The Minoan Crisis

by Cosmic Cowboy

Rating: teen
Tags: Other, Adventure, Lightning Dust, Thriller, Drama, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Mystery
Length: 18268

Someday the Princess of Friendship will be able to handle all of Equestria's foreign relations, but until then, we will rely on our proud corps of trained diplomats, and of course their able guards, ready for anything. Lightning Dust is not ready.

Before Equestria had a Princess of Friendship to handle (or cause) international incidents, the business of diplomacy was carried out by trained, capable ambassadors, hoof-picked by Celestia herself. In fact, in all truly serious matters, it still is.

One of Her Majesty’s best and brightest ambassadors, Laurel Wreath, has done much to establish friendly relations with the minotaurs in their city-state of Minos. Too much, someone decides. When word reaches Celestia that her star diplomat has disappeared under extremely suspicious circumstances, she knows that she needs to act fast if she wants to stop whatever is next. A fast-flying ambassador might just be able to make it to Minos before it’s too late, but he would need escorts who could keep up with him.

There are two ponies in the Royal Guard who might be up for it, Celestia's captain tells her. His first choice is an abrasive, dispassionate rookie named Lightning Dust.

His second choice is... worse.

Edited by Cherry Frosting and Burraku_Pansa
Pre-read by Biker_Dash

Published 2015-04-13 10:10:02 UTC
Last updated 2019-08-07 07:11:06 UTC

Prologue - The Loss of the Goldshod

Dear Princess Celestia:

I sank back into the firm cushions of the minotaur-sized armchair in contentment, stretching my knees and sighing deeply. It felt amazing to finally be off my hooves. After a long day of paperwork, correspondence, appointments, forums, and more paperwork, I could finally take a moment to myself. I was looking forward to a slow, relaxing voyage, with nothing to worry about until our return tomorrow but a social function later tonight with one of the least pleasant politicians in Minos.

It pains me greatly to be the first to inform you of such terrible news.

Of course, that immediately turned my thoughts to what I still had to do. This might be a pleasure cruise by definition, but that didn’t mean it was easy. I still had a job to do here. Still, I wasn’t about to let that thought ruin my moment.

If you check with the South harbor in Minos after eight o’clock this evening, local time, you will find that the luxury trireme Goldshod will not have returned to harbor at her scheduled time.

I let my head fall back against the cushion, idly watching the elliptical sliver of yellowing sunlight creep up the wall, or bulkhead, or whatever it’s supposed to be called on a boat, while I purposefully and happily kept anything of substance from taking the forefront of my mind. To that end, I searched about for little distractions to curiously examine, of which I found plenty. My cabin was roomy enough, especially to a pony on a luxury ship built for minotaurs, but it only had one circular porthole, currently showing me nothing but the boring corner of what was no doubt a grand sunset, over featureless, monotonous ocean.

Standard procedure, which by the application of a little encouragement on your part you may be able to hasten, is to send small rescue craft to search for the missing ship after the first six hours of no contact.

Letting my eyes wander over the furnishings of the cabin while focusing on the feeling of being pulled down into the chair by gravity, I wondered for a moment about my host’s taste in decoration. I had been a guest in similar accommodations too many times to remember in my career as a diplomat, and after a while I had stopped paying much attention to all the different guest rooms. For whatever reason, though, probably just to keep my mind occupied by anything mundane, I paid attention to this one.

After seven days from the time of the scheduled docking, when the ship’s registered supplies are due to run out, she will be declared presumed lost with all hands.

When I first moved to Minos and began my education in hospitality, I had fun examining all the little gadgets and decorative clayspells my hosts would furnish my rooms with, often hidden in unexpected places for the guest to find and enjoy. As I searched this one, though, eager to reignite some of that youthful curiosity, I was increasingly disappointed in what I found. My host for this excursion was a cheap, unimaginative bastard. I got up from my chair to look more closely. Nothing was hidden in the usual spots, and the prominent decorations were bland, commercial products. I had been on a few yachts before, and was used to a little more frugality than what I had come to expect on land, but this was a little excessive. I would have to remember to mention it to Chintz and Elena when I got back. This would make for a couple days’ worth of gossip fuel, at least.

Of course, all of this is a moot point, since through personal inquiry, I was able to confirm this afternoon that the vessel and all hands were in fact lost in some terrible accident, the details of which I am unaware.

Eventually, I decided there was nothing more to be gained from critiquing the furniture, so I went back to the chair. I should have brought a book. I noticed the light coming from the porthole had reached the ceiling, so I decided I had been sitting around long enough, and it was time to do something else. Looking at the very boring heavy clock on the wall (the only thing on that wall, of course), it turned out it was still too early to get ready for the party, which was the entire reason I was on this boat. The thought of watching the last moments of the sunset from the deck sounded much more appealing than anything else I could be doing in here.

I hopped down from the too-big armchair and propelled myself over to the door with a single flap of my wings to give them a stretch. Maybe I would fly a couple circles around the ship, if the crew didn’t mind. Trotting down the hall and up the stairs, I opened the doors to the main deck and walked into a wall of Minoan sea air. I took a deep breath, thinking back to memories of my arrival to Minos and smelling it for the first time. It was different from the sea air in Manehattan or anywhere else I had been to in Equestria; the air here seemed fresher, saltier. I had talked with Whorl Wind about it once, and he said it had something to do with the Wild magic of the Minoan Sea, that made it different than the dead waters around Equestria.

I bring this to your attention because the identity of one of the unfortunate passengers ought to be of interest to you: your ambassador to Minos, a miss Laurel Wreath.

Shaking my head to bring myself back from my distraction to my other distraction, I saw a large figure leaning against a rail at the back of the ship, and trotted over to it with a lazy smile. Looking over his shoulder to see the source of the clopping noise, Alonso smiled back.

The harbor authorities will likely hasten their own efforts without your encouragement when they learn who else was aboard the Goldshodon this excursion, namely the High Elder Alonso Chrontos.

“Feeling cooped up already, Laurel?”

They will want to either recover him or declare confirmation of his death as soon as possible, since his absence presents a major obstacle in administration. The fact that he was your strongest supporter in the High Council might also be relevant.

I just snorted and rolled my eyes at his jab as I reared back to lean against the railing next to him. Over the years, my inability to sit still had become something of an in joke in forum circles. It was partly due to me being the cause of one or two disruptions during important debates, but I like to think it endeared me somewhat to some of the more friendly forum sharks. I’m still not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

“Maybe,” I finally admitted with a smile, not meeting his eye. “I’m thinking about flying a lap or two so I don’t go completely crazy, but I’m also thinking I should ask permission first. Do you know who would be in charge of that kind of thing?”

“Not really,” Alonso answered, shaking his head. “I’m pretty sure you could ask any of the crew, and they could at least point you in the right direction if they can’t grant you permission themselves. It might be more trouble than it’s worth tracking one down and interrupting whatever he’s doing, though.”

“What do you mean?” I looked past Alonso’s huge frame for any sign of a uniform on the deck. My first impression when I came up from belowdecks had been of an uncrowded deck of a ship underway, but Alonso was right; the deck was empty except for the two of us. “That’s odd. Isn’t it?” I asked my companion for confirmation. I really didn’t know very much about seafaring in general. I had assumed that there were always crewmembers doing something or other wherever you went on a ship.

Alonso just shrugged, then he spoke up. “Maybe they’re all in a meeting somewhere. Or maybe they’re short-staffed, so the crew has to help prepare for the event tonight.”

“Must be.” We stood in silence for a bit, watching the sun sink behind the retreating shore. I started to get the feeling he was expecting something, waiting for something. So I took a stab and voiced what was on my mind. “So…” I began, breaking the tension and getting his full attention, “do you think anyone would mind if they were here? You know, if I took a couple laps?”

Alonso smiled again and looked back out at the darkening horizon. “I really don’t know. But I think I’m going to go in and get ready for the party, so if you were to take a ‘couple laps,’ I don’t know how anyone would even know.” He turned his simpering smile back to me for a moment, then turned and headed briskly back to the double doors leading belowdecks.

I watched him go with an appreciative grin, and as soon as the doors closed behind him, I stretched my wings and launched myself into the invigoratingly cool open air.

No one seems to know the details of what business either the ambassador or the High Elder had on the ship or who invited them.The meeting appears to have been a secret. The records of who chartered the vessel have likewise mysteriously gone missing.

I had been flying for a while high above the Goldshod when my blood was frozen by a voice calling my name from the deck. I looked down in mild panic and relaxed a little to see that it was only Alonso. Still without his dress toga, I noticed. I nodded and waved to him, and glided down to land in front of him in the middle of the open and still-empty deck.

“What’s up? I’m not late for the party, am I?”

My smile died on my face when I saw the look on Alonso’s.

“Laurel, there is no party.” He looked scared.

It should also be noted that they  were the only ones actually aboard the Goldshodat the time, though the harbor authorities will have no record of this. I don’t think I need to spell out for you the implications of that fact.

The unexpectedness of the answer relieved some of my growing anxiety. “What? Did we both get the wrong memo or something?”

Alonso shook his head hard, and I noticed he was breathing heavily. “I went to the ballroom to ask a question, but there was nothing and no one there. It’s due to start in fifteen minutes, so I thought there should at least have been some tables set up, but the room was empty. I ran all over the ship, to the engine room, to the bridge, all over. There’s no one else here. It’s just us.”

He stood there, catching his breath and staring at me, and I didn’t know what to think. “But… Really? That can’t be right, they’ve got to be somewhere. Where else would they be if they’re not here?”

Of course, it got better. “The lifeboats are gone.”

I also don’t need to remind you of the tense political climate in Minos these days, but I do feel I should remind you that such an abrupt power vacuum in the High Council has not been seen in seven hundred years.

That gave me pause. “Alonso,” I asked, starting to get really worried, “if the crew is gone, who’s steering the ship?”

“The navigation clayspell steers it wherever we were set to go. We should get back home just fine, even if it’s just us.”

“...Can we check?”

In the interest of future relations between Minos and Equestria, a great deal depends on who is chosen to take Elder Chrontos’s seat on the Council. If I were you, I would prepare a new ambassador and get him or her here in time to make a difference in the upcoming election.

Up in the bridge, I had to admit that it really looked like we were alone on this yacht. Neither of us knew how a navigation clayspell worked, let alone how to read one. It seemed to be doing its job, whatever that was. Since we didn’t know where we were going, we set ourselves to finding out just where we were. We both knew the basics of navigation, so we worked together to determine our location and our heading without too much trouble.

We stayed up into the night, plotting our course as we followed it. We hardly talked. Eventually, when we were both just sitting in the bridge staring at a sea chart, it seemed Alonso had something he wanted to say.

“Laurel, I don’t think the clayspell is taking us back to Minos.”

I didn’t reply at first. I had been suspecting the same thing, but I didn’t want to believe it. Hearing that Alonso thought so, too, did wonders for my morale. “What makes you say that?” I finally asked. “Do you have any idea where it might be taking us?”

He slowly nodded, and pointed to a swirling circular shape in a little rocky archipelago. It was labeled “CHARYBDIS” in large, thin letters.

“The monster whirlpool. We’ve been heading straight for it for the past two hours or so. I don’t think it would make sense to go this way if we were headed anywhere else.”

I looked up at his grimacing face; he looked sickened. “Is there anything we can do to change it?”

His frown didn’t tell me anything. “I don’t know. If I knew anything about clayspells, I might try to change our destination. But I only know the basics. Even if I did something wrong, I suppose we might miss Charybdis, but we might end up in the middle of the ocean and starve to death. Still, I suppose that’s a step up.”

I nodded enthusiastically. “Can’t hurt too bad, right? Give it a try!”

The way things are and will be going here, I estimate that election will take place in ten days, on Saturday the 29th.

It turned out Alonso knew even less about clayspells than he thought. Either that, or something had been done to our navigation piece to make it tamper-proof. He couldn’t tell. Our next attempt was to manually turn the ship, or to sabotage the clayspell’s control of the rudder somehow. Even with Alonso’s immense strength, that proved fruitless as well. We couldn’t manage to break anything or even access anything we could hope to break, and when we tried to push or twist anything to try and change our heading, the little clayspell’s magic worked just as hard to correct our adjustments.

Unfortunately, the fastest ship in your service would take at least fifteen days, and that only if she were already outfitted and waiting to leave.

By the time the sun came up, we were both exhausted, out of ideas, and almost out of hope. The rising sun revealed a set of tall, rocky islands quickly growing taller on the horizon. A quick check told us it couldn’t be anything but the monster whirlpool. When the sun was overhead, we could make out what looked like a bank of fog among the rocks, though we had no illusions as to what it actually was. I took an hour or so to myself in the hopes of getting the sleep that I desperately needed, but I wound up crying in bed instead, and then lying horribly awake until I decided to get up and face what was coming.

Alonso wanted me to try and fly away. We could both tell he didn’t put much heart into the suggestion. The nearest land aside from the rocks was much farther away than I had ever flown in my life, and I wouldn’t be able to bring enough supplies with me to last long even if there was a destination in reach. Then he suggested I might rather die of dehydration and exposure on some rock instead of going down with the ship, and I just smiled and laid my hoof on his forearm.

“It doesn’t make any difference to me. There’s no way out of this for me, so I might as well make sure you don’t have to face those last few moments alone.”

“Thank you, Laurel. I’m glad of that.”

This, of course, presents you with a unique problem: a desperate need for authoritative representation in Minos, and no way to get it there in time.

There was no talk of trying to fly him off the ship with me. I couldn’t hope to carry him fifteen feet on my own, and it didn’t look like we were going to come within fifty of any of the rocks.

I was distracted from calculating distances on the chart when Alonso flopped a creased photograph onto the table. I looked at it, then up at him. He had tears in his eyes, and he wasn’t smiling. He was just crying, as badly as I had in my cabin earlier. The picture was of his family, who I had met once or twice. His wife was very funny, and his kids were great. I figured it was my job in this situation to say something, so I did.

“Remember when Georgio plucked a feather out of my wing at the Council Dinner a couple years ago?”

That got a smile out of him. A blubbering, choking smile, but still a positive sign. I was inwardly a little surprised by his behavior. Like most minotaur bulls I had met, Alonso was the epitome of manly toughness. I had half-believed he had never cried in his life, even as a baby. He didn’t seem to have anything forthcoming, so I went on.

“That was my first time around a minotaur kid. And it was obviously his first time around a pegasus. He told me a few months later that he still had the feather. I had forgotten about it entirely until then. I think that’s the whole reason I remember it. Not because he came up to ask me if I was a pegasus and then grabbed my wing and yanked a primary out of it, but because you let him keep it. Or he hid it from you somehow. He never told me. And I never asked you. I was afraid that he was hiding it, and that by asking about it I might give him away.” I smirked, getting misty-eyed again myself.

“His mother let him keep it.” Alonso’s voice startled me out of my trance. I had almost forgotten he could speak, or that I was doing this to cheer him up. “She used it as a lesson about controlling his strength and treating others with respect. She pinned it to his wall, above his desk.” He stopped sobbing and raised an eyebrow. “He was supposed to apologize to you the next time, but I’m not too surprised he didn’t. He always thought his friends didn’t count among the ‘others’ we were always talking about treating politely.”

I smiled wholeheartedly at that. “He thought of me as a friend?”

Alonso smiled as well, though he still hadn’t made eye contact with me. He was still looking at the picture currently covering the compass rose. “I think he did. He met a lot of diplomats and politicians at those functions, but there were a few he and the other two would always gravitate to.”

I couldn’t think of anything else to say, but I did have something of my own to share. I stood up to leave. “Don’t go anywhere. I want to show you something, too.”

He glanced toward the forward-facing windows, but quickly looked back down at the table. “Don’t take too long. I don’t think we have very much time.”

“I won’t, don’t worry.” I galloped off the bridge and down the stairs to the guest cabins, keeping my head down while still paying attention to the labels on the doors. I still hadn’t been on the ship long enough to be familiar with it. Before long I reached my cabin door, and I was in such a hurry I missed my first attempt at grabbing and turning the handle. I fumbled a bit then got it open, then rushed inside to my chest, unclasping a pocket under the lid and taking out a photograph of me and my mother, on our old back porch in Cloudsdale. I couldn’t help but take a little time to smile at it, our wings over each others’ withers and grins on both our faces. I was only a little shorter than her at the time. She never lived to see me become an ambassador for Equestria, but I thought about her whenever I heard the title.

I was so engrossed in my memories, I didn’t notice that the normal bobbing and shifting of the ship had become more of a steady slant. I didn’t notice anything until the heavy, boring clock on the wall bare of any other valuables fell on my head, and then I knew nothing at all.

I look forward to seeing how you pull it off, and I greatly look forward to seeing your new ambassador at work.

-Your Best Blue Friend

Flowers, Fruit Trees, and Fire

Fire, Flowers, and Fruit Trees

A week. One whole week of flying, all day, every day. Minos was absurdly far away. Apparently it was the home country of the minotaurs. Or maybe it was a city. The way Plume explained it left me just as confused as before. I hadn’t even known minotaurs were real. But now, apparently, they were important enough that Celestia needed an ambassador there yesterday.

In the captain’s office, Plumage had gotten really excited as he read through the mission details. I’ve never gotten excited over reading anything, but that didn’t stop Plume from trying to share his feelings with me. He was the one that answered my question about the distance, and he went on to explain in detail everything else he knew about the place. We left the office together, and he started geeking out about the ambassador, who was apparently a big deal.

I tuned him out as best I could, to avoid having to hit him to shut him up. When we finally split up to go to our own quarters to pack, I remembered almost nothing of what he said—just how long the trip was going to take. And the idea of spending all of that week in direct company with Plume was starting to wear away at what little enthusiasm I had for this assignment. Fifteen minutes with him and I was ready to eat my helmet crest, and he was only talking for less than half of that.

But it was too late to reconsider; I committed myself back in that office, and I wasn’t backing down from a commitment. That would be like giving up, and that was one thing nopony would ever say I did. So now I had to make the best of spending a week with Encyclopedia Plume.

Maybe Olive Branch would turn out to be actually cool, and I would have a little bit of a break from Plumage’s constant explaining. I hadn’t gotten a very good impression of the ambassador from my interview with him, but sometimes ponies turn out to be different when you get to know them. Mostly they turn out to be less cool, but occasionally there are exceptions.

Finally blissfully alone, I reached the quarters I shared with Music Box, an Earth Pony mare that I almost never saw because she worked night posts and I had daytime posts. So she was understandably surprised to see me when I would normally be half an hour into my very important standing still in front of a big dusty door somewhere. She sat up from her bed, where she had been lying on her back and idly picking at her guitar, and looked at me with raised eyebrows and wide eyes.

“Lightning! No post this afternoon?”

I smiled and went straight to gathering up my stuff. “Nope. Never again, probably. I’m being reassigned.”

Music Box hopped off her bed and trotted over. “What? Where? Did you finally get courier?”

“I wish. You won’t believe the day I’ve had.” I paused, realizing I didn’t know what I was supposed to bring. I shrugged and decided to pack everything. It wasn’t like I had too much stuff, I reflected as I looked around my nearly bare side of the room.

“Why? What happened?”

“Well, first of all, I heard in the mess hall that Corporal Plumage was going to be picked for courier. You know who he is, right?”

Music Box snorted and gave a smirk. “Oh yeah. I know who he is, alright.” I liked Music Box. She and I saw eye to eye on a lot of things.

I told her about being taken out to the parade grounds and being interviewed by Olive Branch as I packed my belongings. She was fascinated by the idea of escorting a handsome ambassador on an urgent mission to an exotic land. Much more so than I was. She sympathized with me about being assigned with Plumage, and she actually had some gossip about him that I hadn’t heard before. She figured it would help me deal with him when he got difficult, and I agreed with her wholeheartedly. I couldn’t wait to see him squirm when I aired that bit of dirty laundry.

Soon enough I found there was nothing left to do but close the latches on my bags. The room felt smaller, somehow, with half of it empty. It was still noticeably messier now than when I had first moved in. I had never realized just how fond I was of my little space before.

Music Box came up beside me. “So you don’t think you’re coming back?”

I shrugged and sat down on my bunk. “I don’t know. Depends what Minos is like, I guess. I’ll be gone for at least the rest of my tour. But let me tell you, Minos will have to be pretty cruddy if I’d rather come back here after I’m done.”

Music Box sat down gently beside me. “You really hate it here that much, huh?”

I nodded firmly. “I feel… stuck here. You know? I feel like I’ve been standing at doors for years now. My whole life I’ve flown. I’ve practiced and trained and worked harder than anypony else so that I could be the best. In the Guard, I hardly even feel like a pegasus. Basic training was tough, sure, but that was basic training. I’ve hardly been in the air since then. I might as well be an Earth Pony. No offense.”

She narrowed her eyes and smirked at me. Needling her with casual racism was fun. “And you think things will be different in Minos?”

“Who knows? I don’t know what I’ll be doing there yet. The captain said the ambassador would assign us duties. I’ll be spending a week with the guy, so I’m pretty sure he’ll give me a good job.”

“Hm.”

We fell into silence, both staring at my two packed bags on the floor. It was odd, but… now that it came down to it, I wasn’t happy about leaving. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything else.

“When are you leaving?”

“Now. We’re taking an overnight train to Manehattan, and we’ll fly from there straight to Minos.”

“You’ve gotta go?”

“Yeah, they’re expecting us right back.”

“Then I guess this is goodbye, huh?”

“Guess so.”

I had nothing else to say. Jeez, since when are goodbyes hard?

“Well, it was fun, Lightning Dust.”

“Yeah.” That jolted me out of my little fugue, and I hopped back down and slung the bags over my back. “Well, I’ll see you later. Someday.”

Music Box just smiled and gave me a big wave goodbye. I turned away and left my quarters for the last time.

Settling into my compartment on the train, I felt like I was entering a new world. The ride itself was uneventful, and that night felt like it lasted an hour. The three of us hardly spoke to each other. Olive tried to spark up a conversation, but I valued my last few moments of privacy too much to involve myself. I don’t know if he and Plume talked at all after I left, but knowing Plume, I doubt it.

I watched the view from the window more than I slept. The scenery was great, but it was thoughts of what was to come that kept me awake. We went past the infamous Everfree Forest, over and between countless hills, past desolate, jagged mountains, and finally into view of the skyline of Manehattan just as the sun was rising over the ocean.

The train station in Manehattan was one of the most crowded places I had ever been to, but ponies made way for us once they saw our armor. I hadn’t thought about it before, but we were really lucky that Olive Branch knew the way to the city’s Guard barracks. If Plume or I had been on our own, we would’ve gotten lost crossing the street from the station.

The quartermaster had a cart of supplies ready for us, which he hitched up to Plume. We went up to the roof, and I finally had a chance to look around at the city as I started my stretches, while we waited for Olive Branch to talk with some desk-job guards over a map. The building we were on was one of the tallest I had ever stood on the roof of, but it was still dwarfed by the ones around it. I had never been to Manehattan before. I felt a little thrill of excitement at seeing such a strange new place, and I was suddenly very eager to be on our way, to see more of the world!

Finally, Olive finished what he was doing and stuffed the map somewhere in the supply cart. He turned to face the two of us, Plume hooked up to the cart looking like he wasn’t sure he was supposed to be there, and me still stretching carefully. Sheesh, what happened to me? This used to be the easy part!

“Ready?”

Oh wow, we were really about to start this thing, weren’t we? I jumped to my hooves. I bet my eyes were glowing, I was so excited. “Yes sir!”

Olive Branch gave a little roll of his eyes and turned, spreading his wings. Wow, that was a wingspan! Those things were more out of proportion than his chin. “Then let’s go. Follow me!”

And just like that, we were in the air. I don’t know how I kept myself from flying loops around Plume and his cart. I was ecstatic! An entire week, and we might not even touch the ground once! No more posts, no more stupid mess hall conversations, just us and the sky!

So why were we going so slow?

By the time we had left the outer edge of the city, I was going crazy. I wanted to fly, dang it! The stupid ambassador was barely soaring! I wondered how long it would be before I was angry enough to speak up. I wasn’t there yet, but I bet it would be soon.

Another few minutes later, Olive Branch suddenly veered off to head for a good-sized cloud a bit to the left. I went along with it, of course, and Plume followed. We all touched down, and Plume and I watched curiously as our principal started walking around in circles, swiveling his wings. I glanced aside to Plume on my right, who looked almost as confused as I was.

“Sir?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we keep moving?”

Olive Branch looked up to me and smiled just like he had in the captain’s office back in Canterlot. “We will. Keep your wings moving. That was just a warm-up.”

Oookay. I wouldn’t have called that a warm-up, more like a… Yeah, I don’t even know what that was like. Not anything I would call exercise. But the boss said keep moving, so I swung my wings around at the same time Plume did, though we both drew the line at pacing.

After about five minutes of that, Olive Branch folded his wings and sat down in front of us, gesturing for us to do the same. Still pretty confused, I sat down as well, and got a little enjoyment out of watching Plumage struggle to crouch in his harness. He made it to a sitting position soon enough, and Olive Branch spoke up.

“Alright, here we are. Oh, you guys have permission to speak freely. And that goes for the entire trip. I get really tired of the ‘yes sir, no sir’ thing.”

I just raised an eyebrow. Being casual is great in my book, but it’s not just something you can turn on like that. If you want us to talk, Olive, it won’t be that easy.

“Cool.” Suddenly I wondered how old Olive Branch was. He sounded almost like a teenager, but he looked old enough to be my dad. “Now, we’re going to spend the next week with no one else but each other to talk to, so we’re going to have to get comfy. No offense to you guys, but it’s pretty obvious you’re not fond of each other. Unless you two can forget that for the week, we’re all going to be miserable.”

I kept facing Olive, but out of the corner of my vision I caught Plumage looking my way. He quickly looked back down at his hooves. Yeah, good luck with that, Olive.

The ambassador glanced back and forth between us with upturned lips and raised eyebrows. “Well, we’ll see how things go. So, you were both recommended as strong flyers, but you both said you don’t have any experience with cross-country flying. Now I’ve been doing this since before I got my Cutie Mark, and you might say I’m something of an expert. So no matter what you think you know about flying, as of now you know nothing. What we’re doing is a whole different animal than anything you’ve done before.

“So listen close. I’m going to tell you the rules of our flight, and you will follow them. If you don’t, you won’t be able to keep up and I will leave you behind if I have to. Got that?”

I blinked at him. I wondered how far his ‘speak freely’ thing really went. I played it safe and limited myself to scowling. Leave me behind if he has to? Oh, he had work to do if he wanted to get back into my good books.

Apparently he took my scowl for what it was, because he turned to me and gave me a taste of his angry eyes. “I’m serious. We have a little more than sixteen hundred miles left to go. That’s two hundred and forty a day, if nothing goes wrong. That longest flight of yours, the one between Los Pegasus and Cloudsdale? That was fifty miles. I get that you’re a big-shot racer and stunt flyer, and that you’ve been mostly grounded for a long time. I know what that’s like. But if you want to survive this trip, you can’t be rushing about and champing at the bit like you were just now. You have to pace yourself, or you’ll drop out of the air before our next stop, which won’t be for another three hours, by the way.” He turned to Plume then back to me, looking me dead in the eye like he does. “You really think you can keep up the pace you were trying to go for three hours straight? And then do it again after a fifteen-minute break? And then twice more this afternoon?”

Okay, I was done with this guy. “Permission to speak freely, right?”

“Yeah.” Jeez, he didn’t ever blink. I would say there was nothing around us but me and him, but the ever-present feeling of Plumage looking down his snout at me in the corner of my vision was too annoying to ignore. I wondered if Olive Branch would object if I took out my anger by punching that snout.

“I’m not just any hotshot racer, ambassador. I’m the best there is! And that’s because I’ve never backed off when somepony said it was too much, that it was too hard. I’ve always pushed myself past their limits, and it’s made me the best flyer in Equestria. I’m the only one that gets to say what I can and can’t do when I’m in the air! No one else! And especially not the guy who thinks I’m an amateur!”

I wasn’t entirely sure why I was flipping out at him. In Canterlot I never would’ve spoken back to a superior, let alone shouted at him like this. I was still angry at Olive for holding me back before, and just the feeling of flying free after so long on the ground or indoors made me feel like I had… woken up. Like I had been sleeping for months, and I was finally up, and now it was time to get out and do something. The last thing I wanted was the guy who chose me for this because of my flying skill to tell me how to fly.

The guy in question was still staring into my soul. “Yeah?” he asked, still not blinking. “That’s great. Honestly, it’s a shame that a spirit like yours has been cooped up in the Guard even this long. But you need to understand that when I say you have to go at my pace, it isn’t because I think you’re not good enough to go faster. I’m speaking from experience. You’ve never flown anything like this before, but I have. Every time we take off, every day you have to wake up and face another day of flying, it’s going to get harder. Each time. My pace is the fastest any of us can go and still have the strength to reach Minos in time. Trust me on this.”

At the end of his little speech, I realized he was smiling. I hadn’t noticed the change.

Then, of course, Plume had to open his mouth. “Besides, what were you going to do, fly ahead? It’s not like you know where to go, or have any supplies of your own.”

 I imagined myself swelling up, building pressure. I kept my gaze fixed on Olive’s hooves, afraid I might explode if I moved so much as a muscle.

“There aren’t really any other options beside doing whatever the ambassador does. Not to mention, of course, that anything else would be going against orders. Desertion, actually.”

I think I started shaking. Plume’s tone never changed, staying calm and reflective the whole time. Unaware, and blissfully so. I found myself trying to decide if I had decided to tell him to shut up or not, when Olive saved me.

“Maybe, but luckily it’s a moot point now. I don’t think Miss Dust and I will have any more trouble with this, do you?”

He was asking me. I took a breath and looked up into his eyes. They were much softer now. “No, sir.” I didn’t like to admit it, but I was really grateful to him for cutting Plume off like he did. It had to be pretty clear how much I hated him. I searched Olive’s expression, hoping to find some sign that he understood now why I felt the way I did, some shared suffering, but I didn’t find it. What I found was pity. Not for my situation, but for me. His smile wasn’t sympathetic, but more like… like he was sad that I was angry.

I guess I should’ve been mad at him for looking down on me like that, but I was just confused. A little disappointed, even. Come on, what made this guy so special that I cared so much about his opinion of me? Since I had met him yesterday, he had paired me with the one guard everypony knew I would rather clip my own wings than spend any amount of time with, held me back on my first real time in the air since joining the Guard, and then told me how much more he knew about flying than me. By all rights, his approval should be worth about as much as Plume’s. I tried to remind myself of that as he went on with his instructions.

“We fly for four stretches a day, about three hours each. We stop for fifteen minutes between the morning and afternoon stretches, and half an hour between stretches two and three. Our cart has food for nine days, but if all goes well it will only take seven to reach Minos.

“We switch off pulling the cart every stretch. Lightning Dust has next, then me. I can’t stress how important it is to hold formation. Plumage, you were falling behind before. That’s because you fell out of our draft. Whoever has the cart takes rear position to get the most out of the draft, and the other two alternate taking the front as we’re able.

“If we make extra stops like this one, we keep moving like I did just now. It keeps your circulatory system from completely shutting down. Otherwise getting started again is really hard. You wouldn’t notice it much now, but you sure will by the end of the week. Take advantage of our breaks by keeping hydrated. We have sealed buckets of water in the cart that we can refill from rainwater as we go. We’ll do that every morning. As guards, I’m guessing you’re used to a rigid sleep schedule. That’s good, we need to get to sleep at a good time and up again in the morning on schedule.

“Any questions?” By now he was positively excited. His eyes were nearly shining.

Plume opened his mouth and raised a hoof.

I distinctly saw Olive look at Plume, but he turned right back to me with a twinkle in his eye. “Ah, well, it’ll all make sense as we go. After me!”

And so we flew. We flew for most of three hours without stopping. Then we did it again. And again, and again. The last light from the sun was gone before we stopped for the night. Olive wasn’t kidding when he said I’d exhaust myself going any faster. By the end of the first day, I felt more spent than I had in years. And I had six more days of this to look forward to! Ugh.

We camped on a lonesome cloud somewhere near Baltimare. The cart had sleeping bags for us, enchanted to keep us warm. According to Plume, they were also meant to keep us from rolling off the edge of the cloud in the middle of the night, but I pointedly ignore most everything he says. Didn’t stop me from staying awake wondering, though. Plummeting from high altitude trapped in a sleeping bag? Nightmare material, there.

Olive apparently brought a bunch of books along about Minoan culture and history, and I think he went through two that first night. I don’t think I’ve ever met a faster reader. He tried to show me some of the ‘interesting’ things he found, but my only interest in history is making a place in it for me.

Plumage ate it up, though. Acted like he already knew half of it. The two of them stayed up chatting until after I fell asleep. I wasn’t sure how Olive could sound so enthusiastic talking to Plume, but my hopes for him turning out to be secretly cool were rapidly falling, like they rolled off a cloud wrapped up in a sleeping bag. Yikes. Yeah, the fact they stayed up later than me is no mean feat.

The next day was brutal. In the morning, while he was going over his maps and junk, Olive must have noticed me groaning and stretching my sore wings, so he gave me some more advice. Apparently I flap too shallowly and too quickly for this long-haul stuff. He said to think of it as ‘perpetuated soaring’ as opposed to simple flying. And I didn’t tell him to perpetuate falling, which I consider an accomplishment.

Near the beginning of the second stretch that day, the grass ran out. We came out from behind some lost clouds and found an area where the rolling grasslands we had been flying over since Manehattan abruptly changed to bare, rocky dirt. The ocean was a glimmer to our left, as always, and far to our right there were jagged, unfriendly-looking mountains on the horizon. When we stopped for lunch I asked Olive about it.

“It means we’ve left Equestria,” he said after swallowing his oats. “Welcome to Wilderland.”

“What’s that?” Plume asked, of all ponies. Stop the presses, the Encyclopedia Plumica doesn’t know something! “I’ve never heard of Wilderland before.”

“The Badlands, the Wild West, there’s all sorts of names for it. Outside of Equestria, the usual name is Wilderland. Fits the best, I think.”

“But what is it?” I asked, thinking Olive was just being evasive for kicks. “Why did the grass stop so suddenly?”

“It’s the world. The rest of the world. You didn’t think everything out here was all flowers and fruit trees like it was back home, did you? This is what the world looks like without Earth Pony magic.”

“Earth Ponies have magic?”

I could tell before the words had left my mouth that I had asked a stupid question. Plume’s great at letting you know that, even without saying anything. But even Olive was looking at me in surprise, trying to hide a smile. He answered me before Plume could so much as inhale, something he’d been getting good at. “Of course they do. Did you think they just missed out when the rest of us were given magic? Theirs is the most important of all, you might say. It’s not flashy like unicorn magic or a part of their lifestyle like ours. It’s more subtle. It’s passive. They exercise it just by living. Wherever Earth Ponies put down roots, plant roots eventually come up to meet them. Not literally, of course,” he added with a quick smile and a nod to Plume. I could just imagin Plumage derailing the conversation with questions about Earth Pony hooves and plant roots. Thanks for the save, Olive.

“You know all those little Earth Pony towns? Stalliongrad, Ponyville, Baltimare? They were all once as barren and dry as this place,” he said, kicking up some of the rocky dust we were sitting on. “Equestria’s always growing, always expanding. New towns are still being settled, places like Dodge Junction, Salt Lick City, and Appleloosa. Right now they’re not much to look at, but within a generation or so they’ll start sprouting grass and flowers and attracting all those little critters that go with them.”

“But why? Why is Earth Pony magic so important?”

Plume butted in, apparently unable to contain himself when someone wanted something explained. “It’s just like clouds and wind. Well, kinda. It doesn’t happen on its own. It needs magic. Life needs magic. Civilized races like ponies and minotaurs survive on their own internal magic, but plants and animals don’t have any life-sustaining power of their own, so they need an outside source. Earth Pony magic and the like suffuses the ground itself, building up over years of exposure. It soaks it in, and the rest just happens.”

Boy, could he talk once you got him started. Oh well, might as well let him finish. “So without that Earth Pony magic…”

Olive finished the sentence instead. Thank you so much! “Life doesn’t happen. Wilderland.”

But Plume still wasn’t done. “Well, except for the monsters, of course.”

“Yeah, I guess we can’t forget them, can we?”

My confusion must have shown on my face, because Olive went on to explain even more. “Wilderland’s full of monsters. They roam around alone for years, eating whatever they can whenever they can. They’re self-sustained magically like Civilized races are, but they’re not actually Civilized. No one really knows where they come from, or how they survive out here.”

Plume cut in immediately, no doubt eager to share another fun fact. “Some magizoologists hypothesize that all Civilized races started out as monsters. They think that we Civilized each other, or that something or someone Civilized us.”

“Why do you keep saying ‘civilized’ like it’s a thing? A… a verb?”

Olive gave his head a shake and stretched. “It’s part of that theory. ‘Civilized’ is the technical adjective used to describe sapient creatures that form societies, to differentiate them from  sea serpents and chimeras and other things that can talk but are still technically ‘monsters’. Those theorists Plume was talking about took that term and ran with it, using it as a verb to describe the act of making something sub-Civil into something Civil. It’s all scientific stuff you’ll never have to remember.”

Didn’t I know it. Seems my mouth was too big for my ears. I don’t know where that sudden bout of curiosity came from. Science to me is like history, though much less likely to get something named after me someday.

I’d learned by sad experience that Plume doesn’t stop once he’s gotten started, so I figured I had better put an end to this discussion right about now. “Well, isn’t it time we got going?”

Olive gave me a sly smile. “Are you sure? You haven’t even eaten anything yet.”

Wipe that smirk off your face, Plume.

We followed the coast south for the rest of that day and the next. Wild clouds became more scarce, and we took more of our stops on the ground than in the air like Olive preferred. He started rationing our water, though we never came close to running low. Those buckets were huge.

That third night, we camped on the ground for the first time since Manehattan. There was no wood for a fire, but our cart did come with some unicorn creation: a crystal orb that Olive smashed on the ground. The shards started glowing with blue light and giving off a good amount of heat. Once that was done, he gave the order I had been dreading since we started this little trip.

“We need to set up a watch rotation,” Olive announced, making me groan—after three days travelling together, I wasn’t afraid of voicing my opinions. “Come on, we need to keep watch in case of monsters. The ground isn’t safe out here. I’ll even go first. Plume, you’re next at about one o’clock, then Dust at four.”

“Yes sir,” Plume promptly responded.

Thanks, Plume. “Yes sir,” I grudgingly repeated.

It turns out falling asleep to magically imitated firelight is a lot different than falling asleep in plain old moonlight. The broken bits of gem didn’t give off constant light, but they didn’t flicker like normal firelight did either. It was more of a very uneven pulse, sometimes gradually shifting in intensity and other times suddenly. Combined with the heat, which I was starting to think pulsed along with the light, it was just as mesmerizing as a real campfire.

I noticed my chin was getting numb from propping my head up to stare into the light, so I rolled over and stared up at the stars instead. Plume was snoring pretty obnoxiously, though I had started getting used to that, I think. Olive was sitting propped up against the cart facing west, tearing through another book about minotaurs. My rolling over caught his attention, and he smiled when he saw my wide-awake eyes.

“Do you want a book?”

I tilted my head back even further to look at him, showing him one highly raised eyebrow.

“I know you’re not the reading-for-fun type, but a good story is just the thing for long nights like this.”

I rolled back over to see him more comfortably, raising my head off the ground. “You have story books? I thought those were all history and stuff.”

“Yes.” I wasn’t sure that was a straight answer to my question, so I waited for whatever trick answer he had in store. He did this a lot. “History is stories. That’s all it is. History books just don’t tell them like story books do. It’s up to you to flesh out the cold hard facts and see the story they tell. A little imagination makes the whole world more interesting.”

I snorted. “Still doesn’t sound like my kind of pastime. Sounds harder and more boring than regular reading.”

Olive scoffed theatrically, holding a hoof to his heart and looking offended. “Did you actually hear what I said? It sounds way more fun than ‘regular reading’! Like this story about the last king of Minos. Listen to this: twelve hundred years ago, a minotaur prince named Gallus led an expedition across the sea and discovered Zebrica. He fell in love with a zebra princess, but when her father found out, he banished her and tried to kill the minotaur explorers. The minotaurs escaped back to Minos, and when Gallus became king he swore he would go back and conquer Zebrica.”

Olive set his book down and waved his hoof over the ocean spread out behind him. “He put together the largest armada the world has ever seen, and made his people into an army. They say his flagship was twice the size of any before or since, and trimmed with Minoan gold. Of course, this was something like fifty years later, so people had been back and forth between the two countries a few more times, and the zebras caught wind of Gallus’s plan before too long. They sent a message to the Princesses in Equestria, asking for help. They had long since deposed their old leaders, the ones who banished their own daughters, and were prospering through trade with ponies.

“The Princesses agreed to help, and here’s where it gets good. You always know it gets good when Alicorns step in to stop an army. The book says there’s no surviving record of what exactly happened next, but the most popular legend says the Sisters summoned a monstrous tropical storm as Gallus’s fleet sailed for Zebrica, and only the king’s ship was sunk while the rest were turned back. There are still people today who search the ocean for the wreck of Gallus’s Golden Galleon. Now how’s that for a story?”

“History’s messed up.”

“Yeah, no arguing there. But when you think about it, they were real people and that was their lives. They made decisions. Think about that! They had responsibilities, and opinions, and there was lots of stuff they didn’t know, about the world, about other people, other countries, and they just had to do the best with what they had. Just like we do. Someday people might read about the crazy stuff that happens in the world today and say we were messed up!”

I smirked and rolled over onto my back. “Oh, we are. No question about it.”

Our conversation died out, and I watched the stars, thinking about kings and explorers and history. Olive didn’t go back to his book.

“Lightning Dust?”

I looked up at Olive again; he hadn’t used my full name since yesterday.

“How did you get that injury? The big one?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Campfire conversations. Before I answered him, I listened for snoring. Still going strong.

“It was Plume. Sorta.”

“Plume? Plume Plume? As in our Corporal Plumage?”

“All of those, yeah. I guess it can’t all be his fault, but he was the reason.”

“What happened?”

I sighed. “I had just gotten booted out of the Wonderbolt Academy over something stupid. I got myself pretty worked up about it. I was in line at a Hayburger in Cloudsdale and there were two guards in front of me in the line. They were talking about a Wonderbolts show one of them saw. The other one was Plume. He was talking trash about the Wonderbolts, saying any pegasus who was good enough to be in the Guard was more than good enough for any stunt team. I was a bit of an emotional mess at the time, and I stood up for ‘my team’. I told him I was a cadet at the W.A. and that I could fly circles around any guard. His buddy said we should put our money where our mouths were and have a race.

“I’ve never said no to a race. Now that I’ve gotten to know Plume a little better, I think he wasn’t very enthusiastic about it, but at the time he seemed all for it. He’s good at putting on masks. His guard buddies set the whole thing up. Plume was the best flyer they had, so they really wanted to seem him beat me. I’m pretty sure they rigged things a little. They threw in as many obstacles as they could get their hooves on, trying to make a challenging course, but I’d seen and flown better tracks before I got my Cutie Mark. It took them a week to set it all up. I prepped myself more than I have for anything else, and that was what did it. I pulled a muscle in my wing the day before the race, but I went ahead with it anyway. Stupid excuse to back out at the last second.”

I glanced at my audience. Olive was sitting perfectly still, leaning forward and listening solemnly.

“One of the hazards they set up was a pair of walls making a zigzagging sort of corridor between them, just wide enough to flap your wings in comfortably. At least it was translucent, so you could see the corners coming. Otherwise I don’t know if it would be possible to fly through it.

“As a racing hazard, it was a complete bottleneck and served no purpose except showing off our flying skills. I made it in first, just barely ahead of him. My wing had been holding me back the whole time, but those turns in that tube were too much for it. I took the first turn too wide and bumped into the wall, and Plume muscled his way past me instead of passing me above or below. He pushed my bad wing way too far over my back, and knocked me off course. I hit the next corner with my back and that wing, going from forty-five miles an hour or so to a dead stop. I was unconscious for the next bit, but apparently they barely caught me before I hit the ground. I’m glad I don’t remember too much of the pain. I had to go to a surface hospital in Canterlot for surgery, and spent five months in recovery. I’m all better now, but when I strain my wing, my back still aches. It’s been aching this whole trip.”

“I’m sorry, Dust. I didn’t know.”

“That’s not even all,” I continued, not acknowledging his comment. “We had a bet going for the race. If I won, he and his buddies would send a letter of recommendation to Spitfire, the Wonderbolt captain, and they would all buy season passes to Wonderbolt shows. If he won, I would enlist in the Guard.

“They called off the bet, of course, but I joined anyway. I lost the race, so I wasn’t going to use an injury or anything else as an excuse to back out of a promise I made. Heh. I keep saying ‘they’ because this was all the other guards. After the race, I didn’t see Plume again until I came to the Canterlot barracks.” I rolled onto my side, finally finding a comfortable spot.

“He still hasn’t said sorry to me.”

We set out the next morning in record time, eager to get back in the air. Olive directed Plume in burying the shards from our “fire,” which had gone out just as the sky began to brighten. Olive strapped himself to the cart, and we took off.

We took an early break at the first wild cloud we found, to refill our buckets. Plume drank tons, apparently having drunk nothing since the night before, and payed for it after lunch with another early stop just for him. We were in empty skies again, so we touched down at the top of some imposingly jagged and broken cliffs overlooking the ocean. Plume peeked over the edge and saw another ledge partway down the cliff face from where we had landed, and he flew down to be alone for a few minutes.

Olive and I occupied ourselves, him with getting me out of the cart straps so I could go around to the back to get some water, and me with taking off my helmet to rub my scalp. Guard helmets are about the least comfortable wearable thing there is. I wasn’t entirely sure why we were still wearing our full armor, and I was just about to ask Olive about it when Plume shot up over the cliff edge like a rocket, eyes wide with panic. Our puzzled looks tracked his path through the air over our heads and inland, until the explanation roared loud enough to shake our teeth.

We looked to the source and saw three burnt-orange dragon heads rising over the edge of the cliff, trailing incredibly long necks that eventually met at the shoulders of one large body, climbing up over the cliff with massive claws. When the monster was fully on the top with us, it spread two enormous wings and gave another three-toned roar, each head spewing fire into the air.

It was right about then that Olive and I regained our senses, taking off after Plume as fast as we could go. I was a little upset that Olive was keeping pace with me, but that feeling was quickly swept up in the fear for my life as the beast followed us into the air. We flew and flew and flew, catching up to Plume, who had waited for us when the dragon thing roared the second time. Every panicked look behind us confirmed that it was still in hot pursuit, though I thought it might have been falling behind.

We reached some of the barren, jutting mountains we had seen before from a distance, and one by one we noticed that the monster had stopped. We stopped as well, turning around to watch it. It was just hovering, with huge, long wingstrokes, and looking at us with its three heads. With one great flap, it dived down towards the ground and blew, drawing a colossal line of fire that continued burning on the bare rock. It flapped back up where it had been hovering before, where it gave us a mean look and roared once more before turning around and flying back towards the cliffs.

My heart was thundering and I was very confused about what had just happened, and as I started to notice my more immediate surroundings I realized Olive was laughing. Of course, he was panting just as much as Plume and I were, but something about being chased by a three-headed dragon was definitely making him laugh.

My first impulse was to be angry with him, but I just couldn’t. Instead I laughed along with him. When we had gotten that out of our systems, Olive waved for us to land.

“Well that was fun,” he said once we were on solid ground. He and I shared a smile, and we looked to Plume. Plume wasn’t smiling.

“Fun?” he repeated. “What exactly was fun about that?”

I lost my smile. Olive looked at him like he had said ‘no’ to sneaking out to a party with us. “Everything! You have to enjoy moments like that while they last. Celestia knows the rest of our lives are boring enough. It’s all about the angle,” he added with a wink. “How you look at things. I say it was fun, so it was fun.”

Plume glared at him with the scorn of an angry schoolteacher. “Did you miss the part where we were almost roasted and eaten alive?” I grimaced and looked away. I wasn’t at all ashamed of the laughing—it would be a dark day indeed when Plumage said something that made me feel ashamed of myself—but it was never fun to be around Plume when he really got angry.

Olive had no idea, though. He was all smiles. “Nope! But I think you might have missed the part where we didn’t!” Olive leaned in close and laid a hoof over the withers of Plume, who was still scowling at him. “Come on. Take a breath, take a moment to realize we made it out alive and unharmed, and think back to find something you can laugh at.”

Plume’s nostrils flared. “Laugh at? You want something to laugh at? How about this, idiot? Our supplies are still back there!” he shouted into Olive’s face, jabbing a hoof in the direction the monster had flown off in.  “We’re still four days off from Minos, and we have no food or water. Is that what you’re laughing at?”

Olive held his gaze, his expression pleasant, until Plume’s breathing calmed down. He smiled again and answered his question. “Yes, they are still back there, and we do need them. We’ll get them. But no one ever accomplished anything in a time of need by expressing their anger and passing blame.” Heh. Now that Olive mentioned blame, I remembered that it was entirely Plume’s fault that we had stopped here in the first place. Wait. Did he do that on purpose?

Olive must have been a diplomatic miracle worker after all, because he actually got Corporal Plumage to calm down from a rant! I had never seen that happen before. Usually when he got angry it would take him days to calm down, where he would stalk the corridors of the barracks fuming silently to himself. But now here he was, gazing calmly at the ground in front of his hooves. He took a couple deep breaths, then gave a chuckle and a small smile.

Olive saw it and smiled even wider. “See? Always something worth laughing about!”

Plume smiled wide enough to bring out his dimples. Looking up, he muttered something, then looked back down bashfully.

“What was that?” Olive asked.

Plume looked up again. “I said it really did roar in chords, like the books said.”

I had no idea what that meant, but something about it caught Olive off-guard. “Wait, really?” he asked, dropping his kindly mediator thing completely. “I didn’t notice! That’s fantastic!” He burst into full-bellied laughter again, and after a moment Plume joined in.

I didn’t get it, but I let the two of them enjoy whatever had been funny for a minute or so before bringing them back to reality. “So… How are we supposed to get our stuff back from the dragon?”

“Zmey,” Plume said.

“I’m sorry?” I asked, still pretty low on patience where he was concerned.

Plume looked back and forth between us, apparently unsure if it was safe to speak. “That… monster, it’s not a dragon. It’s called a zmey. Exotic cousin, but not actually a dragon.”

Olive stepped closer to him with purpose in his eyes, causing Plume to recoil a little. “How much do you know about it?”

Plume settled back into a comfortable stance before he answered. “Well… they’re obsessively territorial. That last roar sounded like a diminished chord, which means he was chasing us off instead of hunting,” he explained with a growing smile. He pointed to the line of fire still burning at the foot of the mountains. “That line marks the edge of this one’s land. They never leave, not even to chase food. That’s why it stopped following us. It marked the boundary to tell us not to come back.”

Olive stepped back and hesitated, then looked at us as an open smile grew on his face. I started to feel a tiny little fear for my life. “I knew having escorts would come in handy! Plume, you were right about our supplies. We’ll never make it to Minos without them.”

I raised an eyebrow in worry. “So why are you so confident we’ll get it all back?”

Olive returned my look with a smile I was starting to hate. “Because it only came up when Plume went over the edge. If you’re careful, the two of you can sneak back and grab it all without the zmey ever knowing you were there.”

The two of us? Hold on a second. I almost opened my mouth to call him out, but then decided I didn’t want to be the one to demand that the superstar ambassador we were supposed to be protecting with our lives come with us to the lair of a giant, fire-breathing monster.

Plume seemed to be thinking the same thing, but he had another, even better question. “But how do you know it won’t be waiting for us?”

Olive’s answer just made my day. “I don’t,” he said with a smile. “But the only alternative is to go on without our supplies, and die of dehydration and exposure tomorrow night, or get eaten by some other monster.” I shared a look with Plume, something I had done more often in the company of Ambassador Olive Branch than the rest of my time knowing him combined.

“Fair enough,” I said for both of us.

"Sir Lance and the Dragon"

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"Seagull's Voyage Around the World"

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Keep your enemies close, and your friends closer.

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PART 2 - Consultation, Coffee, and Clay

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Shell Shock, Self-Recrimination, and Soldiering

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PART 1 - Posts, Plumage, and Performance

Posts, Plumage, and Possibilities

The rhythmic, echoing, clip-clopping sounds of marching hooves on stone roused me from my stupor. My relief was here. As the two guardsmares rounded the corner, gold armor gleaming in the torchlight against the dark stone wall behind them, it took all of my considerable powers of concentration to keep my face from betraying my excitement. This was always the best part of the worst part of the day. It’s hard to adequately express how insufferable four hours of standing as still as a statue is every day, so you can understand how I feel when it’s finally over.

Stone face, Lightning, stone face.

The new guards walked sedately toward my partner and me, who I hadn’t so much as looked at since we relieved the pair before us. Finally they reached us, stopped, and inclined their heads to us. I did the same, and a slight movement in my peripheral vision told me my partner did at the same time, then the four of us did the little circular dance of the changing of the guard. Oh, my muscles. After four hours of standing stock-still, I had almost forgotten I had any. And I still couldn’t stretch. We were still in “presentation” mode, after all. The relief would be nicer if it happened all at once instead of being stretched out like this.

Anyway, my partner and I walked away at the same pace our replacements arrived, and we left them to stand pointlessly in front of the giant locked door for the next four hours. Stone face, eyes ahead. Two hooves in front of the others. This was my life, folks! Eighty percent of the time, at least. Not quite as exciting as the life of a Royal Guard is made out to be, though I guess I should have seen this coming. And not nearly as exciting as my life was supposed to be, but there’s no use in looking backwards, not when I have such an interesting and promising career to look forward to in the Guard!

The long walk back up the ten flights of stairs to get to the ground level of Canterlot Castle didn’t seem as long as it had back when I was first put into rotation, but I think that was mostly because I had timed it once and found out it took about fifteen minutes and twenty seconds, give or take. Before that I could’ve sworn it took us at least half an hour. Technically, we were on patrol when going on and off duty, so we were supposed to be attentive and check down side passages we passed. But in the more than eight months I had been stationed here as a castle guard there had been exactly zero incidents, so I wasn’t exactly expecting to find anything. And it wasn’t just me; all the guards I had taken this trip with gave it about as much effort as I did, or less. At least I tried to do my job well. I’m starting to think they’ve all realized that there’s a limit to how good of a guard you can be. On the other hoof, everyone keeps going on about how amazing the old captain used to be, so I’m holding out that it is possible to break the mold. Of course, it might have just been because he was a unicorn.

Anyway, we finally got to a small side door in a side chamber to the throne room that led to the castle barracks, passing about five ponies on the way. I couldn’t keep myself from hurrying a little as we reached the end of public-accessible space. Off-duty mode, activate. Oh, it felt good to stretch. My partner and I shared a look, wordlessly empathizing with each other over the ordeal that was the daily post. We kept moving, heading for the supervisor’s office in the awkward silence that comes when you don’t really have anything to say, but feel obligated to start a conversation because you’re finally allowed to speak after four and a half hours. You know how that feels, right?

Luckily for me, she took the jump and spoke first. “Hey, aren’t you that courier? The one I always see delivering things around town?” As a rule, my partners and I hardly ever knew each other. There were just too many guards in the Guard to get the same one twice in less than two months or so.

The question made me brighten a little, but I quickly hid my little burst of elation and got control of myself. Cool, casual, disinterested. I don’t know who this mare is yet. “No. Not yet, at least. I want to get transferred from post to courier, so I volunteer to take messages whenever I can.” If this mare actually thought I was a courier, I must be doing something right.

“Ahhh,” the mare said. “Okay. I was pretty sure that was you, but I was confused, you know, because you were clearly on post with me. That makes sense. What’s your name?”

I gave her a quick look. Earth Pony, white coat and blonde mane, and way more friendly than any guard had business being. So far, not very impressive. “Lightning Dust.”

“Lightning Dust,” she repeated. “I’ll watch out for you. I’m Pirouette.”

“Hey.” Weird name. Dancing talent? Wonder how she ended up in the Guard.

“Not a fan of post, huh?” she asked, smiling at me knowingly.

“Not at all. I’m a flyer. I hate standing still.” I answered, not smiling back.

“So courier.”

“Yeah.”

“Lucky,” she said, looking back at her own lack of wings. “Most I can hope for is a promotion or desk work. I wouldn’t mind being a trainer someday. Teaching is fun.”

I just grunted. We just had to make our report and I could ditch this mare. She must have sensed something of my mood, because she slipped back into silence. We finally got to the office and quickly filled out the paperwork for our report. In all my career in this place, I don’t think I’ve ever written a word differently on those sheets. Nothing ever happens in the bowels of the castle, but the Princesses and the captain insist on maintaining a watch at every important-looking door in the whole building. I hurried from the front desk out the door, impatient to get to my lunch. Pirouette stopped me outside the doorway for goodbyes. Ugh. “Well, it was great to meet you. Good luck with getting that transfer!”

“See you.” I left her at the door and leapt into the air, flapping my way through the corridor and through the doors of the mess hall. The hall itself was built with high ceilings, to reduce crowding by letting pegasi get off the floor, which I was very glad of as I loosened up, zipping up to tap the ceiling before gliding back down to where the food was. I had missed breakfast hurrying to get to my post on time, and now I was paying for it. I hate morning post. Actually, I don’t hate it any more than any other slot, but I still hated it. I just hated them all equally, and each one had its own special reasons to loathe it.

I loaded up with as much as they would give me, and took the tray back into the air to look for a place to sit. The mess hall was only about a third full, since most of the Guard were working somewhere at any given time, but that still left me with a whole lot of choices. Luckily, nothing escapes me when I’m in the air. I searched the confusion for wings, and spotted a table with some pegasi I recognized and remembered getting along with, so I swooped down to land near it.

“Mind if I sit here?” I asked, walking up on three legs.

The three pegasus guards at the round table looked up at me, then at each other. “Sure,” said the only one I didn’t know, a mare wearing sergeant insignia on her armor and sporting a country-ish accent. She smiled and scooted over on the bench to make room for me.

“Thanks,” I said with a smile, taking the spot, slapping my stupid helmet down on the table and immediately digging in. After I swallowed my first bite, swiveling my ears to get some feeling back into them, I looked up at the two guards I recognized, a mare and a stallion. “I remember you guys,” I commented, gesturing to them. “What were your names again?” They each looked expectantly at the other, as if they were both hoping the other would speak first. I smirked at them.

The mare introduced herself first. “I’m Moonracer.”

“Basalt,” the stallion grunted, giving his attention back to his sandwich.

Really? “Basalt?” I asked, leaning back to double-check that he had wings. “I think I’d remember a name like ‘Basalt.’”

“Yeah?” Basalt asked levelly, with raised eyebrows. The two mares shifted in their seats.

Okay, sensitive subject. Totally understandable, I guess.

The mystery mare who made room for me broke the tension with a smile that seemed a little wider than the mood at the table warranted. “Anyway, I haven’t officially met you yet. You’re Lightning Dust, right?”

I grinned at her. Not only did she head off that Basalt guy from making things worse around here, she was setting up my first impression with a superior almost perfectly. If only she had led with ‘aren’t you that courier?’ like the other girl from before did. “The one and only. I guess you’ve heard of me?”

“Oh yeah. Your reputation gets around.” Basalt suddenly buried his muzzle in his sandwich and closed his eyes tightly. I gave him a look out of the corner of my eye that he didn’t see, and leveled my gaze at the sergeant.

“Hey, any talk is better than no talk, right?” She looked away and gave a noncommittal shrug. “What’s your name?”

“Daisy Duke,” she answered with a coy smile. “I hear you’re fishing for a courier assignment.”

I brightened right the heck back up. “That’s right! Do you know if they’re looking for applicants?”

Her smile softened into what a more cynical mare might call ‘patronizing’, and suddenly I felt my respect for this sergeant begin to slide. “You might say so. Apparently there’s one opening and they are looking to fill it, but right now the favorite to get the transfer is Corporal Plumage,” she said, nodding towards a spot over my shoulder.

My blood froze and boiled at the same time, and I snapped my head around to look behind me. Four tables away, sitting alone, was the stupid jerk of a stallion who tricked me into this dead-end job with the Guard, with a generic Royal Guard blue mane and white coat, eating a salad and reading a book.

I twisted back around to face Daisy Duke with wide eyes. “Plume?” I asked in incredulity. “They want Plume as a courier? Instead of me?”

She shrugged, still smiling that stupid smile. “That’s the word coming from the officers’ mess, at least. But that word ain’t often wrong.”

Basalt and Moonracer both snorted. My reputation in the Guard, such as it was, invariably included my hatred of Corporal Plumage, and his more passive-aggressive hatred back at me. I had no delusions about ponies talking about me behind my back, but if there was one guard you could be sure had it worse than I did, it was Fluffy-Feather Plume. The colt was just annoying, but most ponies in the Guard could at least stand him. He even got along pretty well with a couple of them, though not enough to sit with them in the mess, apparently. But no one seemed to hate him nearly as much as I did. The few times I had had to talk to him after really getting to know him, I had to hold myself back from kicking his smug face in. Plume was arrogant, snobby, contentious, and generally an insufferable know-it-all.

I hated him, and I let him know it. Because of that, and, I strongly suspected, because I had joined the Guard and risen to his rank of Corporal all while he stayed in the same duty rotation, he didn’t hide his feelings toward me either.

I looked back and forth between Daisy Duke’s eyes, looking for some explanation. “But… why? Why him? I’ve seen him fly, he’s not that good!”

Now apparently it was everyone else’s turn to smirk at me. “Well, he was good enough to beat you, wasn’t he?” Moonracer asked with a nudge to my side.

Jeez, how much talking did these ponies do behind my back? Did everyone know that story? I glared back at her. “Hey. That doesn’t count. Any other day, I could fly circles around him, and he knows it.”

Okay, there might be one more reason I didn’t like the guy.

Moonracer shrugged. “Maybe. But maybe no one told the Courier Division.”

I gave up on conversation and went back to my hayfries, trying to sink all my anger into them as I chewed.

“So you gonna show ‘em?”

I looked back up from my food at Basalt, who was ignoring his sandwich and looking at me expectantly, still with that stupid smirk.

“Who, the Courier Division? They don’t exactly hold tryouts, Rocky.”

Basalt lost his smile and rolled his eyes at the nickname that he had probably heard a few hundred times in flight school. “Not officially, no. But their recruiters are always looking out for good candidates. You know that.”

I gave him the look he deserved. “Yeah. Which is kinda why I’ve been doing all these volunteer deliveries. Sounds like you’re suggesting I do what I’m already doing.”

He shook his head. “No, I mean with Plume. Set something up where the two of you can fly side-by-side so the recruiters can see if you actually live up to all your boasting or not.”

I wasn’t a fan of this guy with the funny name, but I liked this idea of his. Of course, I had thought of doing something special to show the Courier recruiters what I could do before, but the thought of doing anything with Plume voluntarily was one I actively avoided out of principle. But now that someone else had done that part for me, I realized I could appreciate a plan that involved me leaving the Downy Wonder in the dust in front of a bunch of recruiters. That still left me with the same problem I had when I was thinking these things up on my own, that I had no idea how to go about it.

“Sure, but how? I can’t just challenge him to a race and get the recruiters to watch.”

Basalt just gave a shrug that basically said, “Dunno, not my problem” and went back to his food, but Moonracer and Daisy Duke were both looking up in thought. Interesting. I had written them off of helping me to find a solution to my problem, but apparently it was interesting enough that they would give it a try.

Daisy Duke looked up at a different corner of the ceiling than she had been examining previously, scrunching up her face a little more. “Well, you could try to get parade duty. It’s a good way to show off your flying skills, but the stupid traditionalist coordinators have only used mares in their shows about once or twice in the past decade, so good luck with that.”

“Parade duty, huh?” That was another idea I had once entertained, but I gave up on it even before I found out about the weird sexist thing they had going on. Their shows were cool enough, though not nearly Wonderbolt material, but what turned me away was the sort of performance they encouraged. Daisy Duke was wrong; Guard parades weren’t a good place to “show off” at all. They were all about coordinated flying and perfect timing. Nothing they actually did was very impressive, and I could tell just by watching them rehearse that it was just as boring as post duty, only with about four times the effort involved. Not a very good option for showing up Plume, either. They actually punished you for trying harder than the others. “Maybe.” Nope.

Moonracer spoke up. “You know, whatever you end up trying, you’ll have to talk Plume into going along with it to compete with you, and I can’t see him agreeing to that. Maybe you should be looking at the stuff he does and see if there’s anything in his duty rotation you can use.”

Good point. “Yeah, but I don’t know his rotation. I don’t know if you noticed, but I don’t exactly go out of my way to run into the guy. I’d have to get a copy of it somehow.”

We both looked at the sergeant at the table, who raised her eyebrows and held up her hooves. “Don’t look at me. I’m not a part of this. If you want Corporal Plume’s duty rotation, you’ll have to talk to his supervisor. I’m not gonna take the time to get it for you.”

Moonracer, who had been leaning forward a bit, sat back in her seat and relaxed her shoulders as she and Daisy both resumed eating. I pursed my lip at her. Apparently Daisy backing out was all it took to get her out of helping me, too. So much for friends.

We ate in silence for a few more minutes while I tried to come up with a working plan. No luck. I cycled through frustration and on to depression. I can almost say I came to terms with the idea of losing the courier position to Plume, but, of course, that would be ridiculous.

Basalt finished his meal first, and left with only a quick goodbye. The amount of off-duty guards in the hall stayed about the same, as some came and others left. I still had an hour until my next post (two in one day!) and I was hoping to get in a power nap and then maybe a little exercise before then, so I finished my food as quickly as I could. I was just getting up to leave when my attention was stolen.

“Corporal Lightning Dust!”

Woo, that’s always a shock, let me tell you. I whipped around to see who called for me, and saw a lieutenant at the main doors of the mess hall, reading from a sheet of paper. I waited for further instructions, hoping against hope that this was about the courier opening. What he said instead simultaneously stoked that hope and chilled it.

“Corporal Plumage! Report!”

Heads turned to watch the two of us make our way to the lieutenant. Weird, I had never felt this mix of nervousness, excitement, and anger before. I was more worked up over this than I had been about the Wonderbolt Academy, and I didn’t even know what this was about! Maybe that was why. Maybe this competition thing would care of itself. Or more likely, I was just gonna end up doing something unpleasant with Plume. Of all the ponies in the Guard, it just had to be him, didn’t it?

We both got to the stallion at about the same time and stood at attention. “Sir!” we chirped together. Plume was standing as still as I was, but for some reason I got the feeling he was purposefully avoiding looking at me. I might have just been imagining it, but it annoyed me anyway.

“Follow me,” was all the lieutenant said, turning about on two hooves and marching through the open double doors into the main hallway of the barracks, and Plume turned to allow me to go first. When I was sure no one could see, I let my mask slip and rolled my eyes.

To try to get control of my nerves, I placed bets with myself on where we were being taken (don’t judge me; when your job is to stand perfectly still for hours on end, you start doing weird things in your head). I wasn’t entirely sure where they would be taking us if this was for the courier application, but I did know that the location of their office was nowhere near where we were going. Highest odds were on the gym judging by our current route, but I couldn’t think of a good reason for taking us both there.

Then we took a right turn I wasn’t expecting. That only left one possibility, unless we were going to janitorial. I tilted my head to look past the lieutenant, and I could almost feel Plume’s glare of disapproval on the back of my helmet. Chill, dude.

Just as I thought, the lieutenant led us outside to the parade grounds, where a civilian pegasus stallion stood by the flagpoles with Fine Line, the new captain, facing a row of guards of assorted rank standing at ease. The captain was floating some official-looking papers up for the civilian to read. Personnel files, judging by the way the two of them looked up to the line of guards from time to time.

“Corporals Lightning Dust and Plumage, sir,” the lieutenant reported to the captain when we reached him, giving a salute. Fine Line nodded to him and then turned to the two of us. “Fall in, Corporals.”

We turned about and marched into place next to the other guards, and waited while the captain chatted with the civilian out of our earshot and the lieutenant headed back inside. With the captain himself right there, I didn’t dare to even glance to the guards at my side, but I was pretty sure from my earlier cursory glance that they were all pegasi. If I were holding a tryout for a position in the Courier Division, this is probably how I would go about it, but I couldn’t figure out what the captain or this civilian were doing here. As subtly as I could manage, which was extremely subtle, I examined the mystery stallion.

He was… slim-ish. Little, really, but that might have been just because he was standing next to Fine Line. The captain was a pillar of a stallion. The pegasus had a pale green coat, a shaggy mane of streaked brown hair (part of how I could tell he wasn’t in the Guard), and watery blue eyes. In contrast to his slighter-than-average build, his jaw seemed disproportionately chiseled, defined further by a line of brownish stubble. Between that and the unkempt mane, he looked like a mess. I guess you could make a point for ruggedly handsome, but I just didn’t go for that sort of thing.

I lost interest in the new guy just in time to see the lieutenant come back out of the barracks leading another pegasus guard. Wow, was that Basalt? It was! The lieutenant presented him to the captain just like he had with us, then he joined us at the left end of the row. This time Fine Line didn’t send the lieutenant away, and lowered the papers to his side. Then he turned to address us. “Guards! Atten-tion!”

As one, we all straightened up and clicked our hooves together. He went on: “Corporal Updraft, Private Storm Spark, Corporal Windfurl, dismissed.” Huh, didn’t see that coming. Three guards at the other end of the lineup, two stallions and a mare, turned about and marched away back inside. Now I was regretting that I hadn’t counted how many guards there had been in the line before taking my place in it. I didn’t really have any clue how many of us were left. The tension was killing me, but luckily the captain had more to say.

"At ease!" We spread our hooves and relaxed a bit. "Here is what will happen. You will all stand by till your name is called by Lieutenant Seaworthy. At that time, you will report to Ambassador Olive Branch for an interview. Afterwards, follow any instructions he gives you. Is that understood?"

In unison, we all replied, "Yes, sir!"

"Good." To Seaworthy he said, "They're all yours, Lieutenant." With that, the captain made his way back inside to deal with whatever business he had, leaving us alone with Lieutenant Seaworthy, as the guy who must have been Ambassador Olive Branch went off on his own to the far corner of the parade grounds.

Well, looked like I was missing out on that nap. Maybe they had someone else lined up to cover my post. Celestia, I hoped so. I wondered how long this little meeting had been set up for. I watched as the lieutenant called up the first guard, a stallion I had never met but had seen doing parade rehearsals. That first interview took all of about two minutes, but it looked like the stallion had been standing at least fifteen to twenty spots away in line when he had been called up, so even if they all ran that short, I was still going to be standing here at ease for a while. Time to zone out. It was really depressing to me that I had learned to pass hours at a time doing absolutely nothing, but it was inevitable in this line of work. The alternative was going crazy.

Have I told you how much I wanted that courier spot?

The parade stallion came back and took his spot in line, sending the next poor fool up for her turn. I spent my time sizing up my competition, estimating the top speeds and minimum turning radii of the other pegasi. Of course you couldn’t tell much just by looking, especially from distances like these, but I like to think I have a sense for this sort of thing. I did have years of practice with it, after all.

Needless to say, the wait felt like an eternity. Not only that, but the worst kind: a measurable eternity. A familiar ache started to creep back into my neck. Dang it, I just stretched that out! And then the time finally came for Plume, standing to my right, to go up for his turn. And of course, that triggered my heart rate again, just like when I was called up in the cafeteria. Sheesh, in the old days nothing would have gotten to me like this. But now every little thing was setting me off. I really needed to get out of this line of work. All this standing around was making me lose my edge.

I used all the time Plume gave me to try and calm myself down. Come on, Lightning, control. You’re the best, and there’s no reason to get excited over a stupid interview!

Or scared.

Wow, was it just me, or was Plume taking an especially long time? Was… was this ambassador guy actually considering him for… whatever this was about? What was this about? Why would they have an ambassador interview us for a courier position? What else could this be?

No. No more worrying. Whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen. Heh, it can only go up from here. Nothing worth doing but facing it head-on. Push the limits. Get out and get whatever this guy can give me. Whatever it is he wants from us, I’m gonna be the one to do it.

I took a deep breath and felt my heart rate get back under control, and I allowed myself a small smile as I watched Plume heading my way with what looked like a spring in his step. Enjoy yourself for now, Plume. You’re not getting this spot.

The smug pest came up to me and nodded, then took his place to my right. I took another breath, and started walking. The ambassador was sitting on a bench by the castle wall, looking down at the papers the captain left with him. As I got close enough for him to hear my hooffalls against the grass, he looked up at me with a friendly smile and motioned for me to take the open spot on the far end of the bench. I sat down and waited with the super-equine patience I had gained in the first week of post for him to say something. His smile grew wider as he shuffled the loose sheets of paper into a neat pile. He was stalling on purpose, wasn’t he?

I nearly flinched at how suddenly he looked me in the eye, the smile frozen on his face. Whatever sense of control I had over the situation was gone. There was no way to hide from those eyes.

“Corporal Lightning Dust?”

It took me a second to realize he was talking to me. I gave my head a shake to clear it. “Yes, sorry. That’s me.”

His smile widened again, and his face crinkled with lines I hadn’t noticed before. “Oh good. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. You have an interesting record.”

I actually blushed. I never blush! “Yes sir.”

The smile never left his face, but he did relax, leaning back into the shade of the castle wall. The sun was so bright out here it was noticeably harder to see him there. “So, Miss Dust, you were suggested to me as a talented flyer. I want to hear about it from your own mouth. What are some of your accomplishments?”

I glanced quickly down at my open file on the bench between us. Surely he’s already read all about me. There’s not really anything else I could tell him that isn’t in there. “Well, sir, I got my Cutie Mark winning a flight school stormrace, I won the Los Pegasus Junior Flying Competition two years running, and graduated basic training with a special commendation for aerial performance.”

He leaned his head back against the wall and folded his forehooves over his stomach. “Right, I guess I should have phrased that better. I want to know who you are as a flyer; what you’re capable of. There was something in your file about the Wonderbolt Academy. Did you attend it?”

Well, I guess this had to come up sooner or later. “Yes sir.”

“But you didn’t graduate.”

“No, sir.” And here came the follower…

Nothing. I blinked at Ambassador Olive Branch, but he was just watching me thoughtfully. I waited some more. Still nothing! Everyone asks why I didn’t make it with the Wonderbolts. Was he really not going to?

I guess not. The ambassador gave another small smile and tilted his head down to look at his folded hooves. Even looking into the shade with the sun in my eyes, I could see his piercing blue eyes meet mine. “Corporal, how would you describe your talent and ability in flying?”

He asks this instead? Right after that? Jeez, normally I’d have a response ready and waiting before he finished his sentence, but bringing up the Wonderbolts on top of all the rest of this… “Ambassador, sir, flying is what I live for. I don’t feel alive unless I’m in the air, working hard to push my limits.” Wow, where did that come from? I’ve never been this sappy. What’s with this guy?

There was a pause as he nodded to himself and looked back down at his papers. “There’s also a note here about an injury.”

My spine shivered. I didn’t like remembering that. I didn’t even know the Guard kept a record of that, it was before I had even considered enlisting. “Yes sir.”

“Sounds pretty bad,” he commented, raising his eyes to look me straight in mine again. Something about his expression reminded me of the one time I had made eye contact with Princess Celestia. He had something of the same smug confidence, and gave off the same impression that you were a part of his plan. I was starting to develop some unpleasant feelings for Ambassador Olive Branch. I don’t like feeling manipulated. “Does it still bother you?”

I shivered again, this time in a surge of anger. Old anger, I had to remind myself. That was an unpleasant time for everypony involved, but it was over. “No sir. I recovered fully before enlisting with the Guard.”

He smiled and nodded again. “That’s great.” He flipped over some papers and found a spot on the bottom page with his hoof. “One more question, Lightning Dust.” I bristled a little. Sheesh, I must be a career guard now if I object to ponies leaving out my rank. “What would you say is the farthest trip you’ve ever flown?”

Oh. Wasn’t expecting that one. I had to think a little. Cross-country flying wasn’t something I had ever seriously tried. Too boring. And the only traveling I had done was when I was too young to fly myself. “...Los Pegasus to the Wonderbolt Academy outside of Cloudsdale, I think,” I answered, nodding in confirmation to myself. “I don’t know how far that is, though,” I added.

“That’s fine,” Olive Branch said around a pen he was using his mouth to write with. He finished, set down the pen, and closed the folder with a hoof. “That’s not a bad distance, for an amateur.”

I frowned at him out of habit. That was a word I objected to, no matter what the context.

“Alright, Miss Dust, we’re all finished,” he said, shuffling his papers together. “Wait here, please.”

I blinked at him. Was he not going to send me back to fetch the next candidate? Did I make it?

He stopped himself as he was getting off the bench. “Oh, actually, I think the lieutenant might want to do this formally. You should go take your place in the line again.”

I tilted my head as I watched him hop off the bench and start making his way to the flagpoles to speak with the lieutenant, presumably. Huh. Do what, I wonder?

I shook myself and hopped off after him, marching back to my spot between Plume and Basalt. When I turned around to face the flags with the rest of the guards, Lieutenant Seaworthy straightened up. “Atten-tion!”

We followed suit, and I waited with anticipation for good news.

“Corporals Plumage and Lightning Dust, accompany Ambassador Olive Branch for briefing. The rest of you, dismissed!”

No! Both of us? Really?

I barely matched the salute with the others to my sides, only doing so out of habit. My mind was completely elsewhere.

What in the wide world of Equestria did an ambassador want with us? Why were we both being called up for briefing? I didn’t like where this was going one bit.

I numbly followed Plume to wherever we were going, my mind racing over the same track over and over and over again. I noticed changes in our surroundings from time to time: a sudden darkening as we went inside, a transition from stone corridors to paneled walls and carpet, up some stairs. Finally we reached the end of a hallway, and I realized we had reached the captain’s office.

I had actually never been in here before. It wasn’t nearly as grand as I had been expecting. The drapes were deep red velvet and the frames on the paintings on the wall looked like gold, but the office was no bigger than any of the others I had been in here in Canterlot Castle. Captain Fine Line himself was seated at the large wooden desk, his back to a bay window looking out over the green parade grounds we had just been standing in. I was brought back to reality by the little shock of making eye contact with Plume, who was already sitting in a simple chair in front of the desk. There was an empty one next to it and Plume wasn’t the only one with eyes on me, so I assumed I was supposed to do the same. I quickly took my seat, blushing just a little bit. I saw Olive Branch seated against the wall, watching me with a smile.

Fine Line straightened in his chair. “Well, if we’re all ready, let’s get started with this briefing. Corporals, Ambassador Olive Branch has picked you to be his escorts for his journey to his new mission in Minos.”

Wha-hu-what? That wasn’t the phrasing I had in mind of ‘you’re joining the Courier Division.’ Minos? Where even was that? What was that?

I realized the captain was still talking, so I hurriedly refocused on what he was saying. “...You are also being reassigned to the Equestrian Embassy in Minos, under the ambassador’s command. You will fill whatever role he chooses to assign to you once you get there. You will carry out the remainder of your respective tours there, and you will retain the standard non-transfer bonus if you elect to stay in the embassy for future tours. Your assignment details are here, along with the standard transfer paperwork.” He slid two identical manilla folders to us across his desk, and suddenly I regretted paying attention again. It was at times like this, I reflected as I opened the folder and scanned the contents blankly, that I wished I had been here when the old captain was in charge, before he went off to be a prince or whatever. Everyone says he was great about this stuff. Apparently the new guy was much more of a stickler.

“Ambassador?”

I looked up to the captain and then to Olive Branch, who apparently had something to say.

“It’s up to you if you want to take this assignment or not. It’s a big trip and an even bigger commitment, so if either of you want to back out, I can find someone else.”

Oh dang, he was giving us a choice now? And he caught me off-guard again. Any other time I would go along with it out of principle, but this time I stopped to really consider the options. It’s true I would rather be doing almost anything else than stupid post twice a day, but was it worth going off to some weird foreign land for years with Plume? How big were embassies, anyway? Maybe I could avoid him like I did here.

“Sir?” Speak of the devil. I looked to Plume on my right, one eyebrow raised in unease. Idiot. Suddenly I knew I wanted to take the assignment, if only because Plume seemed unsure. I did promise myself I would do whatever it was Olive Branch wanted us for, after all. “If I may ask, why do we have to fly there?”

Wait, what?

Olive Branch gave him a wicked smile, like we were all planning a big prank on someone important. “It’s urgent. It’s a special assignment straight from Princess Celestia. We don’t have time to take a ship.” What? We’re going somewhere ships usually go? Hold on a second!

Plume bit his lip, then nodded. “I’ll go.”

Okay, I wasn’t going to be outdone by Showfeather. I just needed to know one thing first.

“Um… exactly how far away is Minos?”

Oh gosh, the smile grew teeth!