Fools Go Where Pegasi Fear to Tread

Courage and her new faithful companion Loyal trudged through the sewer, trying to find the source of the noises up ahead. It sounded like there was a fight. There was angry swearing, grunting, the occasional scream, and then there was diabolical laughter.

Courage didn’t like the diabolical laughter. She wished it would stop. It made her want to have a wee. Which really was a difficult thing really, considering what she was standing in, she could in fact have a wee and it would make very little difference. Except that it wouldn’t be very brave.

Loyal stayed close, every step getting a little stronger, the shine coming back to his bulbous insectoid eyes. Sometimes, a hug was all you needed to get you going again, especially if you were a changeling. The difficulty was, most ponies didn’t hug bugs. The pony-changeling hug was a rare occurrence, probably because most changelings tried to feed on love by force. Had they simply asked…

“I’ve seen better plots in a cemetery!”

“Oh no!” Courage exclaimed to Loyal. “The heckling hyenas have joined their evil master, Ahuizotl! We have to rescue her, the heckling hyenas never say anything nice!”

“Hey, why did the pegasus cross the road?”

Meanies! Courage fumed internally.

“Because everybody knows pegasi taste like chicken!”

Oh no! They wouldn’t!

“I bet she’s all stringy. I say we slow roast roast her.”

Oh no! They would!

There was the sound of a scuffle somewhere ahead in the many forking tunnels.

“Hurry Loyal!” Courage urged.

The pair slogged through the river of muck as quickly as they could, the sound growing closer and closer. The soupy goop was moving faster now, having really picked up speed. Courage’s horn gave off a blue glow while Loyal’s horn gave off a green glow, lighting the way ahead with a blue-green light.

“I have a very hard shell. I am durable in a fight, but I am a worker drone. Not a soldier. I don’t know how much use I will be,” Loyal said as they hurried forward.

“I have my zapper,” Courage said. “And I learned a few spells from my mother. A sticky spell and a greasy spell.”

“You hit like a girl!”

“Yeah! A girl with a salad bowl on her head!”

“I am going to do something very unladylike to them!” Courage shouted.

The duo rounded a corner and saw sunlight up ahead. There was also a crowd of several heckling hyenas and a very battered looking Daring Do, who wobbled about unsteadily. One wing looked broken.There was no sign of Ahuizotl.

“Here! Take this!” Daring Do instructed as she threw a small bundle to Courage. “Get this to Dr. Biscotti in the city of Galloping Gulf, down along the coast!”

The heckling hyenas snarled and growled, seeing their prize fly through the air. Courage caught it with her magic. Daring Do lunged at them and began to pummel them with her forehooves.

Courage summoned her wings and charged ahead, hoping she could clear the melee fracas. Loyal surged ahead of her and slammed into a the pack of hyenas like a battering ram. They flew apart like bowling pins before a bowling ball.

“I don’t remember being this strong before,” Loyal said in surprise.

“Good luck!” Daring Do said. “Remember, Dr. Biscotti in Galloping Gulf!”

Courage lept from the sewer pipe, a heckling hyena hot on her heels. There was a one hundred foot drop down a cliff to a sewage lagoon far below. She flew away, but the heckling hyena did not, and he fell downward, yelping as he fell.

Courage winced, knowing that the poor hyena was going to get a really big booboo.

Loyal buzzed along beside her, and Courage could hear Daring Do dealing with the last few heckling hyenas behind her. Courage stuffed the package into her saddlebag and soared skywards, already beginning to feel a bit peckish. There was no way she could fly to the coast, and she really needed a bath or a shower. She was stinky and so was Loyal.

The house was just as she left it and the carefully flew down the halls, trying not to touch anything with her filthy hooves. Loyal buzzed behind her, hovering.

“I am going to take a shower. You can take one too when I am done. Do you eat actual food as well as love Loyal?”

“I don’t need food, but I can eat it. I don’t get very much energy from it though,” Loyal responded in tired voice. “I don’t understand why you are being so nice to me.”

“Because,” Courage responded. “I would want somepo- well, I would want whomever found me in the sewer almost dead to be nice to me and save me, so how could I not do it for you?”

Loyal’s eyes glowed brighter for a moment, and his wings buzzed a little louder. “You are very kind,” Loyal gushed. “Thank you.”

“Something just happened. I saw your eyes flash. What was that?” Courage asked.

“I felt a burst of love,” Loyal answered.

“Oh,” Courage gasped, a faint blush hidden behind her pelt. “I try to be nice to every single thing  I meet. It just seems right. I suppose I would even be nice to the heckling hyenas if they gave me a chance. I am going to take a shower now before I die from embarrassment.”

The unicorn filly paused for a moment and then spoke: “Loyal, you can be my moral compass so I will never become lost.”

Courage slipped off to the shower, thinking about her own profound words.

The train had very few passengers. Courage sat with her pith helmet beside her. She had tried to clean it as best as she could, using magic. It still had a peculiar aroma. Loyal sat in the seat across from her, covered in a cloak that covered him completely and a hood that covered his head. He looked almost like a pony. Loyal had mentioned the ability to change his appearance, but he wasn’t strong enough just yet.

They had showered and fled the house before anything might have found them.

Galloping Gulf was a city on the edge of the Saddle Arabian empire, and it was considered one of the great harbours of the world. The train would take them there in just a few days. It just felt proper, riding a train, going on a good adventure, riding in unparalleled comfort and dignity. This was certainly better than stomping through a sewer. Anything was better than stomping through a sewer. Stomping through a jungle was on the to do list and stomping through a foreign library looking for clues seemed like a good idea, but might be considered slightly rude.

Yes Courage thought to herself, adventurers belong on trains. Something just feels right about adventuring and trains.

Daring Do after all, even though she was a pegasus, had all of her best adventures and even some of her biggest fights on trains. One Daring Do book started when Daring Do boarded a train, and ended when she had disembarked, the entire novel taking place entirely on the train, and a great mystery had been resolved. A priceless treasure had been recovered. They had been burning mummies in place of coal. Mummies! Priceless artifacts that belonged in a museum. Daring Do had found and saved the priceless mummy of Trottencommon the Secondyfifth.

Courage hoped that there would be no fights on this train. She wasn’t sure she was ready for that just yet. That might spoil the mood.

“So tell me about yourself Loyal,” Courage said in a low curious voice.

“Like what?” Loyal replied.

“Like, everything,” Courage answered.

“One day, I just woke up. I don’t know what happened, or how it happened, but I lost my connection to the hivemind. The shared mind we all have. We all share memories and experiences. We don’t need to spend as much time learning as other species, because we have entire lifetimes of experiences that we pass on to each new generation, the memories of every other changeling that has come before. Hard to remember them all though. So the necessary experiences come as we need them, when the situation demands them. Otherwise, it just stays in the mind of the hive-mother.”

“Do go on.”

“It was just gone. And then my hive mates realised that I was no longer connected and they tried to turn me into hive wax. I had to escape. I didn’t want to be hive wax. I didn’t want what made me as a creature used to contribute to the next generation. I had to subdue my former hive mates and escape. I came to the city. I was not made welcome. Many tried to hurt me. And then you came along.”

“I am sorry that my kind tried to hurt you,” Courage apologised.

“Well, my kind and your kind have been enemies for a long time. They were right to hate me. We’ve done bad things to them,” Loyal sighed.

“You shouldn’t be hated for what you are. You can’t help that you are a changeling. You shouldn’t have to pay for what they have done. That is just wrong,” Colibri said, feeling more like herself rather than her new hard boiled persona. “I am really very sorry for how my kind reacted. We ponies are known for our tolerance. They should’ve known better.”

“One pony was tolerant and did do the right thing,” Loyal replied.

Colibri blushed, and this one was visible through her pelt. She meeped in embarrassment.

“My kind will probably never stop looking for me. They came for me once again in the city. And I doubt your kind will ever allow me to live in peace,” Loyal mumbled, his voice low and sad.

“I will keep you safe if I can. From the other bugs and ponies. You’re my friend. You are my only friend. Other ponies think I am really weird. They’re not very tolerant of me. I have big dreams and everypony laughs at them. My parents laugh at me all the time and tell me I am going through a phase, and that I will grow out of it. I keep getting told I need to grow up and take life seriously. Unicorns are supposed to be prim and proper and little unicorn fillies don’t go on adventures,” Colibri said bitterly.

“I know one unicorn filly that waded through a river of unmentionable filth in a sewer, found a near dead changeling, and then Daring Do asked her to take a package to Dr. Biscotti. That sounds like an adventure,” Loyal pointed out.

“Yeah, I suppose it is,” Colibri replied, perking up. “Thanks Loyal.”

The changeling once again felt a strong surge of power flow though him, stronger than any feeling ever before when he had fed off of the love of others. He did not know that that love directed towards him was a much stronger force than leaching away love directed at another.

The simple love of friendship was a powerful force, and Loyal was ignorant of its properties.

The second and third day on the train were mostly just plain boring. Colibri and Loyal where getting to know one another quite well. They had passed the time talking and sharing stories about their lives.

The changeling no longer needed his cloak. He took the appearance of a custard yellow pegasus with a dark orange mane. The cloak was carefully folded and tucked into a saddlebag. The pair ate together in the dining car, slept near one another with their chairs reclined backwards, and over the short period of time became very close. Colibri entrusted Loyal with her secrets, and Loyal discovered that he had a reliable source of food that he did not feel guilty about feeding off of. Love was being offered, not taken.

The train pulled into Galloping Gulf and the passengers began to disembark.

Courage wore her now battered looking pith helmet and began to make her way through the crowd, Loyal behind her in his pegasus form. Courage realised she had no way of knowing where to find Dr. Biscotti, and this city was huge. Impossibly large. She didn’t even know where to begin looking for Dr. Biscotti.

The city was vast and stretched from horizon to horizon.