Lutscintorb

Chapters

Somewhere
Transient
Obtaining Property
Loud Awakening
Evaluate The Situation
Now Listen Here
Moving Forward
Afternoon Travel Logs
Growing Wary
Crouching Unicorn, Hidden Stallions
Rivers Run Hither
Earnestly
Uptight
Reevaluate The Situation
Now You've Done It
Enter Stage Up
Do Over
Granite's Tomb
Log
Underscored
Toward
Succor
Inter Mission: Part 1
Treachery

Somewhere

The air crackled like hoofsteps in fresh snow, soft and contained. But it was also unmistakably loud, announcing its presence to any and all who’d listen to its burning tongue. An open flame licked the air, sending embers towards the twilit sky along a poking, sizzling crescendo. Its heat scorched the nearby ground and suckled its base for precious fuel. Wild grass that stood too close saw itself charred, collapsing with tiny embers riding the fall and sparking new licks of flame.

A dirt-stained hoof quickly stamped the tiny fires out. “Dammit!” a stallion cried, stomping on the burning grass while simultaneously trying to pull out other stalks before they too could ignite. “I told you to clear the area before you started the fire, Whiskey! You’re gonna light the whole damn field up!”

Whiskey was a tired stallion, a unicorn who used his horn to cut corners more often than he used it for something as trivial as cutting grass. His fur was a brownish orange, the same color of the sky as the remnants of the sun’s rays lost its battle to the already-here night. But the hair on his head and stuck to his tail was a darker shade, just a touch lighter than the nightly shadows washing over the world around them. And his eyes were a vibrant yellow, reflecting the generous warmth of that sweet fire now keeping him awake.

That, and currently trying to spread its way north.

“Stupid fire!” he cried, smacking it into submission with his wide-brimmed hat.

“You’re the stupid one!” the other stallion remarked.

“I don’t need lip from you, Sharpy!” Whiskey hollered back.

“It seems to be the only way to get things through your thick skull,” Sharpy muttered. For an earth pony he wasn’t exactly well built, but then again neither was Whiskey and he was sure he could beat that lazy stallion at even the most menial of tasks. His fur was a more relaxed shade of yellow, but the dirt stains, the leather vest, and the machete sheathed at his side betrayed any soft outward appearance. His green hair was shorter than Whiskey’s, something he found ideal when spending weeks at a time under the sun, if not entire months.

Finally the fire was restrained. It snapped at them before settling into an angry little ball in the center of a wide ring of dirt. Whiskey threw another log on top of the pile as an apology and returned to his lazily assembled hammock: a sheet tied between two rungs on either side of the driver’s box of their stagecoach. It was slightly off centered and when he sat in it, the bottom contacted the bottom of the driver’s seat. But he didn’t care, it was comfortable enough for him.

Sharpy removed a short flask from his vest and took a quick sip, finding a spot in the fresh dirt comfortably between the fire and the grass. “Today’s Tuesday, right?” he asked after a pause.

“Always,” Whiskey said, tilting his hat down to cover his eyes. “Don’t worry you itchy legs none, Sharpy. We’ll make it to the town before the shipment does.”

“I know that,” Sharpy said, rolling onto his back. “I’m just getting tired of pulling that wagon is all.”

“Hey, I pull it too you know.”

“When you’re not sleeping, or eating all our packaged foods, or drinking from both of our hootch stashes.”

“You owed me that one, remember?”

Sharpy hummed. “Soon enough, you’re going to return the favor. What’re are we at now, three to one?”

“Something like that,” Whiskey said, his voice softening.

“Could be two now that I saved your stupid face from painting this side of the mountains with hellfire.”

“Whatever,” Whiskey snorted. “You just had to go out and get those fancy new reins: one hundred bits! And half the time we don’t even use them.”

“And half the time we do,” Sharpy remarked. “Like now.”

“Fair enough.” Whiskey turned in his hammock, which he was discovering to be less comfortable than he had hoped. But sleep was falling over him all the same. “Wake me if something exciting happens.”

“Right-o,” Sharpy said, before taking another swig from his flask. He didn’t bother to put it away, instead holding it to his chest as he stared up the stars. The moon was now center stage, having beaten back what remained of the day and bearing down on the dusk. He found this process oddly soothing to witness, the sky turning darker so slowly he’d never realize it changed at all until his wandering mind returned, all the while it grew brighter with every star that bled through the wake into being.

The wind had returned, and with it the night’s cold blanket. But the fire warded the latter off well enough. As an earth pony, with the ground pressed firm against his back, he felt right at home in this wide and open field, away from the distractions of society. The wind still kept, however, a distraction that caressed the surrounding tall grasses and reminded him of the fire’s existence. Despite its overbearing presence, it somehow turned forgettable as the night fulfilled its complete control of the sky. He wondered how that was, where the time had gone, but soon he couldn’t care about those thoughts either. The night was here, in all its majesty, and he couldn’t think of anything better than letting it take him too.

But that wish was cut short by a brilliant, audible flash somewhere in the distance. The air was overtaken by a new kind of crackling and popping, the tang of a powerful discharge of magic, one he was certain his sluggish friend would never be capable of.

Transient

A quiet breeze worked with the night to turn the meadow into a dark, black lake. The stallions’ campfire stood out in the like a splash in the water, frozen at the height of its plume, and throwing light across the surface like ripples. For a short distance beyond the fire, the wild grass shimmered in the light. But they soon shriveled away and were reclaimed by the shadows.

Sharpy stood at this threshold, his head poking just above the grass, squinting his eyes out over the field. But all he could make out was the darkened horizon where the night sky met the silhouetted world. Whiskey moseyed up beside him, rubbing his eyes.

“You’re just imagining things,” the unicorn said, beating back a yawn.

“I told you, I didn’t!” Sharpy hissed. He waggled his machete forward. “Someone is out there and they used a lot of magic to get here. Can’t you feel it?”

Whiskey tilted his head from side to side, staring up at his horn. “All I feel is the fire. Quit being so paranoid and go back to sleep, you hoofsucker.”

“I’m not being paranoid!” he shouted, just to quickly realize what he’d done, and what they were doing. He grabbed Whiskey by the neck and pulled themselves below the grass. “Someone is out there, watching us,” he said in a harsh whisper. “Need I remind you of the bounties on our heads? Help me deal with this punk or they’ll be taking those bounties!”

Whiskey rolled his eyes and hollered: “Hey, jerkwad! Whoever you are, give up! We have you surrounded!”

Sharpy slapped himself in the face. After a long pause and a dismissive shrug from his friend, he growled, “Not what I meant. Use your brain for once and light this meadow up!” He twirled his machete in his hoof. “I’ll make sure they don’t get away from us.”

“Whatever,” Whiskey mumbled. His horn sparked to life and an orb of blue light shot out over the field in front of them.

Sharpy poked his head up out of the grass and watched the orb fly outward. “A little to the right,” he instructed, and Whiskey adjusted the spell’s course. “Further,” he added, and the orb moved away another twenty paces.

Then a clear depression appeared in the ocean, a hole created by something much the same way they parted the grass away from where they stood. Sharpy sneered and Whiskey only offered him a sigh. “It’s probably a rock,” the unicorn said.

“Get your flank in gear,” Sharpy ordered, turning into the tall grass and stalking towards where the ball of light now hovered, his machete gripped tightly in one hoof. Whiskey reluctantly followed, but at the rate Sharpy moved, they were both crawling.

“It’s a little too late to surprise them,” Whiskey announced, casually walking around and overtaking his friend.

Sharpy groaned and cursed something under his breath. He leapt to his hooves and galloped forward, swinging the machete at the grass that separated him from the intruder. “I hope you got a good story, pal!” he yelled, closing the distance. “Nobody ever gets the drop on Sharp Tack!”

And as soon as he could see into the hole in the field, Sharp Tack nearly tripped over himself.

“What, was I right?” Whiskey asked, a cocky grin spreading across his face. His pace quicked to catch up and rub it in. “Make that four to one, Sharpy! Nobody has any reason to be out here! Can’t wait to tell the boss how you got scared in the middle of the night over a, a dumb... uh... huh.”

Whiskey stopped right beside his friend, a similar wave of dumbfoundedness smacking him across the face. Their eyes were wide and their noses scrunched, staring down at their intruder and at a loss for words. The ball of light forced back their shadows and spotlighted the center of their attention.

There in the grass lay a unicorn mare, her magenta fur looking as soft as a lazy cloud. Her hair was a darker shade of purple, save for the thick lighter streaks that ran down the center of her tail and over her ear, covering her eyes. Sharp Tack used the tip of his machete to part her bangs, revealing her eyes were sealed shut and confirming that the mare was knocked out.

One of her forelegs had a heavy bandage wrapped around it, right above the hoof, but otherwise the mare looked like the picture of health. Both legs were entangled in the strap of some brown, heavy duty satchel. Her cutie mark was three blue, brilliant-cut diamonds, arranged in such away they made up the corners of a similar, larger diamond.

Sharp Tack pulled his machete away and sheathed it. He scratched the back of his head, as if that would dig out the answers to the questions assailing him.

Whiskey just chuckled. “Well, I certainly didn’t expect that.”

Obtaining Property

Grunting, Whiskey struggled to lift the mare with his magic. Sweat beaded over his brow and his horn sparked like a firework. It felt like he was bracing some ceiling with the tip of his horn, sensing something in his neck ready to pop as he fought for breath and strength.

“Just get her off the ground,” Sharp Tack said.

“I’m trying!” Whiskey wheezed, his eyes ready to pop from the exertion. The mare was hardly more than an inch in the air.

“You’re useless,” Sharp Tack said, rolling his eyes. He grabbed one of the mare’s limp forelegs and pulled her body up over his withers. Whiskey gasped and uttered an angry groan, but for what it’s worth he didn’t relinquish his magic until the mare was firmly set across his friend’s back.

He hooked the mare’s satchel off the ground and threw it over himself. “She’s heavier than she looks,” he muttered.

“She sure is,” Sharp Tack remarked sarcastically, walking back to the campsite at a brisk pace. “What’s in the bag?”

Whiskey trotted up beside him, rifling through the satchel with his magic. “Let’s see, we got a notebook, some pencils, a compass, a pair of binoculars...” He lifted out a bundle of fresh fruit. “Oh, score! Apples!” He took a bite out of one and stuffed the rest back inside the satchel. “Looks like our princess is a park ranger or something.”

“I don’t think she’s a princess,” Sharp Tack said, glancing back at her. “Makes no sense for someone of that stature to that have that kind of gear on them.”

“Fine, aristocrat, noble, whatever,” Whiskey said, taking another bite of his apple. “Look at her coat: smooth, pink, all dainty-like. And that mark on her flank, for crying out loud! She’s a somebody, for sure.”

Sharp Tack turned his direction as the breeze blew their campfire’s smoke at them. He walked around the fire and up to the stagecoach. “I don’t disagree with you,” he said with a quick smile. “But she was hugging that there satchel like her life depended on it, and her leg looks to be pretty banged up to. I’m not sure if she’ll be able to walk with it, but the closest settlement is Ripper’s Creek and that’s where we came from. There’s nothing around here but plains and mountains.” He cleared his throat. “Point is, I got a hunch her being here is no accident. I know as well as you do that it would take a crapton of magic to teleport a pony to where we are.”

“The only accident was sending her where we are,” Whiskey said with a wider smile, coming to a stop beside his friend. “Remember the last aristocrat the boss had? The ransom we were able to squeeze out of his rat-faced family was enormous!”

“Which is why we need to figure out who she is, but just as importantly figure out why she’s here.” He craned his neck at the door of the stagecoach. “Open the door. Then see if there’s anything in that book of hers worth knowing.”

“Eh, I’ll do it in the morning,” Whiskey said, and then yawned. “She isn’t going anywhere.” His horn flared briefly and the thick iron padlock holding the door closed clicked apart.

The interior of the stagecoach betrayed its outward appearance. While the stagecoach displayed some sense of self respect, with its polished cherry panels and black-and-yellow trim, beneath the exterior the carriage was cold and rotten. The inside had been gutted, presenting its bare scratched wood and a floor carelessly strewn with straw. Outside, the windows were covered by thick drapes that were fastened to the bottom of the frames. They concealed a layer of thin and magically-infused glass, and then another layer of iron bars. A bucket sat in the far corner and something resembling a mail slot sat high up at the front of the carriage, just behind the driver’s box.

“She’s a delicate thing, that’s for certain,” Sharp Tack observed, unloading her into the carriage.

“Yeah, yeah,” Whiskey droned, returning with a horn cap. It was a small, metallic mesh cone with a bright blue crystal the size of a pea at the very tip. He placed it on the unicorn’s horn and tightened the clamp at the base. “That one should last about another two weeks, by the way. When we get to Portsmouth we should stock up on more horn caps and sell the other two we have. They’re pretty full.”

“Sounds good,” Sharp Tack said with a nod. He closed the door to the stagecoach and slapped the iron padlock back into place.

Loud Awakening

The following morning started with the stagecoach exploding.

It happened like a wooden barrel rupturing at the seams. The panels tried to fly apart, but the trim and metal framework held firm and more or less kept the stagecoach in one piece. Still, it tried desperately to burst. A brilliant blue and pink flash of light sent a thumping shockwave across the surrounding meadow, as if a thundercloud had gone off spectacularly from inside the carriage. Trunks and miscellany not tied down went flying, and the hinges on the door snapped and threw it open. Some of the panels separated along the seams and the ones that didn’t had bolstered new cracks. A rear wheel had even popped off its axle and the windows that weren’t cracked slid out of their frames.

As for Whiskey, who decided to fall asleep on the carriage, he was rudely tossed up into the air and, accompanied by his surprised scream, landed somewhere in the tall grass with an unceremonious thud. Sharp Tack woke up with a start, alarmed and mystified to catch his friend at the peak of his arc and then fall out of view. He scrambled to his hooves and made it to check on his friend.

“I’m alright!” Whiskey declared, jumping to his hooves. One of his legs then gave out and he staggered forward, yelping. Sharp Tack took another step and Whiskey tried to wave him off. “I’m fine!” he reiterated. “Go check on the bloody unicorn!”

“Forget her!” Sharp Tack said, coming up to and supporting his friend. “Where’re you hurt?”

“It ain’t broken,” Whiskey said, taking his leg back. His right side took the brunt of the impact, and was covered with scrapes and one big nasty bruise. “I can walk just fine,” he added, and then started limping towards the stagecoach. “Go check on the damned unicorn, already! Hard to demand a ransom when the girl’s dead!”

“I know, I know!” Sharp Tack said, turning and running back towards the smoking carriage. “How in Epona’s sweet name does this even happen?”

He made it to the stagecoach, which in addition to the immediate area, was radiating with the distinctly pungent smell of ozone. He grimaced, finding the door blasted open and hanging off one of its hinges. The straw, the wood, the iron bars: they all had been scorched black by the unmistakable discharge of unfiltered mana. The mare lay in the middle of it all, unmoving. Her perfect fur and mane had been tarnished by light burns and the lingering soot. The horn cap had been shattered, resting in loosely held together bits at the base of her horn. A dark blast mark resided at the tip of her horn, evidently the source of the explosion.

Sharp Tack leaned in and checked the mare’s pulse. He murmured something low that was as much a curse as it was a prayer, and started to drag her out into the fresh air.

Whiskey finally arrived, waving away the thin smokey haze and wrinkling his nose at the smell. “She alright?”

“Still out cold,” Sharp Tack said, "but she's alive." He took her out and set her down in the grass over beside the campfire. He pointed out horn. “Looks like the horn cap overloaded.”

“No, that’s not... no!” Whiskey said with a gasp. “There was like two weeks’ worth of room in that thing! I double-checked! No way that thing filled up overnight! It’s literally impossible!”

Sharp Tack turned and barked, “Yeah well did your dense mind pick out one of those two full ones by mistake?!”

“Absolutely not!” he snapped back. “And even then I’m sure to leave a couple days’ of room so they don’t tap out. You know how volatile those things can get!”

“Obviously!” Sharp Tack shouted, throwing a hoof at their smoldering stagecoach.

“Maybe it was cracked! Somehow!” he offered. “It’s not my fault!”

“Well she sure as hell didn’t do it!” Sharp Tack yelled. His mind raced for more things to say, to maybe uncover the real cause of the explosion by simply screaming and marching around in a circle, yelling angrily at the world and fate at large.

Whiskey looked down at the mare and with little else on his mind, sighed. He quickly checked her for injuries. Fortunately, she only appeared to have soot stains across her fur. Had the horn cap been any stronger, than it probably would have burned her more severely, if not cracked her horn. He playfully slapped her on the cheek to try and wake her up, but of course that didn’t work.

“She’s lucky to be alive. If the filly wasn’t comatose before, she sure is now,” he said dryly. He glanced up at the broken carriage and asked, “Now what?”

Sharp Tack stopped, took a look around at the stagecoach and the debris strewn about, and gave a defeated sigh. “I’m sure we can fix it,” he said. “But anything we do will be temporary. We’ll need to stop somewhere in Portsmouth and see if we can get it repaired, but it’ll have to be someplace we can trust on account of our... modifications. And that’s going to be expensive.” He groaned at the situation. “It might be cheaper to just buy a new one. But then we’ll need to modify that before we can pick up our shipment, and that isn’t going to be cheap, either.”

Whiskey pinched the bridge of his snout. “Great. So we’re set back what, half a day to get this thing moving again? And maybe a day or two while in Portsmouth?”

“Probably, and at least a thousand bits coming out of the boss’s pocket,” Sharp Tack added. He moved towards the unconscious mare and looked down at her, furrowing his brow in the early morning sun. He said, “This filly better be our big break.”

Evaluate The Situation

Several hours had passed by the the time the two stallions had the stagecoach in an operable condition. It was far from being repaired, but they were certain they could pull it again without losing a wheel or breaking the reins off. The rear axle took the most amount of work, as the wheel that came off had actually sheared the hub off with it. Their temporary solution was to take some of the iron bars down and hammer them into the axle to keep the wheel in place.

All of the windows were ruined one way or another, so they just chucked the shards of glass off into the field. They did the same with anything else deemed unsalvageable, like the door and a few broken containers that had once sat on top of the stagecoach. Everything else, if it couldn’t be pieced back together, had been stuffed inside. When all was said and done, the carriage looked like it had taken a tumble down a hill. Noon had arrived, and with it came the desire to just lay down and not do anything.

Their stomachs did keep them awake, however. Soon the campfire was rekindled and the two stallions sat around it, tired and aching. Whiskey rubbed at the bruise on his side, using a simple spell to help ease the pain and keep his weight off his bad leg. Sharp Tack stirred a pot over the fire, a hard and frustrated look on his face. Off to the side, they had put the mare resting in the grass.

“I still don’t know what we’re going to do with her,” he said, glancing away from the stew and down at her. He took the wooden spoon out of the pot and tasted it. “Got anything?”

Whiskey held the mare’s notebook in his hooves, flipping through the pages. “She’s been places,” he said. “The Riverwood Forest, some place called Hoofprint, the... June-amp Ocean? Ever heard of that?”

“Geography was never my strongest suit,” Sharp Tack said. “What, has she just been listing the places she’s been? Like some kind of travel route?”

“Drawings, actually,” Whiskey said, presenting one of the open pages. It was of a surprisingly well-drawn forest interior, where beyond a row of tall pine trees, the forest dropped away to reveal an incredible and expansive landscape with mountains in the far distance.

Sharp Tack whistled. “Artsy filly, huh? Any maps?”

“Some,” Whiskey said, flipping to another page. “But they’re incomplete and not anything I recognize. I mean, what in the North is ‘Harmphstead?’” He showed his friend a detailed map of the presumptive kingdom, whose borders looked like a misshapen potato. “I swear half this stuff is made up.”

Sharp Tack just shrugged. “Beats me. There’s nothing in there about who she is or what she does?”

“Nope, just these kind of drawings.” Whiskey set the book down and reached for an apple. “How’s the stew going?”

“It should be ready soon,” he replied, stirring the pot again. He took another quick taste. “Can you go see if we have any salt? If we did it’d be in the crate with all our medical stuff.”

“Good thing that crate was a broken one,” Whiskey said with a sigh, standing up with a limp. “And why is the salt in the same box as our bandages?”

“I used it for dealing with those bee stings a while back,” he chirped. “It’s pretty effective stuff.”

“Whatever,” Whiskey muttered, walking towards the stagecoach. “I like my stew unsalted, thank you very much!” he hollered as reached the carriage.

He knocked his hoof on the side as he poked his head in the doorway, looking over the loose contents and the dilapidated state of it all. There wasn’t much in the way of sentiment held over it, but it was still the first thing he was ever in charge of. When the boss paired him and Sharp Tack together and set them off, sending them off across the country, the process was like discovering an entirely new piece of himself. And this was the catalyst.

He sighed. The floorboards creaked uneasily back at him as he shuffled his way inside. He overturned salvaged materials and shifted through broken bits of wood until he finally found the medicine box. He popped the steel lid and quickly found a salt shaker beneath a roll of gauze.

“And he mocks me for being disorganized,” he grumbled, taking the salt and scooting back over to the doorway. He popped out and took a few steps back towards the campfire, and as soon as it caught his eye, he froze in place.

The unicorn was sitting up right beside Sharp Tack. The world held a collective breath, not even the quiet winds stirring to bother the sudden silence.

It was the mare who broke it, not that she seemed to notice it in the first place. “Thirsty,” she said, her voice dry and cracking.

There was another bewildered pause, before Sharp Tack absentmindedly reached into his vest and produced his banged-up flask. The mare eagerly snatched it from him, her hooves shaking as she unscrewed the cap, brought it to her lips, and threw her head back.

“Whoa there!” Sharp Tack yelled, stealing it back before she guzzled the whole thing. She immediately choked on the bitter taste and started coughing and retching.

Whiskey hastily hobbled over. “Hey!” he shouted, throwing the salt shaker at the mare. It missed and landed at Sharp Tack’s hooves. “What do you think—!”

“Whiskey!” Sharp Tack barked, and the lazy stallion fumbled over the rest of his words. The two glared intensely at each other as the mare continued to try and control her lungs. Sharp Tack leaned over into a nearby box of ingredients he’d been using for the stew, and offered the mare a canteen. That he didn’t bother stopping her from drinking.

“Sorry about that,” he said to the mare with a nervous laugh. “Are you alright?”

She finished the canteen off and gasped for breath, only to suddenly start hiccuping. “I’ll live,” she said, a wariness to her tone.

“Help yourself to some stew,” he said, handing her a metal bowl. She took it in her hooves and nodded a thank-you. He hastily added, “I’ll be right back,” and then cantered off to intercept Whiskey before the stallion started speaking again.

Sharp Tack said in a hushed tone, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Me?!” Whiskey said, aghast. He threw a hoof out at the mare. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Be quiet!” Sharp Tack hissed back. He shot a glance at the mare who had already dipped the bowl in the stew and was taking generous gulps, holding the bowl up with her hooves. He turned and grabbed Whiskey by the foreleg, leading around and behind the stagecoach.

“I’ll reiterate,” Whiskey started, reluctantly holding back his voice. “What do you think you’re doing? You can’t give one of our lockups our stock like that! That’s not how this works! That’s not how we work!”

“In case you haven’t noticed, we can’t exactly work the way we used to!” Sharp Tack rebuttled, knocking a hoof on the stagecoach beside them. “What do you want to do, tie her to the roof? She’s a unicorn, for crying out loud. And I checked those last two horn caps we have—even if we swap them out, there’s no way they’ll last until we get to Portsmouth. Would you rather have an angry captive or a blissfully ignorant and complicit one?”

Whiskey groaned and dragged his hooves across his face. “Alright, fine, I get the point. But what’re we going to do with her when we do get to Portsmouth?”

“Hell, I’m winging it here!” Sharp Tack said, trying to keep his voice down. “I didn’t expect our stagecoach to explode and complicate things!”

“Speaking of which,” Whiskey started, a bit of breath catching in his throat, “regardless of why that happened,”—he motioned at the tip of his own horn—“we both know the cause of it, and frankly, that scares me a little. I know this mare is going to net us a profit, but something tells me she isn’t going to be so complicit when we get to Portsmouth.”

“All the more reason to get her on our good side,” Sharp Tack finished. He poked his head around the carriage and spotted the mare dipping her bowl back into the stew for a second helping. He turned back to his friend and said, “Just follow my lead, alright? We can do this.”

Now Listen Here

“Sorry about that,” Sharp Tack said, returning to the campfire with Whiskey in tow. The limping stallion was doing a poor job of hiding his disgruntled frown, which had Sharp Tack forcing his smile harder to compensate. He walked over to the box of supplies and picked two more bowls out, tossing one to his friend. He told the mare, “My friend and I just had a... a bit of a disagreement, yeah. How’s lunch?”

The mare finished the rest of her dish and set it down. “It’s really good,” she said, happily catching her breath.

“I’m glad someone appreciates my cooking,” Sharp Tack said with a chuckle. He swiped the salt shaker off the ground, added some to the pot, gave it a stir, and dipped his own bowl in. “What’s your name, by the way?”

She paused for a second. “You can call me Sparkler, I guess.”

“Sparkler, huh?” Sharp Tack took a sip from his bowl. “That’s quite the fancy name, if I do say so myself.” He pointed at himself and then to Whiskey, saying, “My name’s Sharp Tack and the loveable sack of oats over there is my good friend Whiskey.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” she said, smiling at the two of them.

Whiskey offered an acknowledging grunt.

“Where’re you from now?” Sharp Tack asked next.

She blinked at him. “I’m uh, not from around here,” she said awkwardly, glancing around the immediate area.

Sharp Tack chuckled. “I’ll say! Not too many ponies have business going offbeat through the Green Stretch.”

“Green Stretch?” Sparkler asked, cocking her head. She opened her mouth to speak, but a sudden realization cut her meandering thoughts and set her focused. Her head snapped down and she smacked a hoof against her abdomen, reaching for something that wasn't there. Instead she found her fur covered with mysterious black marks. That gave her pause, but she disregarded it as wave of panic slowly washed over her. She dropped her bowl and hobbled to a stand. “Where’s my...” she started.

“Oh! Your book?” Sharp Tack interjected. He motioned at Whiskey, who signed and lit his horn. Out of the nearby grass floated Sparkler’s notebook, which landed happily in her hooves. “Hope you don’t mind we kinda had a peek at that,” he added, scratching the back of his head.

Sparkler slowly sat back down and flipped through the pages. “No, it’s alright,” she said, sighing in relief. “I thought I lost it for a second there. Thank you for taking care of it. And me, I suppose?”

“You’re very welcome!” Sharp Tack said with a quick laugh. “You gave us quite the scare last night, popping in out of nowhere like that. Must’ve hit your head or something because you were out cold.”

“I have a tendency to do that,” she muttered. She closed her book and found new black marks across its brown cover, and that returned her attention to the state of her fur. She tried to wipe some of the soot stains off her legs and with a look of disgust, said, “Ugh, was it in a cloud of smoke or something? I just got out of the spa yesterday.”

Sharp Tack clicked his tongue. “No, no smoke... uh, I mean, no, you kinda just teleported in right on top of our campfire.”

“Oh.” She wrinkled her nose, realizing her attempts at cleaning herself were getting nowhere. “Well, I’ve been in worse situations,” she added, shuffling her bandaged foreleg in the dirt. She paused and glanced up. “What’s Green Stretch?”

Sharp Tack hummed. “You certainly aren’t from around here if you’ve never heard of the Green Stretch,” he said. He clapped his hooves and explained, “The Green Stretch is a long, relatively narrow stretch of wild grass and forests spanning from the north of Agrisaltar all the way down to the World’s Belt. Over there to the west you got the Windhurst Mountains, and off to the east is the ocean.” He smirked to one side. “You’re lucky we crossed paths. The closest town is four or five days away, and it’s where we’re going. You’re more than welcome to come with.”

“Hold on, now,” Whiskey interjected, catching the other two off guard. He pointed a hoof at Sparkler and said, “I’m not exactly keen on bringing a stranger along with us if we don’t know jack about her.”

Sharp Tack gave him a hard look. “What? We’re not just going to leave her here in the middle of nowhere!”

“Well I’m not about to share my provisions with somebody who for all I know is going to rip us off! We’ve barely got enough to get by to Portsmouth as is.”

Sharp Tack glared at him, but before he could speak, Sparkler suddenly blurted out: “I promise I won’t be in the way.”

Whiskey eyed her again, tipping his hat up out of his eyes. “Look, missy. We’re... freighters. We don’t buy. We don’t sell. We move things from A to B and get paid for it. And we’re not about to just pick up new cargo that we have to feed and take care of, without getting something for it in return.”

Sparkler pursed her lips and looked down at herself. “I... I understand.”

“Or,” Whiskey added, “a very good reason why. And you can start with telling us where you came from, and more importantly, why you’re here.”

Sharp Tack looked between the two of them, deadpan. A voice was rising from inside to speak up, but he kept his mouth clamped shut. At least until the silence turned awkward, where there was nothing but the crackling fire beneath the pot and the surrounding winds. He sipped his soup.

“Okay,” Sparkler said, finally speaking up. She straightened her posture and took a deep breath. “My name is Bright Spark, and I am the personal assistant of representative Blink, delegate of Her Royal Highness Gold Crown of Harmphstead.”

Whiskey gave her a skeptical look. “Can’t say I’ve heard of this Harmphstead.”

“For the same reason I didn’t know of the Green Stretch.” She pointed a hoof at the mountains in the distance. “Have you ever been about a thousand miles past those mountains?”

Whiskey blinked at her. “Uh, no?”

“Not surprising,” she said. “This continent isn’t exactly as connected as some of the major nations would like. So there’s a big summit going on Agrisaltar with representatives from all over the place to see how we can build better communications and travel networks between one another. That’s where I’m supposed to be going. And you two are heading north, right?”

“Uh...” Whiskey stared. “Yeah?”

“Well, assuming someone in this Portsmouth can take me to Agrisaltar, I can definitely make it worth your while when Blink discovers his good friend is in one piece.”

Sharp Tack squinted at her. “And how exactly did somepony such as yourself end up here?”

“I... have my ways of getting around,” she said, shifting uneasily. “But I’d rather not be random about it if it can be helped. Blink and our convoy were traveling through a mountain pass when a rockslide hit. I was able to escape, and I know he’s alright and the convoy would continue on, and that’s all the information on that I’m willing to divulge.”

“Alright, whatever,” Whiskey said, throwing his hooves up. He then went and dipped his bowl in for a helping of stew. “But you’re doing your fair share of the work to Portsmouth. No freeloaders allowed.”

“That’s fair,” Sparkler said, trying to hide a giddy smile. “I can take care of myself for the most part, anyways.” She looked to Sharp Tack, who was scratching the back of his head and still giving her a skeptical look.

“I guess we’ll see how this goes,” the stallion said, returning to his bowl of stew. “Eat the rest of the pot. Don’t let it go to waste.”

Whiskey took a sip and grimaced at his bowl. “Too much damn salt,” he muttered.

Moving Forward

“The day is still young,” Sharp Tack said. He kept one hoof over his eyes as he glanced up at the sun, sitting just barely in the western half of the sky. “We’ll be lucky to make twenty-five miles today. But if we hurry I’m sure we can get to Portsmouth by Sunday.”

“Good enough for me,” Whiskey muttered. He hefted a wood board up against the exposed doorway of the stagecoach as a cheap way to make sure nothing fell out while it was moving. With his magic he held it in place while he hammered nails into it with a hoof.

“What happened to your stagecoach?” Sparkler asked. It reminded her of a rotten pumpkin starting to collapse in on itself.

“It broke,” was all Whiskey said, deadpan.

She gave the carriage a quick look, skeptical of its capacity, but the annoyed response she received told her it wasn’t a matter worth pursuing. She pulled on the strap of her satchel so it sat more comfortably at her side, and she walked around to the front of stagecoach. There she found Sharp Tack starting to hook himself up to the harnesses, which had two sets of reins attached to it.

“Anything I can help with?” she asked.

“Do you want to help pull now or later?”

“Eh, later works.” She twisted her head from side to side and popped her neck. “I’m still feeling a little run down from this morning, honestly.”

“Alright,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Hop on if you want. It’s going to be a couple hours before the first stop.”

She glanced at the driver’s box of the carriage, which was currently occupied by a bunch of miscellaneous tool and wood scraps, and nodded. “Okay,” she said, and lit her horn.

Sharp Tack did a double take as she disappeared in an audible flash! of red-pink light. She reappeared right on top of the carriage roof. She quickly found her footing uneven and stumbled, causing the stagecoach to twist with her, but she soon settled down on a relatively flat and stable surface. He wrinkled his nose at her and went back to securing himself to his harness.

From on top of the roof, Sparkler could get a much clearer look of the land. She reached into her satchel and produced the pair of binoculars and her compass.

Off to the west, the Windhurst Mountains reflected their gray stone in the afternoon sun. They were tall and thick, the peaks tightly packed together across the whole range as it spanned the horizon. They were mostly bare of snow except for the tallest and thickest of peaks, which resembled little teeth scraping at the sky.

A few spindly clouds were rolling in from the south, but otherwise the sky was as clear as the mountains. The Green Stretch had its fair share of hills, despite being mostly flat by what she could see. Small pine forests dotted the landscape all around, which helped give her some measure of distance. But from the north to the south, that’s all there was to see.

The east, however, carried an unusual outcropping of thick, gray clouds, partially obscured by one of the patches of small, thick forests. Her binoculars didn’t clarify much for her, but she could see enough that the clouds were churning end over end, as if rolling up a hill. She stuck her tongue in her cheek and looked down at the two stallions, who were now both hooked up to the reins and whispering to each other. Whiskey, unsurprisingly, looked the more frustrated.

Sparkler hummed something and returned her belongings to the satchel. She then reached for an apple, which she quickly discovered there weren’t any more of. She also found soot stains all over the satchel, now that she was paying attention.

“Stupid,” she muttered, closing the satchel up and laying down in the most comfortable position she could manage. Not a second later, the stagecoach lurched forward. It groaned defiantly at first, but soon the squeals disappeared and they drove forward north along a dirt-grass path that was hardly there.

Afternoon Travel Logs

“This thing’s itchy,” Sparkler muttered, shifting uneasily in her reins as she helped pull the carriage forward. It was a two piece ensemble: a padded breast collar resting over her withers, which connected to a thick belt around her midsection by a pair of tugs. The belt itself connected to a heavy wooden yoke by a large metal bolt. There were two identical harnesses attached to the yoke, one on either side of the tongue that extended to the front axle of the stagecoach.

Sharp Tack was occupying the second harness and he didn’t know whether to be annoyed or simply laugh. “You get used to it,” he told her, shrugging. “Now come on, I’m not pulling this all by myself.”

“No, you aren’t,” she rebutted, pushing into the harness. The stagecoach lumbered behind them at a walking pace, which seemed to be good enough. It was putting a pain on her shoulders, though. The itchy harness didn’t help with that at all.

Somewhere behind them, she could hear Whiskey snoring.

They continued on, making it over a short hill that looked like it was more weed than grass. Sharp Tack had told her they tend to avoid the pockets of forest, as the stagecoach has gotten stuck in them before. But the forest edges, when approached, took on a mysterious affection. Chirping animals, the sounds of rustling leaves and flowing water, and if she paid close enough attention she could’ve sworn there was a voice or two be heard. It was a pleasant distraction from the clatter of the carriage, the thudding of their hooves, and the occasional whisper of wind or accompanied snore.

She mostly kept her chin up, looking for the traces in the grass that brought some semblance of a path. It wasn’t worn by any considerable measure, but every bump and trough of the landscape bore evidence that this path was walked before.

For the most part, she was uncomfortably quiet. Too quiet too often for Sharp Tack’s liking.

“What’s your special talent?” was one of the questions he had asked her.

She had seemed more surprised by the fact she had a cutie mark than the question itself. After a few seconds of thought, she told him: “I have a knack for telling what something’s worth. Price, mostly. Like if you’re getting a good deal out of a trade.”

“How’d you discover something like that?” he had followed up with.

She had explained, “One day I learned my mom was going to sell an old, broken necklace she didn’t care for. It had a couple of dirty and scratched up gemstones on it. Instead of taking it down to the local marketplace, I convinced her to take it someplace to get appraised. It came to both of our surprises when we discovered those rocks were priceless norn stones. And just like that, I got my cutie mark in the middle of the appraiser’s store.”

A while later, as the sky started to change tint with the onset of evening, he asked her another question: “Do you know any spells?”

“I’m really good at teleporting,” she was quick to say. But she had to be asked if she knew anything else. “I know a spell for breathing underwater and I like to think my telekinesis is pretty okay,” she added with a nervous smile. “But magic isn’t really something I think a lot about. I like to work with my hooves, if that makes sense.”

It didn’t, at least not to Sharp Tack. Every other conversation he tried to start ended shortly and without much detail. It was frustrating, trying to get to know this pony better and hardly be given anything in return. He eventually gave up right as Whiskey woke up from his long nap and they decided it was time to stop and set up camp for the night.

Which was fine for Sparkler. She didn’t like the attempts at small talk, either. Every new thing she told him about herself became something else she needed to remember.

Growing Wary

Night had befallen the Green Stretch once again. The little group had assembled their camp on top of a hill, however short it was. Nonetheless, as daylight receded, the expanse of the Green Stretch could at last be respectably measured. But once every ounce of sunlight finally drained below the horizon, one could see just how lonely the Green Stretch really was.

Stars filled the sky so packed together, the celestial gasses so reaching and colored, when combined with the overwhelming presence of a full moon it was almost oxymoronic to call the night dark. Rather, the real shadow was laid out over the world. From atop this hill, hardly a blip of light rose out of the Green Stretch. Even the westward mountains showed more signs of life. Only the eastern horizon offered a real sense of civilization, however few and distant the lights of those towns were.

No, the Green Stretch was a swath of blackness in an otherwise vibrant night.

Sharp Tack prodded their dwindling campfire with a plank of wood. He sat on his haunches, hunched over and stuck with a frown. Glancing up through the flames, he could just barely make out the light magenta of Sparkler’s tail as she slept on top of the stagecoach.

Whiskey stood right beneath her, and he poked her overhanging hoof with a stick. When she didn’t respond, he shrugged and returned to the fire, sitting down beside his friend. He tossed his stick in the fire and said, “Yeah, she’s out.”

“Good,” Sharp Tack muttered. He put the plank of wood down and sighed. “So, what do you think?”

“Honestly? I just know she’s worth something,” he repeated, stressing the point to hide his own skepticism. “But exactly what that something is? I haven’t a clue.” He jabbed his friend’s shoulder. “What about you? You were the one walking with her all evening. Learn anything?”

“Some,” Sharp Tack said in a low voice, still frowning. “And I don’t believe any of it.”

Whiskey clicked his tongue and glanced up at the stagecoach. “You don’t say?”

“Really, your guess is as good as mine as to who—or what—that pony is,” he added, and then sighed. “She’s quick on her hooves, I’ll give her that much, and she might be able to pull off a lie, but her acting sucks. No royal dignitary assistant whatever acts like that, y’know? They’re freaking about getting dirty, worried about their duties, being bossy, that kind of stuff. Heck, she pulled that stagecoach for hours on end, and not one bitchy complaint about it! That isn’t the least bit fishy to you?”

Whiskey furrowed his brow. “You’re upset she hasn’t been a hassle so far?”

“I’m upset she hasn’t been acting like the way you’d think she’d be,” he said. He crossed his forelegs. “I don’t like it. I don’t like her.”

“That makes two of us,” Whiskey muttered. “But, I mean, you can’t just dismiss her colors. You can’t ignore that cutie mark. She’s high-class, that’s for sure, and we both know that means she’ll score us a pretty price.”

“But why is she lying?” Sharp Tack asked, racking his mind. “Passing herself off as somepony she isn’t, but still high-class? I don’t understand that at all.”

“She’ll have to slip up sooner or later,” Whiskey said, standing up. “It’s only been a day, and we’ve got like three more at least until we hit Portsmouth. Give it time.”

Sharp Tack rolled his eyes and reclined in the dirt. “Since when were you the patient one?”

“Since I learned the beauty of the afternoon nap,” Whiskey said with a lazy smile. “‘Night,” he added, and then cantered off towards his hammock. Which, given the state of the carriage, was now suspended between the rear axle and a stake hammered into the dirt.

But, just like with the driver’s box, it couldn’t keep his butt from hitting the ground.

“Goodnight,” Sharp Tack offered, too late and too low to be heard. He stared up at the starlit sky, rolling his intrusive thoughts and speculations together in his head, until finally the worldly ambiance lulled him to sleep.

Crouching Unicorn, Hidden Stallions

That night, Sparkler awoke with a start and a gasp for breath. A mysterious cold sweat came over her, which was a struggle to fight against and brought an intrusive set of shivers rippling up her back. It took her a second to realize the spots in her eyes were just the stars above, but it wasn’t until she finally remembered where she was did she at last calm down.

The boring days in the middle of nowhere always went by too fast. “Not again,” she muttered, pressing her hooves against her temples. A sharp pulse like a second heartbeat throbbed at the side of her head, and her attempts to suppress the headache were doing zilch. She let out a defeated sigh and decided she wasn’t just going to lay here and wallow.

Her hooves twisted for something to grab and pull herself upright. It wasn’t like she’d be falling asleep again anytime soon, anyways. Not with this headache. She pulled herself onto her hooves and took an uneven step forward. Something creaked back at her but, against her better judgement, she ignored and took another step. This time her hoof met open air and her eyes went wide, and she tumbled right over the edge of the roof of the stagecoach.

She was lucky enough to roll when she hit the ground, but it was without the care to make it not hurt. She staggered hastily back onto her hooves, trying to walk off the new pains in her shins.

“Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid!” she hissed, angrily making a circle in the grass. “Why’d it have to be the middle of nowhere?” she asked the world around her. The quiet winds were her response, which wasn’t good enough, so she paced around looking for something to take her mind off and ease the pain in the head.

She walked around Whiskey’s hammock and the smoldering remnants of the campfire, until she found herself back at the stagecoach. The side with the large opening, to be specific. She stared into the shadowy shell, finding several pleasant distractions coming up to her. One of them was the vague memory of their being a medicine box tucked away inside. She wondered if there was anything in there that could placate her headache. Then she wondered if she should ask first before going inside the carriage.

As she pulled herself over Whiskey’s little guard rail, she wondered if she could’ve brought a light of some kind. But it was too late for that, and as quietly as she could she started fumbling through the contents of the carriage.

A few minutes later, and after looking underneath a pile of trash, she found a metal box. She took it out into the moonlit night for a clearer picture. If what she held was a medicine box, all the paint had been scraped off and it had received many a dent over the years. A simple set of latches held it fast, but they came unlocked with ease.

Inside, however, were nothing resembling medical supplies. Just a bunch of folded up papers, a pair of strange wire-mesh cones, and a metal bar. In the faint light of the moon, she guessed it was either silver or platinum. Curiosity got the better of her and she slowly sat down in the grass. She picked up one of the cones and found a bright-blue bead at its tip, but that didn’t gather much of her interest. Instead, her eyes quickly settled on the faint and telltale lines befitting a map, sitting folded among the pile of papers.

She took that out and, as suspected, unfolded it to reveal a map of the Green Stretch. There wasn’t nearly enough light out for her to try and copy it, and she suspected there wouldn't be much night left besides. But she could at least make out a few odd borders. However, what took her attention the most were countless notes and symbols scribbled all over the page. She could barely read the writing, but after a few minutes of scouring she found the names of Agrisaltar and Collisunda. Not that she knew precisely where on the map they were.

Sparkler glanced back at the stagecoach and quietly closed the box back up. The sky was lighter now, the stars starting to recede. On the tips of her hooves, she made sure to place the box back exactly where she had found it, and then crawled back on top of the carriage. Confident the two stallions were still fast asleep, she pulled her satchel close and took out her notebook. Opening to a random page in the middle of it, she placed a folded up piece of paper inside and shut it.

She made a mental note to ask about something to relieve her headache in the morning. But she was content, and could surely suffer for another day in any case.

Rivers Run Hither

The stagecoach rolled to a stop at the top of a hill. The afternoon sun kindly fell down on their heads, so they had to cover their eyes to gauge the landscape around them. All Sparkler saw was the same old random variation between open fields and clustered forests. She pulled at the straps of her harness to give her sweating skin some air. The winds tickled her ears with their idle whistling.

“So how long until we get to Portsmouth?” she asked, glancing off to the east. She spotted another outcrop of churning clouds in the far distance.

“Uh...” Sharp Tack glanced at the sun and then the mountains. “It’s Friday, right?”

“Should be,” Whiskey said, stretched out over the driver’s box with his hat over his face.

“We’ll probably be there Sunday evening then, if all goes well,” Sharp Tack said. He added, “Come on, let’s keep heading north.”

He started pulling in the harness and stagecoach bumbled along in tow. Sparkler hopped forward to keep up and quickly fell back into pace. Sharp Tack gave her a sidelong glance as a sizeable portion of the stagecoach’s weight fell to his side.

“Is something wrong?” he asked her.

She groaned. “It’s just a terrible headache.” She forced a small smile. “Don’t worry, it comes and goes. It’ll probably be gone later tonight.”

He gave her a confused look. “What, are you ill or something?”

“Kind of,” she admitted.

“Does your friend... Binks, know about it?”

She pursed her lips. “It doesn’t concern him, so I don’t really know if he does nor do I care. Besides, I’ve had it for awhile.” She paused. “I don’t suppose you have anything to help relax the pain, do you?”

“Not unless you’re bleeding,” Sharp Tack remarked. He scratched his chin and glanced around the field they were in. There was nothing but tall grass and the occasional flower. “Keep an eye out for feverfew, I guess. I don’t know if we’ll find any out in the open but I’ve heard that stuff helps.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a flower,” he explained. “It looks exactly like a daisy, but with shorter and a fewer number of petals.”

“You and your home remedy crap,” Whiskey muttered, just loud enough to be heard.

“Hey, it’s that ‘crap’ that cured your idiot hide when you came down with the flu last season!” Sharp Tack barked.

“I was on my way out of it anyways!”

“I should’ve just shoved those pine cones up your flank,” Sharp Tack murmured. “Shove them waaaay up there. It probably would’ve been a lot more pleasant for you than putting them into a tea.”

“Everything you cook is more pleasant going out than coming in,” Whiskey said.

“I liked last night’s stew,” Sparkler remarked.

“Thank you,” Sharp Tack said, somewhat relieved. He nodded to her and said, “At least someone appreciates my cooking! You can go eat grass from now on for all I care, you lumbering turd!”

“It’s all the same to me,” Whiskey quipped, flashing a cheeky grin from beneath the shadow of his hat.

Sharp Tack groaned. “I swear, one of these days, that stallion is going to get his teeth kicked in.”

Sparkler laughed, her ears twitching to the kind caressing of the wind. It beheld an unusual crispness that gave her pause, however, and it wasn’t long until she realized what she felt was really noise. She turned her eyes to the side, looking out over the field, and stopped.

The stagecoach lurched but quickly stopped as well. There was a long pause until Sharp Tack finally asked, “What is it?”

“I think I hear water,” she said, looking around. “Like a river or something.”

“Probably,” Sharp Tack said with a shrug. “All the water around here runs off from the mountains and flow through Portsmouth. Most of them, anyways. Although they’re usually further out west.” He paused. “Why?”

His answer was a flash of light and Sparkler disappearing from her harness. He stared blankly at the new void and snapped his head in the general direction of the a distant popping sound.

“Hey!” he shouted, and started to run after her. But the stagecoach weighed a little too much for just one pony, he soon rediscovered, and nearly choked himself on his harness. He growled something low and while he fumbled to remove himself from the harness, he yelled, “Damn that pony! Whiskey, get over here!”

Earnestly

Sparkler reappeared almost a hundred feet from the stagecoach. She could faintly hear an angry yell, but the gushing noise of the nearby river had grown tenfold. However, it wasn’t right here. She followed the noise twice more, teleporting through the field until finally she came across it.

She ran up to the edge of the riverbank, which amounted to a short cliff about as tall as she was. The dirt wall held itself together with the roots of the wild grass, but at the bottom the earth turned into an assortment of loose stones and driftwood. And shortly beyond that was the river itself.

Easily thirty meters wide, it flowed heavily in from the south, rising and falling with the contours of an unseen bed. What’s more, it was an unexpectedly vivid blue, although covered by the white crests of short-lived waves. The air here was especially crisp, sounding at a relaxed pace that was neither too quick nor too slow.

She scratched her breast with a sweaty, dirt-and-soot stained hoof, and hopped down onto the riverbank. A few more steps and she stood tentatively at the water’s edge. She slowly dipped her hoof in the water which was, as she probably should have expected, incredibly cold. But she watched in fascination as her dirty hoof quickly changed into its brighter, natural color. That was all she cared for, so she waded further into the river until the water rose to her knees, and she happily collapsed into the flow. It felt strangely like an everlong blanket being drawn across her, and she rolled with it.

Time escaped her then as she splashed around, scrubbing all over herself to get the dirt out of her hair and fur. The cold water was numbingly pleasant despite the bite it brought upon her. It even alleviated her headache some, which was openly welcomed. Rather, it simply made her ignorant to it what with the shivers now racing all over her. But she found it relaxing all the same.

Soon, however, her impromptu bath was interrupted. The pauses in her splashing revealed that yelling voice getting closer and closer, and it wasn’t long before she couldn’t ignore its words anymore.

Sharp Tack yelled at her like how someone might scold a puppy. “What in the North do you think you’re doing?!”

She wiped the water out of her eyes and parted her soaked mane, and found him standing atop that short little ledge of dirt, glaring daggers. She sat up and splashed a bit of water in his direction. “Getting clean,” she said dismissively, flashing her bright and shiny hooves at him. “Or, at least, something close to it. You and Whiskey should really dunk yourselves in the river in too. Trust me, you need it.”

Sharp Tack made a face caught somewhere in between frustration and confusion. She noticed he made that face quite often over the past couple of days. He pinched his snout and said, “Just... get up,” he muttered. “And you’re just going to get dirty again besides! We’ve still got a day at least until we get to Portsmouth. You can take a proper bath there if you’re so inclined.”

“It’s not like I plan on jumping on top of a fire anytime soon,” she said, and then dunked her head back underwater.

Sharp Tack groaned. “Damned unicorns,” he hissed. “The absolute worst, every one of them.” He slid down the little slope onto the riverbank. “Did I ever tell you that we’ve got a schedule to stick to?” he asked. “We can’t take breaks like this. And you can’t just wander away from us without saying something, either.”

“Why?” she asked next, standing up in the shallow water. She splayed her legs and quickly shook a large amount of water off herself. While running her hooves through her mane to straighten it, she said, “I told you before, I can take care of myself. I’m a grown pony.”

He sighed. “You don’t get it, do you? Every little distraction slows us down. We can’t allow that.”

She paused, glancing at him. “Am I distraction?”

He stared blankly at her. “Uh, yeah. A pretty big one at that.”

She stuck her tongue in her cheek. “Would you rather I just leave you two then? I can probably make it to Portsmouth on my own. I mean, just follow the river, right?”

“Uh... n-no, that’s not—” He smacked himself in the face and dragged it down. “That’s not what I meant. You... you really don’t know anything about Portsmouth, or how this land works. You really think you can just waltz into town and get anypony to believe you’re a foreign dignitary from a country I didn’t even know existed two days ago? What was it, Heartstead or something?” He blinked. “Heck, I don’t even know why I believe it! For all I know you’re just some vagabond mooching free meals off of us!”

She rolled her eyes and finally walked out of the river. “Yeah, and you two are traveling sales ponies,” she muttered. When a response didn’t come, she sighed and said, “I’m sorry. You’re right. I should be more thankful for everything you’ve done for me so far. I... will follow you for as long as I can until we get to Portsmouth.”

Sharp Tack gave her an incredulous look. “What do you mean, for as long as you can?”

Sparkler twirled a hoof in her wet mane. “I haven’t exactly been very forthcoming about who I am, have I?”

Uptight

Whiskey sat on the stagecoach driver’s box, tapping his hooves together and impatiently watching the horizon. The green tended to meld together with distance, hiding the crests of small hills within the borders of much fuller ones. The only hint he had to the true contours of the land were the spotty forests and the gusts of wind caressing the grass tips, and neither one help out too much. It wouldn’t surprise him if Sharp Tack, returning with Sparkler, appeared to materialize out of the grass in front of him.

But what he didn’t expect was the two of them spontaneously appearing beside the stagecoach in a flash of magic. With a startled yell, he jumped out of his seat, just to tumble out of the driver’s box and crash onto the ground.

“—think that is necess... sary...” Sharp Tack was saying. But his train of thought derailed and he blinked up at the carriage beside him. The rest of his sentence never came.

“Told you I could do it,” Sparkler said as she tried to wring out her tail. “It really wasn’t that far away.”

Sharp Tack scratched his head, a light shake taking control of his hoof. “Yeah, okay,” he continued, “but that doesn’t change my point.”

“Sharpy!” Whiskey hollered, scrambling to his hooves. He hobbled over the set of harness and landed right next to the two, his mouth already open with things to say, but his thoughts never left his tongue. He glanced between the two, seemingly torn between disbelief and confusion, and struggling to contain his outrage. But in the end, he just bit his lip and said, plainly, “We should get going now. Don’t want to mess up our schedule too badly.”

“Hold on,” Sharp Tack said, pulling him back. He motioned to his side and said, “Hey, Sparkler. Tell him what you told me.”

“Hm? Oh. Yeah.” She turned to Whiskey and offered him a quick bow. “I want to apologize for running off like that without saying anything, especially after what you two have done for me. I know I should’ve communicated better, or, at all, I guess. I kind of got—”

“Forget about it,” Whiskey grumbled, rolling his eyes. “Are we done here?”

“There’s one more thing,” she said slowly. “I think it’s clear enough that my presence here isn’t exactly wanted. I’m extremely fortunate that you two found me and took care of me that first night, but ever since I woke up, it’s plain to see that none of us really get along. I think that, that it would be better for us both if we part ways.”

For the first time since she woke up two days ago, Sparkler finally saw Whiskey not frowning. Granted, it wasn’t a smile, either. It was more like straight confusion, which she awkwardly tried to reassure with a smile.

Whiskey blinked at her. “What?”

“This isn’t to say I’m not thankful of all that you’ve done for me! I know I promised you two some sort of payment for taking me to Portsmouth, and we will keep that promise,” she said, waggling a hoof at him and glancing at Sharp Tack. Her horn lit up and suddenly her satchel was in her hooves. She pulled a pencil out between her teeth and removed her notebook. “I will write you two a missive,” she explained as she flipped the book open, “an official document stating what you two have done for me thus far and should be rewarded. I will make sure that Mr. Binks is aware of this when I return to him and he will certainly find a way to uh, to contact... you...”

She held the notebook open in one hoof, flipped to a random page somewhere in the middle. She stared down at it like a filly with her hoof in the cookie jar.

“Looking for something?” Whiskey asked?

Sparkler snapped her head up to see Whiskey staring back at her, deadpan. In one hoof he held a folded piece of paper, which slowly came undone with the help of the wind to reveal a map of the region.

“Oh.” She blinked, the color slowly fading from her cheeks. “Yeah, that.”

“And you’re right. Your presence really isn’t appreciated,” Whiskey said curtly. “And frankly, I’m tired of it.”

“Well then,” Sparkler said, closing her notebook. She slowly bent down to pick her satchel up off the ground. She opened her mouth again to say something new, but Sharp Tack stopped that by clonking her over the head with the butt of his machete.

Instantly, her eyes pointed off in random directions and she fell over into the grass, unconscious. Sharp Tack sheathed his machete and grumbled, “And frankly, I can’t take any more of your lies.”

Reevaluate The Situation

Sharp Tack hoisted Sparkler’s unconscious body into the driver’s box of the stagecoach. He wound a pair of ropes around her hooves and tied them off around the metal rungs on the opposite side panels. Whiskey then appeared, floating forward the blue-tipped horn cap.

Sharp Tack took it in his hooves and gave it a critical look. “How long will this one last for?”

“Four days,” he replied. “Easy. It’s not going to blow up overnight.”

“I can see that at least,” Sharp Tack remarked, and then slapped it on top of Sparkler’s head. He tightened the band at the base to the base of her horn, then hopped off the stagecoach. “Well, I guess keeping her going for two days was better than none. I hate when we have to actually take care of them.”

“She kept us going, too,” Whiskey grumbled. He tossed the folded up map at his friend. “She tried to hide it in that book of hers. Imagine what would’ve happened if she got away with it?”

Sharp Tack unfolded the map and pursed his lips. All across the worn and weathered page, in addition to the various borders and landmarks, were years’ worth of travel notes and sketches they had assembled. Notes such as who were the controlling gangs of several large cities, contact information for several of their associates, and of course the paths to stray away from in order to avoid local officials and checkpoints.

He grimaced at it, more so at the implications of having it stolen rather than simply losing it, and he folded it back up. “That’s troubling,” was all he said.

“Understatement of the year,” Whiskey retorted, taking it back with his magic. He returned the map to its home in the banged-up metal box. “How’d she even find it? Had to be when we were asleep last night, right?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sharp Tack said with a sigh. “I’ve had my suspicions about her ever since she first opened her mouth. It’s a good thing she’s a horrible liar. You know that place she said she’s from? I called it something else and she didn’t bother correcting me. Heck, I even started calling her ‘representative Blink’ representative ‘Binks’, and I even got her to start calling him that! She is absolutely terrible at lying and she can’t even do the acting to support it.”

Whiskey pinched the bridge of his snout and shook his head. “So, what now? If we can’t trust her story, then we can trust her being here.”

“And if she was after that,” Sharp Tack added, pointing at the metal box, “or something like it, then that means she was sent to us deliberately. She’s after us.”

“Dammit!” Whiskey stomped a hoof in the grass. “What, do you think she’s a bounty hunter or something?”

“Worse,” Sharp Tack said after a pause. He pointed back at her. “We both know that a pony of those colors is somepony of high class. Dignified. Pinks, whites, purples: they’re all the same. Someone with power sent her after us.”

Whiskey blanched. “You don’t think she’s with the Bureau, do you?”

“Something like it, at least.” Sharp Tack shook his head. “You know the Green Stretch crosses through a dozen and half countries. It could be any agency under the sun for all we know!”

“God! Dammit!” Whiskey threw his hat down, exposing his messy orange-brown hair. “How would they even find us?!”

“You think I know that?!” Sharp Tack yelled. “You were the one who was all excited about trying to work a ransom out of her!”

“You were the one who was so set on finding her in the first place!” Whiskey hollered. “So, by the way, it’s still three to one!”

“Two to one, you lazy bastard!”

“Whatever!” Whiskey threw a hoof out. “And who’s saying we can’t work a ransom out of her still? If she is Beauru, then that means the ball’s in our court!”

“If they know we have her, that means they’re just going to come after us harder,” Sharp Tack droned.

“Not if we play our cards right,” Whiskey added with a smile, throwing a hoof up. “For all we know, they think we’re just some lowly traffickers. They could be trying to get to the boss. The way I see it, there are three possibilities.” He cupped his hooves and clapped them together as he counted off: “If she were to... not, report back to whoever, then they’re probably going to think we killed her. And that would make us more wanted targets. Alternatively, we could just let her go and hope they don’t send someone more ‘experienced’ after us.”

“And if we hold her for a ransom...”

“We hold her, and we let her contact her superiors or whatever with our demands. Of course, a giant pile of bits. But we could also cough up some ‘information’ about our ‘organization’, in exchange for our release.” He smiled widely. “So not only do we get a big ol’ sack of bits, but we also send some feds off our scent. It’s a win-win!”

“Huh.” Sharp Tack clicked his tongue and briefly thought it over. “I actually kind of like it. Who’d of thought you knew how to work that head of yours?”

“You’re quick on your hooves, but I got the bigger picture in mind,” Whisky teased, tapping the side of his head. “And, I might add, that now it is three to one.”

Now You've Done It

Two hours later, evening came. The sun was still high in the sky, but the sky itself was a distinctly paler shade of blue. A brush of orange started to make its way up from beyond the tips of the Windhurst Mountains, which were now casting their shadows down over the Green Stretch. It wouldn’t be long before those shadows found where Whiskey and Sharp Tack were.

“How much sun do you think we have left?” Whiskey asked, relaxing as they came to a stop at the top of a hill.

“Eh, there’s enough to get past the next cluster of forests,” he said, strapped into the harness next to him. He pointed at the horizon. “I’d rather not set up camp at one of those edges.”

“Yeah, don’t want to be in that position again,” Whiskey remarked. “Remember what happened last time?”

“Do I ever,” Sharp Tack mumbled, absently massaging his leg. He passed a glance back at Sparkler, squinting his eyes at the setting sunlight reflecting off the tip of her horn cap. She was still knocked out cold and hadn’t stirred from where he tied her down. “What do you think we should do about her?”

“Hit her in the head again before we go to sleep?” Whiskey offered.

“Tempting, but I was thinking of something less... drastic.” He thought for a moment. “Remember when she first woke up? She was all worried thinking she lost her book. We can probably use that as leverage to keep her complacent. We both know we can’t just keep her knocked out for the next two days.”

“Wouldn’t hurt to try,” Whiskey said.

“I could hurt our profit margin,” Sharp Tack said. “Hurt somebody well enough and the Bureau will be sure to come, regardless of whether or not she’s still breathing.”

“If she is Bureau.”

“It doesn’t matter. She’s something.” He blinked. “Hey, did you ever get a good look at whatever else was in that bag of hers?”

“Uh, yeah? She had a compass, some binoculars, and some other crap in there along with her book. And those apples.” He chuckled. “Those were good.”

“You’re an idiot, you know that?” Sharp Tack said, and then started removing himself from his harness.

Whiskey gave him a look. “What’d I do this time?”

“We can probably figure out what nationality she is by what kind of tools those are. Like where they came from.” He released the belt holding him to the yoke and stepped away. “Where’d you stash her bag?”

“I just chucked it inside the ‘coach somewhere,” he replied.

Sharp Tack turned and cantered over to the stagecoach. He noted the thin wooden beam stopping anything from falling out was itself loose, and an overturned crate had stood in the doorway. He stuck his lips to one side and shoved the box back, worried that something might have fallen out. When he poked his head inside, the disarray supported his suspicion.

He didn’t recall themselves ever taking the stagecoach over something particularly bumpy, or even hearing anything banging around inside. And now that he considered it, the last one in here was probably Whiskey. He never even walked around to this side of the carriage since he first teleported back to it with Sparkler.

He sighed and muttered something under his breath. Sharp Tack quickly climbed inside, pushing over loose objects and trying to get things at least a little bit organized. He could see where the wood panels had separated from that earlier explosion, where orange sunlight graciously leaked through and scattered around the interior like a cobweb. Sparkler’s bag was sitting inside of a bucket, which made him pause when he went to reach for it.

That pause was prolonged when he noticed a blue spark out of the corner of his eye. He glanced its way and found himself looking out of that short little front window, which opened up right behind the driver’s box. There he saw the back of Sparkler’s head, but also a blue glimmer emanating off the tip of her horn.

He thought it was just the sunlight, at least until Whiskey started yelling.

“Sharpy!” he heard him yell. “Get out of the ‘coach! Now! Damn thing’s gonna—!”

Sharp Tack didn’t even question him. He left the bag and was already halfway out the doorway when Whiskey’s voice was cut brutally short. In an instant, that little blue glimmer grew into a brilliant spark, and then exploded in a clash of pinks and blues.

The concussive blast hit Sharp Tack like a buck to the stomach. Before his hoof even hit the ground outside, his body was sent flailing and away from the explosion. Behind him, the stagecoach buckled and broke apart, the carriage’s integrity too weak to argue against the forces thrust unto it. The front axle snapped irreparably, throwing the stagecoach first into the ground and then, as it recoiled, rolling backwards several meters before the rest of it crashed back down. Panels splintered, the roof itself peeling back, and the entire front of the stagecoach virtually disappeared.

When the world stopped spinning just enough for Sharp Tack to register what had happened, a shower of fragments rained down on him. They were mostly chip-sized bits of wood and metal, but he quickly rolled to the side to avoid a larger chunk of shrapnel.

He staggered to his hooves, reeling from having the wind knocked out of him. He missed one step and hobbled to correct himself, but a sharp pain in his back nearly took him back down. He hunched over in the grass, bewildered by the tips sizzling back at him. A thin haze of smoke and ash lingered in the air around him.

“Sharp Tack!” he heard, just as his ears started ringing. Whiskey ran up out of nowhere and grabbed him. “Sharp Tack!” he again yelled.

“I’m fine!” he wheezed, pulling a hoof tight against his chest. “I just need to... to catch my breath, is all. Yeah.”

Whiskey looked back up at the carnage. There was a sizeable chunk of exposed dirt right beneath where the carriage once was. He could practically make out the explosive bubble that had been created, with how burnt short the wild grass was. The carriage tongue was but a giant splinter, tossed nearly a dozen meters forward. He was fortunate to have removed himself from the harness in time.

His gaze then hardened on the magenta unicorn sitting upright in the grass, on the opposite side of the burned earth, and staring back at them with wild, scared eyes—she looked someone woke her up with a bucket of water. Otherwise, besides the new black and gray stains covering her fur, she looked none the worse for wear.

She proved this by scampering to her hooves and running away.

“Get back here, you bitch!” Whiskey roared, dropping his friend and charging after her. But a twinge in his leg kept him from going at a full gallop. “I don’t care who you are! I’m going to kill you!”

And then suddenly, Sparkler skidded to a stop. Whiskey closed the distance in a matter of seconds and lunged. But he grasped nothing but air as Sparkler disappeared in a dark-pink flash, and ran his face straight into the dirt.

Sparkler appeared in another flash right beside the smoldering carcass of the stagecoach. The entire front end had been blasted open, exposing its contents to open air and spilling them out on the ground. In her panic, as she quickly tossed aside broken planks of wood and miscellany, she didn’t see Sharp Tack approach her.

But she did hear the shing of his machete being drawn, and stopped cold. She twisted around just as he lunged at her, and in another flash of magic, he was gone.

Somewhere, several hundred feet away, Sharp Tack sliced at an empty field and screamed.

Sparkler briskly returned to her search and after a few more precious seconds, she finally found her satchel. Fortunately for her, a bucket had mostly protected it from the blast. A quick check showed her everything was still inside it, even if the bag itself now smelled a bit funky.

She looked up to see Whiskey a short distance away, again running at her with a furious look in his eyes. It was the last thing she saw before she slammed her eyes shut and teleported far away.

Enter Stage Up

Sparkler popped out of her teleport a couple of feet in the air, just enough for his hooves to brush the very tips of the wild grass beneath her. Even though she precisely shot for such a height, the short fall was enough to catch her by surprise. Perhaps it was the adrenaline now coursing through her, edging her onto the tips of her hooves, that caused her not to think about what was happening and simply act.

But now, as she laid sprawled out in the grass with a sore ache at the base of her tail, there was nothing she could do but think. Her forehooves grabbled for her face, tugging at her mane and yanking her horn from side to side as a wave of emotion crashed into her. She kicked out at the air and struggled for breath, patting herself down as everything that had just transpired repeated inside her mind like a broken record. One moment, she was trying to come up with a way to weasel away from the two stallions, and then she was hit over the head. The next thing she knew—

“I exploded,” she uttered, staring listlessly at the empty sky overhead. “I seriously just exploded.”

The sky looked down on her and offered her its everything. The wind danced over the tips of the wild grass, finding the depression she made in the field and tickled her nose. Not too far away, the sound of flowing water slowly came up to meet her. She could’ve sworn she also heard a bird chirping. Soon thereafter, the a deep shadow fell over her and the sky began to darken.

She threw her hooves over eyes this time and pulled. “What the heck is wrong with me?!” she cried out, writhing there on the ground. Not even an echo tried to answer her.

Eventually, after the stars started to bore their holes in the sky like awakening eyes, and after the winds shifted from bringing chills to driving a stinging cold, and when the tears that welled up inside the pits of her eyes had dried, and all that was keeping her down the weighty migraine rocking her head, she sat up. Sparkler glanced out over what she could see of the world around her, and she sighed when she found the same old Green Stretch sprawling out in all directions.

She hung her head, just for bits and pieces of metal to slide off her horn and fall into a pile in her lap. She picked one of the odd fragments up, which felt warm in her hooves. It was covered in black soot marks and gave off the distinct, earthy scent of ozone, like the smell of fresh rain. She frowned when she realized some of the same black marks were all over her hooves. And that she’d been running her hooves all over her face earlier.

It was in the night when she first appeared her, wasn’t it? So why hadn’t she popped yet? Then again, Sharp Tack could’ve been lying to her. About that, at least. She knew she did a lot of lying herself. She dropped the metal fragment, reached over for her satchel, and stood.

The late evening was already handing the sky over to the darkness of night. Just a few lingering colors of sunset clung to the edges of the Windhurst Mountains to the east. She slung her satchel on and then walked over to where the sound of flowing water.

She hobbled down a small earthen embankment and appeared on the rocky shoreline of a familiar river. Her satchel absent slid off as she approached it. The water was much colder than before, which stung her hooves and legs as she waded further out into it. It then bit her as she took a deep breath and submerged herself in it.

At least the quick bath seemed to subdue—or rather override—the pain of her headache. Sparkler shortly ran back out of the river, her teeth chattering and her legs flailing between steps. Maybe she should’ve waited until the sun was out before doing that. But then again, she didn’t know if she wasn’t going to pop somewhere with any sort of water source. Which should be happening now. Or sometime soon. She sat on the riverbank, cold and wet, gripping her head with her hooves as she waited for the inevitable.

Which, as her luck would have it, didn’t come. Even as the night reigned completely overhead and her only comfort was the full moon’s light reflecting off the river, she still hadn’t popped. Instead, her headache only kept getting worse. Another hour passed in miserable silence until she finally got fed up and the odd stench coming from her satchel was too great to ignore.

She grabbed the bag, overturned it so everything clattered out onto the rocks, and then marched over to the river and furiously dunked the satchel in it. There wasn’t really a thought to it, she just kept shaking it around and smashing it against the riverbed. Even after the bag was well and truly soaked, to the point every bit of dirt and grime had left it, she kept dunking it, again and again. Her teeth were grit, gnashing together in a moment of absentmindedness. The pain in her head was simply too much for her to not give her attention to.

Until, at some point in the dead of night, she regained a bit of composure. Her legs were weak, her entire body racked with tiredness and shivering in the cold. The comforting winds now peppered her with needlepoints as she slugged back over to where her belongings lay. With a sort of mechanical anger, she sat down and threw everything inside the soaking wet bag. She closed it up and then gripped it tightly in her hooves, her eyes straining to keep her awake as her mind tried to escape the growing pain that cursed it.

At some point, she finally collapsed at the riverbank and fell unconscious. By sleep’s embrace or the weight in her head, she didn’t know. So long as she could briefly escape that insufferable pain, she didn’t care.

Sometime later, at the awkward point between morning and the afternoon, Sparkler woke up. To her pleasant surprise, her headache was gone. But a strange sharpness scratched all around her, and she soon realized she was in a pine tree.

She yanked her bandaged hoof tight against her chest and screamed. Then she fell twenty feet to the ground, hitting every branch along the way.

Do Over

Pine needles fell onto Sparkler like hot embers, poking her with their pointed tips and getting stuck in her fur. She furrowed her brow, watching the small shower come down on her until it quietly ceased. A sharp pain impacted the back of her head, but she knew it wasn’t the swelling headache that followed her the past two days. She knew that issue had left her for the time being. But it would return, as it always had.

She groaned and sat up, wincing at her sore tail. She didn’t quite remember how that happened, but she decided it wasn’t worth worrying about. Instead she focused on the dampness clinging to the back of her head. She gently ran a hoof over the area and found the pink of her fur marred by a deeper, darker red.

She wiped the blood off in the dirt and after a moment of thought, looked around for her satchel. It had fallen just beyond the reach of her hooves, actually, and she awkwardly leaned over the grab it. It was still damp from the dunk in the river and was now covered in dirt and other debris. That pulled another frown from her, but again she ignored it to worry about the present. She plucked her notebook out of the satchel and tore out a bunch of blank pages, then folded them all together until they were one thick, flat bundle.

Then she unwound the bandage that had been stuck to her foreleg for the past couple of weeks. It was dry and tried to remain its shape as it slowly came undone, taking some hairs and scabs with it. As it got down to the last layer against skin, Sparkler tried to peel it slowly, but as the pain grew too much she quickly yanked the whole thing off. Tears welled up in her eyes as she sat there for a second to regain her composure.

This was her first look at the old wound. It looked like a sponge, but every pore was covered by a tiny scab the size of a pinprick. Tufts of fur poked through the mess. If she didn’t know any better, she’d have thought a drooling chimera had bitten her. But she could dwell more on it later. She took the folded up paper and pressed it against the wound on her head, then used the old bandage to tie it off.

“I hope this doesn’t get infected,” she muttered, returning the notebook to her satchel. She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. “I probably look like a ninja who escaped from a psyche ward.”

Sparkler grimaced as she threw the dirty thing back over herself. Finally bothering to gather herself, she stood up and glanced around.

Thick pine trees and a dense screen of bushes and ferns didn’t let her see much. She stood in the middle of a forest, that much she gathered, hidden away by the shadows of the canopy. Chasms of light splintered into thin beams, spotlighting odd segments of the forest floor. Moss clung to several trunks and boulders, and even an overturned log that wasn’t too far away. The occasional chirping bird in the otherwise silent wood persuaded her she was, as with the Green Stretch, in the middle of nowhere. Again.

But she needed to make sure, still. She glanced up at the tree she fell out of and concentrated a spell, and the next second she found herself at its very top. The pine tree swayed with her weight, but held strongly enough to keep her still.

The sun was hidden behind an overcast sky. She wrapped as many legs as she could around this tree’s trunk and branches, and with another she produced her binoculars. And from here atop this perch, she was able to get a good lay of the land.

And she saw nothing but the tips of pine trees, stretching out in all directions and all across the horizon too. All except for one mound of rock in the far distance, perhaps five or so miles away. It just barely poked above the treeline. She rummaged again through her satchel for her compass, and discovered this rock was to the south.

“It’s been awhile since I’ve gone south,” she said to herself, carefully sliding her belongings back inside her satchel. Making sure it was secured to her person, she once again concentrated a spell.

But this time, she was more careful. She felt for the ethereal thread that linked her to some spot on that distant mound, a thread warped by the bonds of an infinitely compact mesh of similar magical wires. They all permeated the mana field, a dimension all their own, fraying off of everything in the world and reconnecting to all those loose strands. If one concentrated just enough, whether they were horned or not, they could surely feel the electrifying tingle of this field that connected themselves to the world.

It was kind of like gravity, in a sense. Teleportation was a lot like jumping, then. Sparkler just had to make sure that the wire she pulled on would lead her to where she wanted. And with all these other trees in the way, warping the mana field like gravity warps space and time, it was prudent she took her time with such a distance. Teleportation without forethought was as reckless as jumping into a void.

Every blind teleport she made just put greater emphasis on the ones she could see. To begin with, she didn’t want to end up embedded inside of a tree. She already dealt with that once before, and it wasn’t fun.

Finally, confident she was going where she wanted, she unloaded a powerful burst of magic and fell into and along the wire. Nearly instantaneously, she disappeared from the top of the pine tree and reappeared on top of a fat rock just over five miles away.

Granite's Tomb

Sparkler exited her teleport on a particularly flat stretch of rock, situated on the southern face of the short mountain. The strangeness of it was what drove her to it in the first place, on top of being a perfect place to appear in: from what she initially gathered, it was at the same altitude as the forest all round. And when her hooves hit nearly level ground, the first thing she saw was the towering stone walls on either side of her, easily as tall the pine trees she just escaped. A very deep, but very short gorge stuck nearly to ground level and pushed its way towards the heart of the mountain, ending with what appeared the be the opening to the cave almost a hundred meters away. This gorge was like a cake missing a very thin slice.

The walls carried strange etchings not unlike cresting waves, and the rock beneath her was likewise akin to a frozen torrent. Except for the occasional blocky step, which had been carved into the rock at some point. Bits of grass stuck to small pockets of dirt. Nearby, a flat window had been chiseled out of one of the walls. Etched into its stone, it read ‘Welcome to Granite’s Tomb’.

“Huh.” She glanced up the path towards the cave entrance. Then she glanced back, where another short walk away would return her to the surrounding forest. But there was also a small square shack, and a brown earth pony running up to meet her.

“Hey!” he shouted as he approached, which seemed to be waste of breath he desperately needed to hold on to. His uniform, which amounted to a rigid-brimmed hat and matching green shirt, seemed like it’d seen better days. At this distance, she didn’t know if those were patches or a profuse amount of pockets covering it. Perhaps both. There was also a gold slash over one of his soldiers.

But as he neared, gasping for breath, she realized those patches weren’t the kind she was expecting. They were more like badges. The stallion stopped in front of her, still trying to catch his breath, but he was able to ask, “What are you, I mean, how, what, how did you get over her?”

Sparkler scratched the side of her head. “I uh, teleported. Sorry. I didn’t know I couldn’t do that.”

The stallion rolled his eyes and, as his breathing settled, smiled. “Hey, it’s not something to worry about. You’re supposed to sign in back there when you visit any of the Quatros’ national monuments,” he added, pointing back at his wooden shack in the distance. He squinted at her. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

She chuckled. “Ah, you’ve caught me. No, I’m from...” There was a brief pause. “...Collisunda.”

The stallion whistled. “You’re quite a way’s away from the Lanoitome lands. Welcome to Granite’s Tomb, I suppose!” He offered her his hoof. “The name’s Patch Moss, but most ponies call me Mossy.”

Sparkler shook his hoof and returned a smile. “My name’s... Sparkler. But most ponies call me Sparkler.”

He laughed. “Nice to meet you! I’m a park ranger for the greater Walsuis National Park, more specifically Granite’s Tomb. At least during the summer, anyways.” He snorted. “Must’ve been quite the distance for you teleport all the way up here without me seeing you coming out of the woods.”

“It really wasn’t that far,” she said, shifting on her hooves.

Patch Moss nodded. “I’ll take your word for it. I can’t exactly cast spells, y’see?” He lifted his hat to show his messy green hair and the certain lack of a horn. “So, what brings you to Granite’s Tomb? Or this side of the Luna Ocean, for that matter? I can’t say we get too many ponies nowadays from across the ocean.”

“Oh, I’m just wandering around,” she was quick to say, just to bite her own tongue. Quick on her hooves, she continued with, “I’m a cartographer, actually. For the High King of Collisunda, His Majesty Sharp-sky. Sharpsky.”

Patch Moss blinked at her, apparently stunned. But before he could respond, Sparkler followed up by saying, “And no, it’s not like that.” She laughed. “I’m not... some... royal dignitary. Believe me, if I was, I would have an entourage and this thing on my head would be trailing ten feet behind me.”

A wave of relief fell over Patch Moss. “Well then!” He laughed again. “I was worried I missed a memo or something. And now that I think about it, royalties aren’t exactly the adventuring type.” He then looked up at her forehead. “And uh, what is that, by the way?”

“A bandage,” she said, absentmindedly trying to hide her scabbed leg. “An improvised one, at that. I kind of hit my head earlier today.”

“Ouch!” Patch Moss whistled. “Hey, why don’t you come down to my station real quick? I can get you patched up properly and split a meal with ya. Looks like it’s about lunchtime anyway,” he said, glancing up at the overcast looming over them. The sun was just a not-so gray area in the sky. “And after that I can give you a tour of Granite’s Tomb, if you want. It’s what I’m paid to do, after all!”

“Yeah, sure,” Sparkler said. She turned and followed Patch Moss down towards the forest, but not before sparing one more glance at the cave over her shoulder.

Log

The little shack Sparkler had seen from afar was actually an outhouse, she realized as they approached. The real main building was a sizeable cabin tucked away into a corner, as the gorge opened up widely and welcomed the encroaching forest. The ground here was much stone as it was dirt and grass, and even a few saplings sprouted out of open cracks in the rock. But a well-worn, compacted dirt path kept these intrusions at bay. It forked off into one path that led straight into the forest, and the other led right up to the cabin.

‘Granite’s Peak’ was writ in bold planks of wood, nailed a small platform protruding from the structure's roof. The building itself was a log cabin, its back pressed firmly up against the rock. The few windows were all opened, leaking a warm and creamy scent. The front door had a little sign that read, ‘Come on in!’

It also had a bell that chimed as Patch Moss pushed the door open. The inside was about what she had expected: a general store-looking thing that offered more knick knacks than anything practical. Although, there was a burning fireplace off to one side and a few lounge chairs spaced around it. A counter blocked off the left side of the building, the wall behind it displaying some of the more pricey items for sale—a giant pinecone for 30₡?!—except for one door marked for employees only. But it did a terrible job of suppressing the smell of a warm meal on the other side.

“Roomy,” Sparkler remarked, noting that gratuitous spacing between the two odd aisles and the front entrance.

Patch Moss flipped open a little countertop door and stepped behind the counter. “That’s one way of putting it,” he said light heartedly. “Granite’s Peak isn’t exactly a tourist destination. I’m lucky to get one party of a ponies a week passing through. It’s a shame not many ponies are interested nowadays in taking a good hike through the woods.” He produced a heavy book from below and dropped it onto the countertop with a thump. “But hey, that’s life for you. Quatros is a big country for such a relatively low population. Anyways,—” He spun the book around “—if you could sign here first, that’d be great. Just put your name and where you’re from. It’s kind of a ‘look who stopped by’ sort of thing.”

Sparkler was offered a pen and she took it between her teeth. Looking down at the registry, she found there had only been three ponies this month. The latest was a “High Inquisitor Sebaste?” she read aloud.

“Yeah. Granite’s Peak might not be a thing for Quatrosians, but it sure is hot spot for foreigners apparently!” Patch Moss laughed and walked to the other end of the counter. “Some pegasus from Equestria stopped by five days ago, wanting to take a look at the tomb itself. Can’t say what she was after, but she seemed satisfied just looking around.”

“Huh.” Sparkler clicked her tongue and scribbled down the date, her name, and Collisunda.

“Yeah...” he continued. “And before her, there was some kind fellow with a strange name. How’d he spell it? Cupric Nose? Circus Pone? Copernicus?”

Sparkled looked back down at the registry. “Uh, Coin Spruce.”

Patch Moss smacked the countertop with a hoof. “Yeah, that’s it! A strange sort, talked like he was from another planet sometimes, but he's the kind of guy you just can't not love, y’know? Sometimes I wonder what it is that brings ponies by here, in all honesty.” He chuckled again and pulled out a thick cloth bag from beneath the counter, colored deep red with a short white cross sewn onto the front flap. He opened it up and pulled out some clean bandages. “Now, get over here. Can’t let you walk around like you just returned from the dead.”

Sparkler smirked and trotted over. “I was thinking ninja nurse, or something,” she said. “Do I really look like that bad?”

“A proper shower wouldn’t hurt.”

“Now that I can agree with,” she said with a laugh.

Patch Moss turned away briefly to produce a bucket of water, a couple of white rags, and some disinfectant. “Too bad I don’t have one,” he said, and then hopped over the counter to meet her. “But we can at least clean that wound. When’d you get it?”

“Earlier today,” she said again. “I... fell out of a tree.”

He gave her a look. “What were you doing in a tree?”

“Good question,” she remarked, and so that conversation point died.

After a short pause, he then asked, “May I?” Sparkler blinked at him and then slowly twisted her head. Patch Moss carefully pulled apart the knot holding the bandage together, but a sickly amount of congealed blood kept her wad of paper in place. That didn’t peel off so easily.

She winced. “Is it bad?”

“Eh, kind of,” he said, dunking a wet rag in the water and wringing it out. “It’s a big cut, but the good thing is that the bleeding’s stopped. Don’t... think I see any debris.” He gently yet firmly patted the wound with the wet rag. “Speaking of injuries, what happened to your leg? Looks like tree bark.”

“You’re not too far off,” she said at first, but then caught her tongue before she could expand. “Let’s just say that I’m not terribly fond of trees.”

“Then you’re in the wrong part of Quatros,” he joked, as he lifted part of her mane to apply some disinfectant to the wound. He paused. “Now it’s your turn to ask me something.”

“What? Oh.” She thought for a moment. “Why become a park ranger, I guess?”

“Oh, I grew up in a small village on the other side of the country, surrounded by a different forest.” He hummed, getting the fresh bandage ready. “I really loved the country and I had a thing for going off into the woods on my own when I was a colt. I’d always end up dragging a friend along to show them something cool I found or just a really beautiful spot to do nothing in, even. Then one day, I found a really, really old dragon skeleton! Oldest complete skeleton in the North, actually. It was dated to be around two-hundred thousand years old! Not even the dragon homelands to the east knew of one so old.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, I got my cutie mark that day,” he added. “A fossil of a leaf with a little lamp beside it. I knew then, however, that I didn’t really want to go looking for these things. What I really wanted was to share them. And well, one thing led to another and now I’m here. Hold still.” He placed some fresh gauze over her wound and tightly wrapped the bandage around it. “Anyways, that’s my story. How’d you get your cutie mark? Doesn’t really look like something befitting a cartographer, I must admit.

“Oh. Well...” Sparkler started, “That’s a... a really long story. But, I guess to put it lightly, one day I was digging for rubies and had to do a bit of history and research some old maps, and I found a really big deposit by finding a pattern in the old records.”

“Ha! I love it!” Patch Moss exclaimed. “Maybe you’ll find a bunch of gold around here. There was a gold rush a couple of centuries ago further south.”

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Do you have a map?”

“Sure do!” He tightened the bandage around her head. “And how’s this? Too tight?”

“It’s good,” she said, and he tied it off.

“So yeah,” Patch Moss continued, turning back to put all the supplies away. “You’re here on a mission, aren’t you? I got a sense you’re going to want to look at one anyways. I could point a couple of the old mining towns if you’re interested. But they’re quite a few days’ trek away. Heck, you probably came from one, right?”

She nodded.

“Which one?”

“Uh...” She adjusted the bandage a little bit, making sure her mane wasn’t caught too much beneath it. “I forget.”

He laughed again. “Yeah, I don’t blame you. There’s almost too many to count.” He had returned to the other side of the counter and stashed the medical bag away. He pulled the red-tainted water and rags off the counter. “Hey, why not have some lunch first? All this talking is making me hungry, and the chowder in the back isn’t helping at all. Then we can take a tour of Granite’s Tour, if you want. I did promise earlier, after all.”

She smiled. “Thanks. That sounds good.”

Underscored

After thanking him for the heaping of mushroom-and-potato chowder, which was easily the best thing Sparkler could remember eating, Patch Moss led her back outside and up the trail to Granite’s Tomb. Along the way, he pointed out the wavy markings on the sides of the gorge walls and the unevenness of the ground.

“So while Granite’s Tomb predates the founding Quatros, we don’t know exactly how old it is,” he was saying. “But the marks themselves, you’ll notice, look more like the flaky skin of an onion starting to peel. This suggests that the rock was excavated out long ago as opposed to, say, being split apart. The lack of relating stress fractures on the opposite side of the Tomb further supports this. However, as a conflicting piece of evidence, you’ll notice there’s no tool markings. Erosion has smoothed out the walls for sure, but there should still be visible pockets and cuts even after a hundred millenia.”

“Maybe it’s natural?” she offered.

“Unlikely,” he replied dismissively. “Remember when I mentioned that gold rush? A stallion by the name of Granite was the first to find this place way back then. He helped create the story that an ancient dragon clawed out this gorge. But we figured that in order for a dragon to have the strength to do that to solid granite, the sucker would’ve had to be almost a hundred meters tall.”

“Maybe it was your old skeleton?”

They reached the end of the gorge where the cave entrance opened up, and Patch Moss paused to laugh. “That guy was a just a liiiittle bit too small, unfortunately.” He reached into one of shirt pockets and pulled out a twine necklace, with little yellow crystal that had one of its ends encased in silver. He smacked the metal end against the rock, and the exposed end lit up like a candle.

“This way,” he said, slipping the necklace on. He then crossed into the mouth of the cave and added, “Watch your step.”

Sparkler moved into the passage and followed. The entrance had concealed the cave’s interior before, with the pale overcast failing to illuminate more than a meter or two. But with the lightstone around Patch Moss’s neck, the entire cave lit up like a roaring fire.

Granted, the cave was only a dozen paces deep. Sparkled glanced up at the walls, noting how smooth they were even compared to those outside. The floor was even perfectly level. If she were to guess, whatever had created the gorge didn’t excavate this tiny cave. A few stalagmites and stalactites stuck to the floor and ceiling, which resembled a clenched maw.

“Over here,” he ushered, and stepped further into the cave’s throat. He disappeared behind a particularly thick stalagmite, but the yellow-orange light remained. Sticking her head around the corner, Sparkler found a very narrow passage that moved further into the short mountain.

“So is this called Granite’s Tomb because of all the granite, or after the pony who found it?”

“Now that’s a question!” Patch Moss’s voice echoed off the walls and from around another corner. When she reached it, the passage wound to the side, and then again and again. But the light led her on, and she kept forward. Their hooves sounded loudly off the stone floors. It seemed like they were walking up.

Patch Moss continued, “Truth be told, there’s not a whole lot known about Granite’s Tomb. There’s many stories behind it, and without a doubt there’s countless more to uncover. And that’s a large part of its appeal, I think. Doesn’t matter if most of what I know is just speculation, because the truth always comes out in the end. Besides, the greater the mystery, the greater that payoff will be.”

“So is that what made you want to be stationed here for? The mystery?”

“A part of it. I also like the outdoors and can’t stand my mother. But another aspect is all the curious characters who stop by and take interest. It’s fulfilling to share these stories to an ear that listens, and sometimes I’ll hear a new one in return. Why, that inquisitor who came by earlier in the week seemed to know more about this place than I do!”

“Oh?” Sparkler rounded yet another corner, and finally it seemed to be the last one. “Then what do you know for certain about this place?”

“Well, there’s a couple things.” He clicked his tongue, turning around to greet Sparkler with a smile as she exited into a large, circular chamber. “There’s a tomb and it’s made of granite.”

The room was easily a ten meters in circumference, a perfect half-sphere with blemishless walls from the floor all the way to the domed ceiling. A small window had been cut out of the rock somewhere up above, letting in a faint amount of daylight that yielded to Patch Moss’s lightstone. Squarely in the middle of the room sat a flat-faced sarcophagus, flush with and perhaps even part of the floor. It rose to her chin level and seamlessly sealed. Carved all over its sides were a nonsensical covering of markings that, to her surprise, she vaguely recognized.

“This is Granite’s Tomb,” Patch Moss started again, walking around the sarcophagus. “Like the outside, it’s just as unknown how the inside was carved out. However, shortly after it was discovered, the tomb spend its first several decades as a church. In fact, they didn’t know it was a tomb at first. This sarcophagus spent a lot of time as an altar ponies used to pray to Epona, pray for whatever ailments they had to end, and give thanks for keeping the Nightmares suppressed behind the World’s Belt.”

Sparkler walked up to the sarcophagus, finding even more of the markings all across its top. She ran a hoof over them as Patch Moss continued. “In time, however, Granite’s Tomb became assimilated into the National Reserves system when parliament recognized the forest as a protected site. After that, the church proceedings dwindled and it wasn’t long before advancements in archaeology let us know more about it. Like the fact that this altar is hollow.” He rested a hoof on the sarcophagus. “And, after finding a couple similar sites across the continent, and deciphering some of this”—he ran his hoof across the markings—“we were able to learn that there’s a body in here. Supposedly.”

She tilted her head at him. “You don’t seem so convinced.”

“Well, that inquisitor came by the other day,” he said. “During the evening of the summer solstice, the sun is aligned perfectly for just a couple minutes with that there window.” He pointed at the rectangular hole in ceiling. “She came by and found that the light hits this string of letters perfectly. And it says—”

“Amitay?” Sparkler said, looking down at where his hoof was.

“...she pronounced it ‘Am-eet-oy’,” Patch Moss said, giving her a look. “It means, ‘to give life’.”

“No... Ameetoy means ‘pregnant’,” Sparkler insisted, glaring down at the string of odd letters with a deep frown. “This says ‘Amitay’. It means... life carrier, I think. Life vessel, maybe?”

“Huh.” Patch Moss took a step back and scratched his chin. “Where’d you learn Drakrenic?”

“Uh...” She tore her eyes away finally and looked him. “I... forget?”

He gave her a skeptical look. “Well, no offence, but I’m going to take the Equestrian’s word for it. She looked like she was on a mission. I mean, she made the effort to be here on the solstice when the sun was out. But you look like you’re...”

“Like what?”

Patch Moss shrugged. “Frankly, you look lost.”

Toward

Sparkler squeezed her way out of the cave and returned to the gorge. Exiting the cave felt like exiting the barrel of a cannon, shedding the hot stuffy air she hadn’t realized had been suffocating her, and the tall granite walls on either side ushered her forward. But a curious weight in her hooves held her at the mouth of the cave, staring down that channel at the gray-as-rock sky and the little patch of green all the way down at the end. For however long it was, she simply stood there breathing fresh air and trying to pick out the thoughts rolling inside her head.

Patch Moss walked up behind her, the echo of his hooves leading the way. “I didn’t mean to offend back there,” he said slowly.

“You didn’t,” Sparkler said after a pause. She lifted a hoof to her brow. “It just... Sorry. I’m just confused right now.”

“The feeling is mutual,” Patch Moss said. “You’re kind of a confusing pony.”

“Don’t I know it.” She sighed. “You said that language was... Drak-renic? Looked like Old Ungular to me.”

“It’s been Old Ungular for over two hundred years,” he said. “‘The light of the world hides inside a heart of stone, waiting for the torch to come and carry it home’. That’s what’s inscribed all over the sarcophagus in there ad nauseum. There’s been scholarly types from all over the North throughout the years, and they all agree that’s the one real translation. Then a few days ago, some pony from Equestria stops by and says there’s part of a secret language hidden in plain sight? Just the words for ‘waiting’ and ‘torch’ scrunched together to make another?” He laughed dryly. “I don’t believe it. But you...?”

She shook her head. “I don’t even know, honestly.”

Patch Moss hummed to that and nodded. “And that’s what I meant when I said you looked lost. You seemed just as surprised as I was to hear you repeat what that inquisitor said.” He thought for a moment. “What is Drakrenic, by the way? I mean, what kind of language is it?”

Sparkler clicked her tongue. “It’s... very old.”

There was a pause as Patch Moss waited for her to expand, but when she didn’t he just laughed. “Yeah, that’s all the inquisitor was willing to say too. You scholarly types sure are a secretive bunch, you know that?”

She blinked at him. “I never said I was a scholar.”

He smiled. “And that’s how I know for sure you’re telling the truth.”

Her gaze hardened. “What?”

“I’m not going to press,” he said, lifting his hooves. “But you really need to work on your lying, you know that? I could’ve bought your cutie mark story, but you really don’t have the acting skills to support it.”

She stared at him and he just laughed. He continued, “You seem like a good pony. But you just, as I’ve said, look lost.”

Sparkler shifted uneasily on her hooves. But before she could summon the wherewithal do something other than stand there, Patch Moss started walking away down the gorge. “Come on!” he said. “You said you wanted a map earlier, right? I know there’s a bunch laying around in the shop.”

Succor

“Here you go,” Patch Moss said with a smile, slapping down a neatly folded pamphlet on the countertop. It had the front image of—perhaps unsurprisingly—and expansive forest with the name ‘Walsuis’ bolstered proudly overhead. He slid it across to Sparkler and said, “It’s just a map of the park, mind, but it’s got all the major details in there.”

“Thanks,” Sparkler said, taking it in her hooves. She unraveled the mess of paper until its size was tenfold and she flattened it out across the countertop, and her eyes lit up.

Patch Moss leaned over and stuck his hoof right in the middle of it. “This here’s where we’re at,” he said, tapping the center of the map. He slowly dragged his hoof towards the south. “Over here is Kiln and Goldburg, and way over here is Revansfield. They’re not exactly cities, but they’re certainly some of the larger settlements inside the park.”

Sparkler ran her eyes across the map. “I always figured things like national parks would keep ponies out of settling in them?”

“Yeah, Quatros is pretty laxed about that kind of thing. I mean, we’re not Equestria or Collisunda. Besides, there aren’t any actual cities here. Population, zoning, actual location, and deforestation are all taken into account.” He clicked his tongue. “Anyways, there’s plenty of really tiny villages that aren’t shown here. These are just the big ones. Go north and you’ll find where most of Quatros is, eventually, but the area between here and there is pretty unlived. Go south and you’ll find more populated areas all the way up to the foot of the Belt. And—it isn’t shown—but over here to the west there’s a big trading route that crosses through the Sundried Basin. The Asland leads right to it.” He looked up at her. “Which way did you come from, by the by?”

Sparkler thought about it, staring intently at some random spot in the woods just north of Granite’s Peak. When the silence between the two grew too uncomfortably long, she conceded and went to show him. “Here, she stated.”

But Patch Moss furrowed his brow at the spot. “Huh. Like, down from Hoofshear?”

“No, it’s...” She groaned. “It’s really, really hard to explain. And personal.”

He dismissively shook a hoof at her and smiled. “No no, it’s alright. I don’t need to know.”

But for some unknown reason, she didn’t want to let it go there. The opportunity was finally here to open herself up, even to somepony who seems like they’d actually listen, but the breath to carry the urge never came. She rolled her thoughts on her tongue until one finally came out. “This Equestrian inquisitor, Sebaste, was it? Did she say where she was going?”

Patch Moss hummed. “She said she was going southwest, so I’d assume Revansfield. Maybe even Last Foot.” He scratched his chin. “Heck, she’s probably at Revansfield already. Why?”

“Like I said, it’s kind of personal.” She clicked her tongue. “But I’m hoping I can find her now.”

He chuckled. “You really aren’t from Collisunda, aren’t you? Let alone some cartographer. You’re one strange pony, Sparkler.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” she said with a small laugh. She pulled the map close and started folding it back up, which kind of surprised Patch Moss. He gave her a look as she said, “Do you mind if I keep this?”

“It’s complimentary!” he chirped.

“Thank you,” she said, sliding it into her satchel. She tugged on the strap against her breast and took a step back, which made Patch Moss’s confused look twist.

“You’re leaving?” he asked her, skeptically.

“Uh...” She blinked. “I was planning on it?”

“Now hold on a second.” He hopped over to her. “The closest place is Kiln and that’s a two day’s hike away. No way you’re just leaving.”

She awkwardly smiled at him. “No, it’s okay. I can—”

“What have you even got in there?” he asked, pointing at her satchel. “There’s gotta be hardly a thing in there. No rope? No first aid kit? I doubt you have any food!”

“I can make it just fine!” she dismissed. “I made it here just fine!”

“With a dirty bandage around your forehead.” Patch Moss gave her a skeptical look. He passed a glance over her scabby foreleg. “You’re not hiking through this park without the proper gear.”

She rolled her eyes. “Look, I really appreciate all you’re doing for me so far, but I’ll be fine.”

For the first time since they met, Patch Moss frowned. “Humor me.”

Inter Mission: Part 1

“Where are we right now?” Sparkler asked, her head poking over the roof the stagecoach.

Down below, Whiskey adjusted his hat in such a way it blocked her out in addition to the afternoon sun. Sharp Tack walked beside him in the harness, glancing up at her skeptically.

“The Green Stretch,” he said plainly.

“Well, yeah,” Sparkler said, throwing a hoof out. “I get that. But like, what country? I know there’s quite a few between the Equator and Agrisaltar, and this Portsmouth could be in any of them for all I know.”

“Fair enough, I suppose,” Sharp Tack said. “We’re currently in the middle of Collisunda, just south of Agrisaltar. Portsmouth is where several rivers from the mountains converge into the River Boreas.”

“Do you have a map?”

For a quick moment, both stallions stopped pulling the carriage and the tall grasses threatened to trip them up. But it kept rolling and pushed them into their next steps. Beneath the brim of his hat, Whiskey shot his friend a hesitant look.

“On a napkin, somewhere,” Sharp Tack said, hiding his face.

Sparkler frowned at them. “Then how do you know where we’re going?”

“Didn’t we say it before?” Whiskey said, shooting her a glance. “We’ve walked this route countless times. But if you want to find your own way, you’re more than welcome to get off any time you want.”

“Sorry, Miss,” Sharp Tack added. “We don’t have anything here for your catalogue. You can buy one in Portsmouth if you’re really dying for it.”

Sparkler let out an exasperated sigh and threw herself back down on the carriage roof.

Treachery

Whiskey flicked his hat out of his eyes. “What?”

Sharp Tack was busy removing himself from his harness, but in his hurry his hooves were fumbling. “That damn filly just took off!”

Whiskey jumped in seat, rolling off and landing hard on the driver box floor in a failed attempt to stand. He threw his hooves over the side and repeated, “What?!”

“She just teleported away!” Sharp Tack declared, finally freeing himself.

“Where?!”

“To Tartarus if I know!”

Whiskey turned and frantically scanned his eyes all over the landscape. A flash of pink appeared well over a hundred feet from them and he pointed. “There!” he shouted, just to spy Sparkler’s distant form disappear in another flash of light. An instant later she reappeared, and much further away. “No, there!”

Sharp Tack yelled and took off running. “I’m going to break that horn of hers!” he cried, his voice fading into the wind.

Whiskey muttered something under his breath and hopped off the stagecoach. There was no way he’d be able to keep pace with his friend, especially not with his leg. And even if they were able to catch her again, what was he to do? He couldn’t just bind her in a telekinesis spell for the next couple of days. No, their only hope of catching her now was Sharp Tack’s ability to smooth talking.

Unless, maybe, he threatened her with his machete or knocked her out. In which case, they’d need a plan B. And as much as he didn’t like it, there was only one Plan B he could think of.

He walked up to the stagecoach doorway and fumbled his way inside. After a minute of sifting through boxes and debris, he at last found what he was after: a dirty, banged up metal box. He sat down on an overturned bucket and popped open the tiny latches that held it down.

Whiskey pulled the two horn caps out and stared at them, running them over with his hooves. Each one held a little crystal bead at their tips, one blue and the other purple. Neither one was shining like a light, but they were full of bright color regardless. Brilliant.

He glared at them, raising the tips to his eyes. He could just barely make out tiny black splotches inside the crystals, hidden by the swirling colors of their respective gems. He figured that either one would last until they reached Portsmouth, but after what happened last time, he really didn’t want to chance it.

A sigh escaped him and he slowly placed the horn caps back inside the lock box, but his thought process was quickly cut short when the horn caps clattered nosily against the box’s floor. He stared down at it, perplexed, and pushed the standing papers to one side. The stack was thinner than he thought it should be.

Whiskey rummaged briefly through them until he realized one was missing, and he frowned.