What got to Red Ink the most was the silence. In the city, there would always be bustle, and even in the middle of the night he could open a window and hear a party, or go down to a tavern and have some fun. When he was in his summer cottage, the birds sang, the insects buzzed all night, and there was the occasional howl of a wolf or growl of something more spectacular. Here, in these ruins, the only noise he could pick up was Long Jump’s heavy breathing and Calpain digging at the ground.

The whole area also puzzled the red unicorn. The buildings didn’t actually look too old – the style had been in fashion about a hundred years ago, but even the ones that still remained somewhat intact looked like they’d gone through thousands of years of decay. Whole stone walls had crumbled, and wood frames took only the smallest pressure to reduce to powder. Weeds and vines covered everything; the pony had to yank with his teeth to reveal even the smallest portion of unexposed stone.

Red Ink watched as Long Jump tossed his cloak, revealing his light barding and the weapons he’d brought with him. The unicorn smiled at the hoofiwork – the pegasus’s bandages looked intact, even after the hard march out here. Even as the other pony surveyed the area, glancing behind crumbling walls and poking bushes as though he expected a monster to pop out at any moment, Red Ink knew he needed to focus on finding out why they’d been brought out here. Since Calpain had also busied himself examining the ruins, Red Ink figured now would be as good a time as any to unpack.

Red Ink had saddlebags full of wizarding supplies and trail rations, so he started to set everything out on a stump. However, at unrolling the first magic scroll, he found it to be blank. Surely he’d packed magic scrolls instead of blank parchment – he made a point to keep them in separate drawers just for that reason. He yanked a potion out of his bag, but when he popped the cork and gave it a sniff, and it was only water. Surely he hadn’t simultaneously brought blank scrolls and accidentally filled the potion bottles with water.

With a little spurt of magic he lifted the potion bottle from the stump, but it took a lot more concentration that he’d expected. Normally he could do something like this without even thinking about it. Was the area itself fighting against his magic? Was that why his magic scrolls and potions had gone blank? Trudging around old buildings wasn’t his type of excitement, but now that there was some mystery to the whole thing he wanted to find out what was going on.

“Where do you think we should start?” He asked Long Jump, since Calpain seemed to be preoccupied with the plant life.

Long Jump glowered at Red Ink, pushing himself back on his hoofs to start walking towards some of the more distant structures.

“You’re the academic here, go… I dunno, do something,” Long Jump said bitterly. “I’m a bit surprised you don’t seem disturbed about this place. The air feels… dead.”

Red Ink cocked his head for a second and concentrated. Now that the pegasus mentioned it, everything did feel a little odd, but he couldn’t quite put his hoof down as to why.

“What do you mean it feels dead? There’s grass. And buildings. No other ponies, but still. Can you be more specific?” He knew Long Jump wasn’t one of his students, so he tried to keep the ‘I’m quizzing you’ tone out of his voice as best he could. Besides, something was definitely going on with the magic.

“You can’t feel the air?” Long Jump asked. “It’s off. Like something important is missing. Maybe it’s a pegasus thing,” Long Jump said. “Don’t know why you’re asking me, though. You’re the ‘smart’ one here.”

While ignoring the pegasus’s tone, Red Ink tried to focus, pushing away the thoughts about the grass and the odd vines, trying to figure out what was wrong with the place. However, the more he concentrated, the more it slipped away, as though pouring magic into it was only making it more mysterious. Red Ink hoofed at the ground before turning back to Long Jump. This was definitely about more than the weird air and the neutralizing of magic items.

“I am sorry about making you upset. Not just that you’re upset. I’m sorry about the heart locket. I should have asked first.” Red Ink hoofed at the ground again. “So can you please explain how the air feels off?”

Long Jump narrowed his eyes. “It’s not a locket, it’s a lock. How am I supposed to get this off? Did you bring a key? Is there even a key to it?”

Even though he knew it was a bit unfair, Red Ink pranced over and caught up to the Pegasus pretty easily. In one swift movement he thrust his horn forward and jammed it into the lock. It popped open without any resistance, though at the moment it did not fall off, since both halves of the collar connection were still hanging onto the loops.

“The spells need a single, small object as a focus. The lock itself doesn’t need a key, since it’s so small. If you want, I can loop it around…” He fumbled with the pieces of the collar for a moment – which also took far too much magical concentration than it should have – and then clicked the lock back together.

“There. I broke the lock itself when I stabbed my horn into it. It’ll hold together, and when we get back to Canterlot, I’ll replace it with a simple clasp. Is that alright?” Red Ink asked.

“Look. Red… I…” Long Jump trailed off, looking off to the side for a moment, and then scuffed at the dirt. “The air just doesn’t seem like it has the… energy it should. Everything’s muted. I didn’t even know how the air felt until… you know…” He gestured at his scarred side then continued, “The umm… flavor? I honestly can’t describe it in words, but after the accident everything ‘tasted’ different. But here and now? It’s like ash.”

Long Jump winced and rubbed his bad shoulder. “Can you just give me some space for a bit? I’m tired and I hurt. And…” He grunted angrily. “Can you just go work with your assistant?”

Red Ink smiled at Long Jump and then walked over to Cal. If he couldn’t solve that problem right now, then he could at least try and figure out what was up with the ruins.

“Any ideas, Cal?” Red Ink asked. Calpain pulled his head out of a bush and took a moment to shake the leaves out of his mane.

“Huh? Think about what?” Calpain asked.

Red Ink waved a hoof around. “We can both feel it, but neither of us can put it in words. There’s something strange going on in this area, and the air feels weird. Is there a plant that could be causing this?”

Calpain stood tall and listened, taking a couple deep breaths. “Hmm, something is certainly off. There’s no wind, birds or insects. The air is stagnant. It’s almost as if this place is being preserved in a certain state for some reason. What do you think, professor?” Calpain asked.

Until Cal had mentioned it, he hadn’t realized that was one of the things that was bothering him – the lack of magical sense. A forest always had a low level of magic, but this small area didn’t. For some reason, he still couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong with the air, and magic wasn’t helping. In his experience, very few problems couldn’t be solved with magic, and maybe that was what was bothering him the most. He couldn’t even figure out which spell to try, since his magical senses weren’t working. Come to think of it, Red Ink couldn’t even notice the traces of his own power, even on his own hooves or belongings.

“I can only guess there’s some field here that’s blocking everything, but I’ve never seen anything like that. No bugs? That’s certainly odd,” Red Ink said.

Calpain nodded. “Hmm…” The other stallion thought for a moment before sitting down on the ground. “I remember a case in one of my books about a preservation spell that was beginning to ‘spoil’. It started leaking from the object it was cast on and contaminated the surrounding area,” Calpain said.

Red Ink nodded. “That could be it. Preservation spells are generally only for a few days, though. What could be preserved for so long, and this far out from civilization?”

Calpain shrugged. “Not sure, all I do know is that it’s got to be very important if it had been preserved for so long. And I bet…” He looked further into the ruins. “That it’s somewhere in there. Any idea what we should be looking for?” Calpain asked.

Red Ink wondered why he worked at the school if he loved field work so much– Red Ink certainly wouldn’t want to be out in the untamed wilds all the time. Perhaps it was because he was an Earth pony, without the protection magic could give him, or a Pegasus who could easily escape a rampaging magical beast. Well, like most pegasuses, Red Ink thought, though in a fight between Long Jump and an Ursa Major, he’d put bits on Long Jump.

Red held up a hoof to tell Cal to wait a moment, then entered a nearby structure. Besides dust and decay nothing seemed extraordinary. When Red Ink stepped back out of a crumbling building, he took another gander at the whole area. Long Jump was investigating what looked like a destroyed fountain some distance away, and Calpain had moved on to one of the buildings that had collapsed into its own basement. “I say we just keep exploring until something jumps out at us,” Red Ink suggested. The unicorn still couldn’t sense any magic – not even the normal residue that would be here from just a bunch of unicorns living in the area for an extended period of time. It was as though the entire village had never experienced a moment of magic, even from explorers or people passing through.

As an experiment, the unicorn sent a shower of rainbow sparks into the air. Normally, they might have spread out and arced over the destroyed building in front of him, but instead, a few feet from his horn, they just disappeared. Frowning, the unicorn concentrated and tried again, this time pointing his horn at one of the walls a few dozen yards away and fired a beam of destructive magic. In any other situation, there would have been little of the wall left except for a crater, but instead the blast of magic just faded away a few feet from his horn. Not only was the air not even warmer, as it should have been, but there wasn’t even the ruffling of his mane from the push of the blast.

“That was… weird,” Calpain said.

“There are some intact columns to the West in a style I’ve never seen before. Why don’t you try moving them with magic?” Calpain suggested. “There might be something underneath them.”

Calpain crept between the crumbling buildings and led them to a set of intact columns that looked like part of the mayor’s house. Though the rest of building had fallen to the plants and time, three columns formed a line in front of the small group. Between them, a few statues of ponies littered the ground, but though they too were covered in vines, it didn’t look like they were damaged at all. That felt odd to Red Ink, but he’d focus on that in a moment.

“Try on the columns first,” Calpain said, prancing around the space.

Red Ink sighed and concentrated. Power poured from his horn, and though he could barely see from the brightness of it all, but despite the sweat pouring down his flanks, nothing was happening to the column. He could move the vines, but the second the magic touched the column or spent more than a second in the open air, it was like he wasn’t even trying. He strained, and even as he felt his magic touch and wrap around the column, it only dissipated. Finally, he twisted it and tried to lift the statues.

The small explosion blasted Red Ink and Calpain back several feet. Vines and leaves flew in every direction, and once Red Ink got back on his feet, he surveyed the damage, or lack thereof. It was as though they weren’t there, and the pony statues hadn’t budged an inch, besides now being a bit clearer of flora.

“Umm… Red Ink?” Cal said, looking over at the unicorn.

“What?” Red Ink asked.

“Look down,” the Earth pony said.

When the unicorn did, he didn’t really know what to do. His hooves had been covered in stone powder, but he knew they hadn’t actually damaged anything. As he watched, the dust solidified, formed into little scales, and then those merged together into solid pieces of marble. It didn’t look like a shell, but instead as if it were part of his hooves. As he watched, more powder appeared, now in his fur, and the process started up again. As an experiment, he took a step. He could still move, but already his ankles felt stiff.

“I think we have a problem.”

Author's Note

2014-06-19: Revision 1