Crystal friendship

“How can you know it?” whispered Deeter back.

“Did you saw that pink pony, who just walked by?”

“Yea, and?”

“When I was here last time, she came to welcome me, few seconds, after entering. As far as I know, she is local party pony and knows everypony who lives here. If she would be real, she wouldn´t ignore us.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. And when I think about it – where did changelings came from? From what direction on the map?”

“Sou-” They both looked on each other.

“Celestia damn it! What do we do?” asked Snaky, with worry in eyes.

“There is what we are gonna do.” Even though, Deeter was also suprised, his experience as a vice-captain allowed him to come out with a decent plan.

“We can assume, that princess Twilight Sparkle is also fake, so my idea is, that the changeling, who is pretending to be her, must be some high officer, since such responsibility can´t take just anypony. So, let´s find where does Princess live, defeat the officer and maybe we will find some informations.”

Grey unicorn nodded.

“If I remember correctly, she lived in a treehouse or something like that.”

After few minutes walking through the town and trying to not get anyponies attention, they finally found the library.

“So we will just walk inside?” asked Snaky and looked on Deeter, who was for some reason looking into windows of another house, standing nearby. Then he just walked inside the house and Snaky doubtfully followed him.

„What are you doing?“ asked him.

„You said that your illusions can be casted by listening to music right?“

„Yea...“

„Then look at this.“ Deeter opened one of the doors and Snaky couldn´t do anything but stare with opened mouth.

The room had several giant speakers, which seemingly could be very loud and on top of that there were of course instruments. One of them being electric guitar.

“How did you know about this?”

“This is house of Vinyl Scratch. Back home I have all her CDs and few times I was even exchanging letters with her.”

“So that´s how it is. Can you play on some of this?”

“We shall see.”

* * * * * *

“I have to admit, that I wasn´t expecting it to be so easy.” said Deeter, when he was waving with his hoof in front of fake Twilight Sparkle.

“Heh. Easy, yea right. That´s maybe because all you did was plaing on guitar.” answered him Snaky, who had trouble with breathing by exhoustment.

“Sorry. Anyway, here is a map and some documents, just rest for a while and I will take a look at them.”

Illusionist just nodded and sat down and listened to music, which they had to keep playing, or the spell would end.

“Interesting. So according to this map there are three prisons, where are imprisioned Princess Twilight and her friends. The rest of Ponyville is taken to their main city to work in mines.”

“Three prisions? Where?”

“One of them, where should be Applejack and Pinkie Pie is hidden in Everfree Forest. The other two are way further, near borders with Badlands, where is also the capital city of changelings.”

“We have to go save them, if somepony can help Crystal Empire, it´s princess Twilight and her friends.”

“True, so let´s go and stop wasting time here. Everything we need to know is in this map. Should we let the music...”

“...going?” finished Snaky.

They both realized that there was no music, what they could let going. Two ponies akwardly turned around and saw very angry looking eyes of changelings, who changed to their original forms and were staring right at them.

“Heh.”

“Run!” shouted Deeter and they both rushed to the door with changelings right behind their backs.

Unfortunately, more changelings crossed their path and blocked their way to freedom.

“Do you have any ideas?” asked Snaky.

“Just one. Don´t stop running, whatever happens.”

“Are you sure?”

“No.”

Deeter´s horn shined with red and above two ponies appeared two purple shields and sword what slightly hit the shield. Same thing appeared above two random changelings.

“Let´s do this!” shouted white unicorn and they both rushed out of the building, don´t minding the changelings.

They menaged to get out, because even though, some of the changelings had spears, anytime any of the cretures hit them, the wound appeared on one of the changelings whom had purple shields above them before.

Thanks to this, they were able to escape infested town into the woods.

“Damn it. My body isn´t builted for this kind of stuff.” wheezed Snaky, after they got rid of the enemies.

“I guess that you are the type of pony who spends most of time with a book in hooves right?”

“Yea, and I was happy with it. By the way, what was that spell, which you used to protect us?”

“I call it The Marthyr. Basically it transfers the damage from a victim on The Marthyr and protects you, until The Marthyr is dead. Who in our case is definetely.” explained Deeter, frowning at blood coming out of shallow wound on leg.

“I get it. Also good question to ask would be, where are we just now?”

“According to the map I think that we are in Everfree forest, but on the other side, then the prison, so we have to go through it.”

“Awesome, simply awesome.”

After a while of walking, Snaky spoke to Deeter.

“About our escape from the Ponyville.” he paused for few seconds. “You saved my life back there. Thank you.”

Deeter patted him on the back.

“Of course! We are friends, aren´t we?”

“Friends...I guess so.” answered Snaky and doubtfully smiled. “That sounds about right.”

* * * * *

Back in the Crystal Empire.

* * * * *

“Damn it! I should´ve told it to him earlier. Now it would be simply crazy, Shining has lot´s of things to worry about, he doesn´t need even more of them.” whispered Cadence silently to herself.

She walked to the balcone and looked at the changelings, waiting behind the barrier.

“Deeter Spirit, please come back home safe and with help. Shining Armor can´t protect the Empire forever.”