea. She didn’t know of any castles around here.

Then the hounds bayed again.

She struggled to her hooves. The mud sucked against her cloak but she dragged it up behind her. She’d lost her hat, she wasn’t going to leave this too.

The minutes felt like hours before she finally reached the outer wall. A huge double door of weathered planks and iron was set deep into the thick wall, and she ran into the relative shelter of the alcove.

“Hello?” she called. Her voice came out barely a wheeze, vocal cords cracking under the effort. She raised a hoof and tried to pound on the door, but it came through as barely a tap.

She slumped against the door and hammered her hoof against it again. “Please,” she cried, “help… me… ”

Her vision blurred as the cold began to drag her eyes closed, but just before the darkness took her, she heard the click of a latch.

----------------------

Every instinct in her body told her to sleep, to rest, but she dragged herself up through the murk.

The cold came back. The wet. Her matted fur resisted as she tried to move.

But outside of the chill inside, she felt warmth beginning to seep through. The mud didn’t stick, it cracked, already dry and brittle.

She opened her eyes and found herself lying on a plush rug in front of a roaring fire. The fibers around her were soaked filthy with drying muck and twigs. Her cloak, still damp, clung to her like a second skin.

Then a voice rumbled from behind her

“Why are you here?”

Her stomach lurched and her skin tingled with the rush of fear. She rolled over.

The back of the room was shrouded in darkness beyond the reach of the fireplace, but she could see a silhouette. It was in the shape of a pony on a sitting cushion, but larger.

When she didn’t reply, the voice rumbled again. “Why are you here?”

It could have been a mare, but she couldn’t tell.

She gulped and licked her lips. The words came slow from her chilled throat. “They… they’re after me.”

As if to punctuate her words, the baying of a hound drifted in through a nearby window, over the din of the storm.

The silhouette turned quizzically and listened. The outline of an ear flicked. Then it fixed back on her. As her vision adjusted to the darkness, she realized with horror the eyes of the silhouette glowed a deep violet.

“What will they do if they find you?”

She scoffed. “What won’t they do?” She felt herself reviving with the warmth of the fire on her back, and with it her anger. “Lazy simpletons. I bring them magic, like I do for every town. Parlor tricks, simple spells. Everywhere else, they understand it’s just a show. But here…”

From somewhere distant and below, she heard the sound of a hoof pounding on wood. A hound bayed again, and a stallion’s voice shouted.

“Here they wanted more,” she said, voice softening. “They wanted fixes, answers to their indolent base desires. Spells and shortcuts to solve their petty problems, and… foalishly, I tried to give it to them.”

The hoof pounded again

The silhouette stood, and she gasped at the full height of it. Then it walked along the perimeter of the room, avoiding the light, to the open window where the storm raged outside.

From a distance, somepony called out. “Up there! You, come down here!”

The pony laughed deeply, a sound like dry gravel. “I see they have forgotten me,” it said. “Come, let us greet them.”

“But–” she started, then the silhouette stepped into the light and her voice died.

It was a mare, or at least what was left of one. The tattered remnants of a striped purple mane fell in stringy tatters over the gaunt skeletal face, skin blackened with age and fur barely holding on in sparse tufts. A cracked horn protruded from the forehead, and featherless wings twice her length unfurled, revealing sunken ribs and sharp hips.

She fell backwards, chest too tight to even cry out.

The lich smiled, revealing chipped and missing teeth. “Have you also forgotten?”

Then it stood high, and walked out the door of the chamber.

The mare waited for a moment to catch herself, then followed. Out of the chamber, through a dank hallway, and down a sweeping marble stair to a darkened grand foyer.

The pounding of hooves echoed through the space again. The lich’s horn glowed, and the double doors of the foyer opened.

Outside, the ragtag mob stepped backward in surprise. About half of them carried torches. The rest, farming implements. A cluster of baying hounds, straining at leashes held by a tracker.

“What do you seek?” The lich rumbled from deep beyond the reach of the torches.

The ponies outside the door paused and looked at each other, seemingly confused at simply being asked.

Finally one stallion stepped forward, raising a torch to try and see inside the foyer. “We seek the magician!” he shouted. “We know she’s here!”

“And what did the magician do?”

“She… she tricked us!” the stallion replied, and his cry of anger raised cheers from the crowd.

“She sold me a bad spell!” another voice called.

“She brought Ursa Major to my farm and it trampled my crops!”

“She turned my wife into a stallion!”

“She stole my SNOUT!”

The lich turned and sneered at the mare shivering and muddy behind her. “It seems they have a long list of grievances. Quite the trickster you are, magician.”

The mare swallowed as her blood ran colder than the rain again. “Please,” she whispered. “Don’t let them take me. I… I can do things for you! I can–”

“Don’t beg,” the lich hissed. “It’s unbecoming.”

Then it raised too full height and stepped into the torchlight, wings spread and horntip flaring in terrible splendor. “The magician is my guest,” it rumbled, “and you WILL NOT have her!”

For the briefest moment, only wordless shock registered on the rain-soaked faces outside. Then somepony screamed.

It was like a valve releasing. Torches fell into the mud and fizzled out. Farm implements tossed haphazardly in all directions. The mob stumbled and tripped over each other as they fled back into the woods.

The lich’s horn flared and the doors slammed shut. Then she turned and lurched toward the mare, her magic the only light between them.

When it spoke, the voice was softer. “So, trickster it seems you can’t cast a spell,” it said, head cocked to the side. “But I wonder… perhaps you can help me break one.”