>>33130190“I know it cause I read it.” Scootaloo nodded, sure of herself. “There’s a bookstore back home, and I read what would happen.” She looked down at her hooves as they walked. “I tried to run away, but even running away just led me here. Off the train and into this strange place.”
“If you’re so knowledgeable about the matter, then maybe you can tell me what happens next, if your book is right about everything.” A hot wind blew from the setting sun, washing over Braeburn and making him break out in a sweat. Banking on the kid’s book as something that could tell him what he was supposed to do was a terrible idea, but the Stranger was long gone. He needed every edge he could get if he was to catch the stallion.
“Follow the path of the setting sun, into the baked and painted hills. There will be darkness and light in equal measure, where unnamed things dwell that will attack anything and everything that passes through. They let the Stranger pass because of his promises; promises of darkness avoiding the light that burns them so brightly when they try to venture out. In there, beyond their attacks, you will be tested three times, and you will fail each and every one. You will give up that which you had, that which you have, and that which you would have received. There will be no happy ending for you, Braeburn.”
Braeburn looked at her sharply. “No happy ending at all?” Had he told her his name? He must have at some point. Before the dark thing in the wall, after, during their climb and preparation to leave? He couldn’t remember her ever asking him for it, and he couldn’t remember offering it. Was it one of those things she’d learned in her book, or was it something to do with the stranger?
