Spike's Doom and/or Destiny

Chapters

Into the Crypts
Heroes of Destiny
Clothes Make the Mare
Rules of the Game
On the Map
Farmer's Fields
Cows and Crows
Cow Level
Total Bull
Just Reward
Swear to God, Derpy
Pigheaded
River Town
Back in the General Direction of the Track
The Castle in the Forest
Driven Batty
Exploring the Maze
Waterway
Lord Orcus
Mission Report
Preparations
Fun and Games
Mountain Climbing
Snowball Fight
Peak of Luxury
Mazes and Minecarts
Mines of Moriaz
Is There Any Escape From Noise?
Is There Any Escape, Period?
What Dreams
Down on the Farm
Small Village
Flutter Valley
Airship Antics
New Mech City
Welcome to the Past
Vocation Vacation
The Adventure Begins
Down the River
It's Raining Deer
Quest With the Best

Into the Crypts

Bon Bon was apparently enough of a rogue to find the hidden lever that opened the portcullis, and with Spike bravely taking the lead, the intrepid adventurers descended the rough-hewn staircase that led to their destiny. As they descended, the air got warmer and dryer, and a steady orange glow brightened as they approached the bottom of the stairs. They emerged from the staircase onto a narrow causeway crossing a glowing pool of bubbling orange liquid.

“Is that lava?” Spike asked, looking over the edge.

“Jump in and find out,” Moondancer said.

Spike considered it, but, “Nah, it’s like ten feet down. I wouldn’t be able to climb back up.”

“I guess we’re not in Ponyville anymore!” Derpy said, hovering up off the ground and flitting towards the edge.

Bon Bon grabbed her by the tail and dragged her back to the middle. “Let’s not tempt fate,” she said. “Everypony stay on the path.”

“Even if we see hidden treasure?” Derpy asked. “Look!” She pointed her hoof, and following it, the others were able to dimly make out a bright glint from something shiny on another platform through the heat distortion rising from the lava.

Bon Bon shook her head. “I don’t think you’re meant to just fly over the lava. It’s obviously a barrier. There’ll be another way to get to the treasure.”

“Unless flying over is the way,” Spike said. “Games have secrets you only pass using a special ability all the time.”

“Moondancer?” Bon Bon asked. “What do you think?”

“It’s obviously a trap,” she said. “The gold probably isn’t even real. For that matter, this whole bridge could be rigged to sink into the lava. We should get moving.”

The trotted – or in Spike’s case, jogged – down the bridge, which showed no signs of collapsing, until they came to a larger platform right in the middle of the room. As Spike set foot on it, the floor started to rumble, and before their eyes, a large pony skeleton rose from the ground, its eyes glowing bright green. It clattered menacingly.

Spike stepped forwards, drawing his sword, and roared back at it, drawing its attention. It met his gaze, and as one they leapt for each other, the skeleton with its bony hooves and sharp shards of shattered teeth, and Spike with his rusty blade.

“Ahhh! Get it off get if off!” Spike banged on the side of the skeletal pony’s neck with his sword, while its teeth held him in place, latched on to his shoulder. They weren’t able to penetrate his scales, but it kept gnawing, and it hurt!

“I’ve got this,” Moondancer said, and then there was the faint chime of unicorn magic, and the skeleton shattered into a pile of bones. “You okay, little guy?”

“I’m fine,” Spike said, his breathing gradually slowing. “I was just a little startled, that’s all.”

“Are you sure you’re a wizard?” Derpy asked.

“Shut up,” Moondancer said.

“She’s got a point,” Bon Bon said. “You kind of just hit it with your staff.”

“I didn’t want to waste my magic points,” Moondancer said. “Wizards hit things with staffs all the time.”

===

They had to fight a lot more skeletons. Every few steps, it seemed, the ground would rumble, and more skeletons would rise up before them, hissing and chattering their teeth, and then leap at Spike. Soon he was sore all over, but the skeletons couldn’t really hurt him, so he kept leaping forwards to get their attention, and then did his best to block their attacks while the rest of the party bashed at them with their weapons.

“Come on, use a spell!” Derpy said, after Moondancer took out yet another skeleton with her staff. “I want to see your battle magic!”

“I’m saving it for the boss,” Moondancer said.

“You don’t actually know any battle magic, do you,” Bon Bon said.

Moondancer rolled her eyes. “I read through Big Bee’s Basics last year. I’m pretty sure I can remember some of the spells.”

“You’d be more sure if you actually practiced with them,” Derpy said.

“I’m not going to practice in the middle of a dungeon!” Moondancer said. “I’ll just tire myself out, and have nothing left when we actually come up against something dangerous. I don’t know how these illusions work, but I’m pretty sure that if we mess up and get killed it’s going to hurt. A lot.”

“And?” Bon Bon said.

Moondancer scrunched up her muzzle. “And I don’t like pain? I thought that part was self-explanatory.”

“Don’t worry,” Spike said, getting to his feet, a bit wobbly. “I’ll protect you.”

Derpy frowned at Spike. “Looks like somepony needs a muffin.”

“Well, too bad,” Bon Bon said. “We didn’t bring any with us, and even if I was a cook, I wouldn’t be able to summon muffins out of nothing. Maybe you should try praying to the great muffin?”

Derpy narrowed her eye, then sat up and folded her forelegs against her heart. “Oh great muffin, please heal Spike.”

A faint noise wafted through the air, like a choir of angels, and a bright spotlight shone down from the ceiling, blinding anypony who tried to look for its source. Slowly, reverently, a sparkling muffin descended from the light, landing in Spike’s outstretched claw as he reached for it.

He gingerly took a bite – and his eyes went wide. “Hey!” he said, around a mouthful of muffin. “This is really good!”

===

Two thousand million billion skeletons (and half a dozen muffins) later, they finally reached what had to be the last chamber of the dungeon. They’d never found a way to the treasure platform in the lava cave, although they had found a bunch of gold and gems tucked away in one corner or another, as well as some upgrades for their equipment. Spike now had a spiked shield that damaged the enemies as they attacked him, Moondancer had found a wand that shot little balls of light (although she decided to stick with her trusty staff), and Bon Bon had unearthed a well-crafted, jewel encrusted ladle.

“It’s a mace,” she insisted. “Rogues uses maces, especially against skeletons.”

Derpy giggled. “Whatever you say!”

The last chamber was lit by braziers with evil purple flames, and filled with covered sarcophagi that they knew from experience were likely to contain either a group of angry skeletons, or a small amount of gold. At the far end was a majestic doorway, lined in glowing runes, and before it stood a skeletal dragon, flanked by a pair of gigantic skeletal ponies.

The party of adventurers froze as they entered the room, but while the skeletons had obviously seen them, they seemed content to bide their time.

So Derpy shrugged, and flipped the lid off the first sarcophagus. “Ooh! Gems!”

Ten minutes later, they’d fought off the last of the coffin-dwelling skeletons, and were standing directly before what was obviously the boss monster of the skeleton dungeon.

“So… do I just go up and hit him?” Spike asked.

“That, or try yelling at him again,” Derpy suggested.

Suddenly, there was a terrifying roar, and the skeletal dragon leapt at the group.

“Big Bee’s Bubble!” Moondancer shouted, her horn flaring as she cringed back and hid behind her staff. With a loud ‘pop’, a force field appeared around the group. It shivered as the dragon slammed into it, then shredded beneath its claws with a noise like tearing metal.

But it had bought them some time. Bon Bon and Derpy leapt at it with their weapons clutched in their teeth, and bashed on its sides as Spike danced in front of it and tried to hold its attention. Its fierce teeth darted down at the tiny dragon, latching onto his shield, and lifted him up into the air.

“Ahhhh!” Spike let out a high-pitched scream, meant to taunt the dragon into continuing to attack him, and held tightly onto his shield as it shook its head back and forth like a dog playing with a stuffed toy.

“Watch out!” Moondancer shouted, but too late. While they were all focused on the dragon, the two giant ponies had moved up, and each gave a hollow, reverberating whinny as it swiveled around on its forelegs to position itself for a mighty buck.

“Gah!”

“Nooo!”

The two hapless ponies cried out in agony as they went flying the length of the room to crumple against the wall to either side of the door they’d come in.

“Ahhh!” Spike screamed again, but it was useless – with one last shake, the dragon tossed him down half the length of the room to tumble and roll to a halt between his teammates.

“Um… good skeleton?” Moondancer said, taking a step back as all three boss monsters focused on her.

The dragon responded with a gout of purple-black flames, that washed over her and turned her into a screaming torch. After a few seconds, the flames stopped, and her charred body collapsed to the ground.

“Great muffin…” Derpy said, staring in horror.

“Don’t worry,” Bon Bon said. “It’s just a game. Now come on – we need to focus on the little guys first, alright?”

“I’m with you,” Spike said, climbing to his feet, a little dizzy. Giving a fearsome war cry, he rushed back down the aisle towards the enemies, Bon Bon tight on his tail.

“Great muffin, please let Moondancer be alright,” Derpy said, a tear leaking from underneath her eyepatch. There was a glow, and a muffin descended… but Moondancer was in no state to eat it, so it sat in front of her muzzle, unloved.

Worse, while Spike and Bon Bon managed to quickly shatter one of the pony skeletons, and distract the dragon, the third skeleton was making a bee-line across the room, right for her. With a squeak, she leapt into the air, but was too slow to keep it from head-butting her right in the belly, knocking her back against the wall again.

But she managed to stay in the air, and sailed across the room to land next to Moondancer. Taking the muffin carefully in her teeth, she focused all her willpower and faith on not eating it herself, right then and there. Instead, she pried open Moondancer’s jaws, placed the muffin inside, and then, with a supreme effort, let go of it.

Derpy’s sacrifice was rewarded – as the taste hit Moondancer’s tongue, she shuddered back to life and started to chew. When it was gone she stood up on shaky hooves, and opened her eyes. “Thanks –“

“Bubble!” Derpy said urgently.

Moondancer cast another Big Bee’s Bubble just in time to keep the remaining skeletal pony from kicking her butt. She turned around and brandished her staff. “Couldn’t you at least –“ she whacked it over the head “—wait until I was done –“ she smashed in its ribcage, sending it toppling to the ground “— thanking my friend?” With one last blow, the skeleton fell to pieces, the lights in its eyes going out.

“I’m your friend?” Derpy said, grinning.

Moondancer panted. “We play games together. I’m pretty sure that makes us friends.”

“More like acquaintances!” shouted Bon Bon, as she and Spike continued to harry the dragon. She was perched on its back hitting it over and over with the fancy ladle, while Spike kept smacking it in the face to get its attention every time it looked like it was going to scrape her off, then blocking its teeth or fire with his shield.

“That’s a type of friend,” Moondancer said. “Come on, let’s finish this stupid dungeon and go home.”

===

They stood over the remains of the skeletal dragon, panting and bruised. It was thanks to the muffins that they were only bruised – the boss had gotten some good hits in, and nopony but Spike had anything to use for armor.

“So much blood…” Derpy said, her single eye staring sightlessly.

“It’s okay,” Bon Bon said, clutching at her stomach even though the gaping wound had already been healed. “I got better. And it’s just a game, anyway.”

“I’m ready to go home now, and never play this kind of game again,” Moondancer said, leaning on her staff, which was clutched in her forehooves. Her horn was smoking slightly – she was completely out of magic points, without even enough left to levitate it. “End. Quit. Home. Exit.”

Spike rolled his eyes at her. “I get it, you want to go home.”

“Terminate. Egress. Finish.” She paused. “Spike, you’ve done this before, right? How do we get out of the illusion?”

“It’ll happen automatically once we complete the quest,” Spike said. He gestured to the glowing archway of runes, with the ornate double doors nestled underneath. “We probably just have to go through that portal.”

“Well, I thought it was fun,” Bon Bon said. “I don’t get to do that sort of thing much anymore.”

Moondancer limped towards the doors. “Good for you.”

“Was it really that bad?” Spike asked.

“It turns out, being hurt hurts even more than I thought it would hurt, and I thought I was being paranoid,” Moondancer said. “So as it turns out it was slightly worse than ‘that bad’ and I want to strangle Lyra and leave her body in a shallow grave, wait for her to reanimate as a skeleton, and then kill her again.”

“No,” Bon Bon said.

“I said I wanted to,” Moondancer grumbled, “not that I’d do it. Celestia forbid I get to do anything that I want.”

“She kind of did forbid murder,” Spike pointed out.

“Shut up.” Moondancer grabbed the doorknob in her teeth, turned it to the side awkwardly, and pulled.

She was flung back as the doors, once cracked, flew open on their own, revealing a swirling maelstrom of yellow and purple mist. The ponies (and dragon) barely had time to scream before they were sucked inside.

Heroes of Destiny

After a few very confusing seconds, during which they flashed through several seemingly random destinations, including a snowy mountain pass, a darkened war room complete with sinister generals hunched over a table covered with maps and papers, and what looked like a busy intersection in midtown Manehattan, the ponies (and Spike) found themselves sprawled on a chilly tile floor.

Around them was inscribed a faintly glowing magic circle, and around that hovered a quartet of giant crystal prisms. Around that, bookshelves and tables full of alchemical equipment lined the walls. Everything was brightly lit and neatly arranged – Twilight would have been proud to call this her laboratory.

“I don’t suppose this is your basement?” Spike asked.

“No,” Bon Bon said. “At least, I hope not. My basement isn’t usually full of wizards.”

There was no mistaking the stallions that surrounded them for anything else – a group of unicorns, dressed up in robes and pointy hats, and lacking only the bells to be mistaken for Nightmare Night Starswirl the Bearded costumes. Most of them even had beards.

“It worked!” said one of the wizards without one, gleefully. “We’ve summoned the five heroes of destiny!”

“All four of them,” said an earth pony who’d been standing in the back, dressed up as a jester with face paint and everything.

The wizard made a show of counting the new arrivals. “Well… perhaps four will do.”

“Maybe the fifth is Lyra?” Derpy asked. “She was supposed to be meeting us here. I mean, not here here, but there here before we got taken here.” She paused as the wizard and fool stared at her. “She was going to be our dungeon master.”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” the wizard responded absently, turning towards the door and motioning for them to follow. “Now that we’ve finally summoned our heroes, we must present you to the king at once!”

“What makes you think we’re heroes?” Moondancer asked. “Maybe you should send us back and try again. I’m sure Twilight and her friends would be happy to hero for you.”

“Who?” the jester asked.

“You’ve never heard of Twilight Sparkle?” Spike asked. “How about Rarity? Fluttershy?” Seeing no recognition, he tried, “Princess Celestia?”

The jester shook his head. “Can’t say I’m familiar. We did mention that we summoned you, right? From another world?”

“Can you unsummon us, then?” Moondancer asked.

“Oh no, no no no!” the wizard said, eyes wide. “We used up our very last magic crystals summoning you!”

Derpy drooped, her ears flattening. “But we’re not actually heroes.”

He laughed. “Nonsense! If you weren’t heroes, you never would have survived the spell. Now come! It’s time for you to see the king and receive your quest!”

“And maybe some clothing,” the jester added, giving them one more look over, then politely averting his gaze.

Once he’d drawn attention to it, they noticed that the other unicorns in the room had been carefully not looking in their direction. As they emerged into the hallways of the castle, and saw guards, maids, courtiers, and other denizens all carefully covered neck to ankle, their own state of relative undress was thrown into sharp relief. Spike cringed and brought his claws down to cover his crotch. Moondancer and Bon Bon kept their tails carefully lowered to cover themselves from anypony walking behind. Derpy was oblivious, but everypony was doing their best not to look, so it was probably okay.

===

“Ah! The five – the four heroes of destiny, at last!” exclaimed the king, as they were brought before his throne. He gave them a closer look, then turned aside to his wizard. “Are you sure these are heroes?”

“They were summoned by the last of our crystals,” the wizard replied. “They’ll have to do.”

“They don’t really… look the part,” the king said, still in a low voice. “They’re a little…”

“Naked?” suggested the fool.

“We can fix that,” Bon Bon said. “You can give us clothes.”

The king looked shocked at the suggestion. “Is that allowed?”

The wizard frowned, and stroked his chin where a beard would be if he’d been old enough to grow one. “Well… to get them started on their quest, you could give them enough golz to buy some clothes.”

“Ah! Of course, of course. That makes sense,” the king said, instantly relaxing.

“Just get on with it,” Moondancer said. “I’d like to get this quest over with as soon as possible, so that we can go home.”

The king nodded. “Then I’ll get right to it. I am King McGuffin, ruler of Castle Town, a town steeped in history as the birthplace of many a heroic quest! Even the great Heroes of Legend had there start here, in this very throne room! Time after time, when evil threatened the world –“

“Can we skip to the quest part?” Moondancer asked.

“Aww, come on,” Derpy said, flopping a wing over her back. “Let him have his speech. He must have worked on it really hard!”

“Yeah,” Spike said. “I mean, he’s not using flash cards or anything.”

“Ahem,” said the king. The four ‘heroes’ quieted down, and he continued. “Time after time, when evil threatened the world, our great Immortal Emperor, Destiny, would come here to summon the five Heroes of Destiny – random warriors from across the cosmos, who would face trial after trial, travelling the world and righting wrongs, facing down evil, and ultimately defeating whatever villain was threatening his peaceful reign.”

“And then they went home?” Moondancer asked.

The king raised a hoof and tilted it back and forth. “Sometimes. Others, like the Heroes of Legend, had forged bonds with the ponies of this realm, and decided to stay. Either way, Destiny would give them a just and fitting reward for their heroic service.”

Bon Bon looked at the wizard, and then at the fool. “So,” she asked. “Which of you is Destiny?”

The fool laughed. “Destiny does not yet smile upon this endeavor, but we endeavor to change that, do we not my king?”

“Indeed,” the king said. “This time, you see, Destiny has held back. The nameless one –“

“Seriously?” Moondancer asked. “Is that his actual name?”

The king shook his head grimly. “Of course not, but none may speak the name of the dark lord.”

“I bet it’s something really embarrassing,” Spike said. “Like, Grimdark Shadowborne.”

“Oooh, or Spiketooth Ripsaw!” Derpy suggested.

Bon Bon smiled a bit. “Iceheart Coldfingers?”

“No, no, I think Spike was on to something,” Moondancer said. “I bet it’s ‘evil something’ or ‘dark something’, or something like that.”

“Please stop,” the king said.

“Look – he’s worried,” Moondancer said, pointing at the king. “He got this really worried look on his face when I guessed ‘Dark Something’. ‘Dark Lord’? ‘Dark Raven’? ‘Dark Ice’?”

“Please stop trying to guess the cursed name.”

Moondancer grinned. “I’m close, I know it.”

“He’s King McGuffin, right? They seem to be using griffon names here,” Bon Bon noted.

“Ah! ‘Dark Ivan’! No? ‘Dark Isaac’? ‘Dark Eidous’?”

Lightning crashed, flashing down from the ceilings, and one of the guards in back cried out as he was struck, and collapsed to the floor.

“That was it?” Moondancer asked. “Dark Eidous?”

Again, a flash of lightning, and the guard gave out another cry as he was struck a second time.

“Stop! Stop saying the cursed name!” the king bellowed.

Moondancer opened her mouth to say it again, but Derpy’s hoof silenced her. “Please, Moondancer, stop. That poor guard gets hit by lightning every time you say ‘Dark Eidous’.”

Lightning flashed, and Derpy eeped. “Sorry!”

Moondancer lifted her staff and removed Derpy’s hoof from her mouth, but although she rolled her eyes she stopped tormenting the poor guard. “Go on,” she said. “You were telling us about – him.”

“Yes,” the king said. “The nameless one is gathering his forces just to the north. My kingdom – no, all the world is in grave peril, but for some reason Destiny will not act. So we have no choice but to take matters into our own hooves. I have summoned you four to be the next heroes sent forth from Castle Town. Once you prove your heroic nature, Destiny will surely recognize you as the Heroes of Destiny and set you on the quest to stop the nameless one, once and for all!”

“So, wait,” Bon Bon said. “This whole thing you’re doing with us is illegal?”

“Not… technically,” the wizard said. “Just a bit unconventional, is all.”

“The Immortal Emperor has always had a great love for heroes,” the king explained. “I have no doubt that when he hears of your deeds, he will be more than willing to recognize you as his agents!”

“So… how do we prove that we’re heroes?” Spike asked.

“With a quest in the grandest tradition of heroic quests, of course!” said the king, smiling. “You must rescue my daughter from the dungeons of Lord Orcus!”

“And if we don’t want to do any of these quests?” Moondancer asked.

“But you must!” the king said. “You are our only hope!”

“We’ve sacrificed so much just to bring you here,” the wizard added.

“We literally won’t let you leave the throne room until you agree,” the fool pointed out.

“Ugh!” Moondancer cringed. “Fine.”

Clothes Make the Mare

After agreeing to the quest, they were given a few more details, and a few hundred ‘golz’, which were basically brass bits, and then escorted out of the castle. Half a dozen armored guards lined up in front of the gate to keep them from going back in.

“Ugh,” Moondancer groaned. “Not only are we not done with our quest, but we have to do a quest to even start on the real quest. Who came up with this?”

“Are we even still in the game?” Spike asked, looking around at the town. It had ponies going about their business, shops, houses, a teacher leading a group of school children on a field trip. “They said they summoned us from another world – what if they were telling the truth?”

“The lava crypt was obviously a game,” Bon Bon said. “It waited until we’d chosen our character classes, then gave us weapons that fit us. We still have those weapons, so this must still be the game.”

“But what if it’s not?” Spike said. “What if their spell was searching around the multiverse for adventurers and saw our game and snatched us out of it because we looked like heroes?”

“Does it really matter?” Derpy asked. “We have to do the quest either way! Either it’s the only way to get back to the real world or it’s the only way to save the real world! A different real world is still a world. We can’t just let it get taken over by evil.”

“It matters because we’re all going to die,” Moondancer said. “Which is bad enough if this is a game, but at least then we’d come back to life at the last checkpoint.”

“If you’re really worried, then we’ll just have to make sure not to die,” Bon Bon said. “But that means we’re going to have to take this seriously.”

“So even if it’s a game, we should treat it like a real quest?” Spike asked.

“Not quite,” Bon Bon said, her face grim. “Even if it’s real, we need to treat it like it’s a game. We need to scour every nook and cranny for every bit of equipment or treasure we can pick up, and pick a fight with anything that’s weaker than us to practice our fighting. We need to do every side quest, win every mini-game, and avoid what looks like the main quest line for as long as possible, so that we’ll be overpowered for the boss monsters when they finally arrive.

“If someone tells us that we need to hurry to fix their problem, we need to delay as long as possible and do everything else we can possibly think of first. If we find too much treasure to carry, we drop everything, head back to town to spend what we have, and then go back for the rest.

“And we need to cheat,” she added. “If any of you see an opportunity to break the rules, let everypony else know so that we can exploit it.”

“I don’t like this plan,” Derpy said. “That’s not the sort of thing heroes do.”

“It sounds like it’s going to take a really long time,” Moondancer said. “But I guess it’s a really long time where we get to still be alive, instead of eaten by monsters. Let’s do it.”

“Spike?” Bon Bon asked. “What do you think?”

“I think everypony’s staring at us,” Spike said, looking around at the crowd. Indeed, everypony on the street was looking at them, except for the teacher who was trying to keep the schoolchildren from staring, without much success. “Maybe we shouldn’t be discussing this out on the street?”

“Or… maybe we should buy some clothes,” Bon Bon said. “Let’s see if we can find an armorer.”

===

The armorer did, indeed, sell armor. He had a suit of copper-colored plate armor that he was able to quickly adjust for Spike, some intricately ornamented leather armor for Derpy that was light enough to let her fly, and a blue-and-white cotton robe for Moondancer that was woven through with special runes that would enhance her magical power, or so he claimed.

“Do you have another suit of leather?” Bon Bon asked. “I’d like to stay mobile.”

The armorer shook his head. “I’m sorry, miss, but we don’t stock clothing for cooks here. Have you tried the tavern?”

“I’m a rogue,” she said.

“Not according to the information I was given,” the merchant said, waving around a small pamphlet. “It clearly says to stock inventory for a Knight, Pirate, Wizard –“

“Are you going to stop right there, or am I going to have to demonstrate my skills?” Bon Bon asked, setting her ladle on the counter.

“But – you can’t threaten me!” he said, cowering back behind his counter. He waved the little pamphlet again. “Heroes aren’t allowed to attack merchants. It’s in the rules!”

“Give me that,” Moondancer said, snatching the pamphlet out of his hooves.

“Do you want to wear mine?” Derpy offered, landing on the counter next to Bon Bon’s ladle, and leaning down to talk to her. “I can just pray for more muffins if I get hurt.”

“I want him to sell me some clothes,” Bon Bon growled.

“Look,” the merchant said. “I can sell you armor for a rogue, but you aren’t going to be able to wear it.”

“I’m willing to take that chance,” Bon Bon said.

“Are you sure? I only pay ten percent if you try to sell it back used.”

Bon Bon dropped a few dozen golz on the counter. With a sigh, the armorer swept it into his cash box, and went into the back room, coming out with what looked like a bright green cat suit. “Here you go, basic rogue armor. Skin-tight to enhance stealth and evasion.”

Bon Bon plopped it on her back and went behind a screen to change. While they waited, Moondancer continued to read through the pamphlet, while Spike practiced a few sword swings with his new armor. It was a bit heavy, but not enough to really slow him down – thanks to Rarity and Twilight using him as a porter so often, he’d gotten used to moving around with heavy loads.

Derpy sat on the counter admiring her new armor. “Mmm, this smells really nice,” she said. “What’s it made out of?”

“We sell starter sets here in Castle Town,” the armorer answered, “so it’s just cow hide.”

Derpy blinked (or possibly winked, but that wouldn’t have made much sense, so it was probably a blink). “Cow Hide? What an odd name for a plant.”

“It’s not a plant,” Moondancer said. “It means they took a cow, flayed off all her skin, and then bashed her head in and rubbed her brains all over it. Let it sit for a few weeks, and you’ve got leather.”

“That’s… not the exact procedure we use,” the armorer said. “But yes, it’s leather.”

“Oooh,” Derpy said. “Do you have a lot of problems with evil cows?”

The armorer looked confused. “Evil… cows?”

“Well, you’re good guys so you wouldn’t have killed a good cow just to make armor out of her,” Derpy said. “Oh! I bet we’ll find all kinds of evil monsters with skin that we can flay off and make into leather! Giant rats and chimeras and spiders…”

“Dragons?” Moondancer suggested.

Spike snorted, “If you’re trying to bother me, you can stop. Most of the other dragons I’ve met deserve to be turned into clothing.” He paused. “Ugly clothing. Or maybe a set of boots so that they can get stepped on all the time.”

“Spiiiike!” came Bon Bon’s voice from behind the screen. “Can you give me a little help?”

“Uh… are you decent?” Spike asked.

“Don’t tell me you’ve gone native already,” Bon Bon said. “Get back here with those nimble little claws of yours and help me get this thing on.”

“Aye aye, captain!” Spike said, saluting and then running off behind the screen.

Moondancer rolled her eyes. “What a perv.”

“What do you mean?” Derpy asked.

“He didn’t put up much of a fight before going back to watch her dressing.”

Derpy tilted her head. “But we don’t normally wear clothes.”

Spike’s voice came from beind the screen. “Nnnnng… Bon Bon… I don’t think this is going to fit.”

“Nonsense, it stretches,” Bon Bon said. “Just put all your strength into it!”

“Nnnng…. Raah!” Spike panted a few times. “Okay, it’s going… are you sure this doesn’t hurt?”

“You’re doing fine,” Bon Bon said, her voice strained. “Don’t stop now…”

Moondancer stood up, and her horn flashed, whipping aside the screen. “Enough with the stupid innuendo! We know you’re just working on a stuck zipper or something.”

Spike and the half-dressed Bon Bon froze, then both started laughing. “Sorry,” Spike said, letting go of the zipper. “We couldn’t resist.”

“Can you imagine the look she’d have had if we were actually having sex?” Bon Bon said. “That would have been perfect.”

“Maybe next time?” Spike suggested. There was a loud CLANG as Bon Bon’s hoof rang off his helmet, knocking him to the ground. “Oww…”

“Now come on, help me with this zipper, I think I’ve almost got it.” She sat back on her haunches to expose the zipper running up her belly and chest, which had been zipped up about halfway. Before Spike could grab hold again and start pulling it up, there was a loud tearing sound from beneath her, and they both froze.

“No refunds,” the merchant said.

“You gave me the wrong size!” Bon Bon said, leaping to her feet. There was another ripping sound as one of the hind legs split open.

“It’s one size fits all!” he protested. “One size fits all rogues.”

“Are you calling me fat?” she growled.

“Well,” Spike said, “you have worked as a candy maker for what, five years now?”

Bon Bon glared at him, until he whimpered and backed off a few steps. “Fine,” she said, through clenched teeth. “Let’s head to the tavern, and talk to their cook.”

“Smooth move, Romeo,” Moondancer said, patting Spike on his head-spikes as he hung back to let Bon Bon leave the store as far ahead of him as possible.

Rules of the Game

While everypony else had lunch at the tavern, Bon Bon headed to the back room to get her equipment. She emerged a while later wearing a rather nice black coat, tightly buttoned down her chest, and a forest green bandanna around her head wrapping her hair.

“Aww, I was hoping for a puffy hat,” Derpy said, finishing off her orange juice.

“Apparently, they only sell starter equipment in Castle Town,” Bon Bon said flatly, taking a seat at the table.

Moondancer, who was still reading through the pamphlet she’d taken from the armorer, did a sudden double take. “That can’t be right.” As everypony looked at her, she explained, “This section was all about how heroes need to buy their own equipment, and how no one is allowed to help them or give them anything except as payment for a quest. Kind of annoying, but par for the course, you know?” She laid the pamphlet out on the table, and placed a hoof on it, underlining one clause. “But look at this.”

The other three leaned over to read it, Spike and Bon Bon reading over her shoulders and Derpy peering down from overhead.

“Seriously?” Bon Bon said.

“Sweet!” Spike said.

“We’re not actually going to do that, are we?” Derpy asked.

“We have to,” Moondancer said, grinning. “It’s the law. Come on, let’s go look for unlocked houses.”

===

“Ahh!” shouted the mare in the kitchen as the four of them burst through her front door. She quickly relaxed. “Oh, it’s the heroes! Are you here to rob me?”

“Yes,” Moondancer said. “Want to make it easy for us and hand over all your valuables?”

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m not allowed to give you anything. You’ll have to search for yourselves. Um… can you try not to make too much of a mess?”

“No promises,” Bon Bon said, heading for a wardrobe near the front door. “Derpy, you get the flowerpots.”

Derpy saluted. “Yes ma’am!”

Spike headed into the bedroom, and searched the dresser. He quickly located a jewelry box, and rifled through it. “Um… she’s got a bunch of gems here. Is that on the list?”

Moondancer ran her eyes down the page. “Only if they’re magical. We can only take things we can use and actual currency.”

“They’re not magic,” the mare of the house said, standing in front of the oven with a fake smile plastered on her face as she tried to watch as many of the adventurers as she could see without moving.

There was a loud smash as Derpy threw a flowerpot against the wall. “Nothing in this one!”

The mare in the kitchen whimpered.

===

“Well, this was a bust,” Spike said, after they finished searching. All in all, they’d ended up with forty-seven golz and three little boxes of orange juice. There was more food in the fridge, but none of it would keep.

Bon Bon stood in the kitchen. “Sorry, ma’am. We’re just trying to do a thorough job.”

“I understand,” she said. “I didn’t really like those pots anyway.”

Bon Bon smiled. “I don’t suppose we could use your oven? I’d like to bake some muffins for the road.”

“Sorry, I’m standing in front of it,” she said.

Bon Bon stared at her for a few seconds. “You could move.”

“You’re not allowed to move me,” The mare said. “I’m standing in front of it.”

“You could move… on your own?” Spike asked.

She shook her head.

“Forget it,” Moondancer said. “We’ve got plenty of other houses to rob.”

===

“Another house, another hundred golz,” Spike grumbled. “This is a lot less fun than I thought it would be.”

“Well, what did you expect? These people are used to being robbed by heroes,” Derpy said. “Did you see how quickly those guys in the mansion all rushed into place to keep us from getting up the stairs?”

“You could have just flown over them,” Bon Bon said.

Derpy frowned. “But that’s cheating!”

“Hey! This one has an unguarded oven!” said Moondancer from the kitchen.

The heroes crowded inside, then made room for Bon Bon to push to the front. “Finally!” she said. “Go get some milk and eggs out of the fridge, and –” she paused, and looked over at the fridge, and at the smug stallion standing in front of it. “Oh come on!”

Spike opened a cupboard. “I found the sugar and flour.”

Bon Bon stared at the stallion. “I don’t suppose you have a side quest you could do to let us raid your fridge?”

“Then I’d have to go get groceries,” he said, shaking his head.

“We could go on a sidequest to get his groceries?” Derpy suggested.

Bon Bon scowled. “If we leave to get groceries, he’ll stand in front of the oven. I know how these ponies think.”

“One of us could go—” Spike started.

“Don’t split the party,” said Bon Bon, Moondancer, and Derpy in unison.

“Can you make muffins out of just flour, sugar, and water from the sink?” Moondancer asked.

Derpy hissed, and bared her teeth.

Moondancer shied away. “Nevermind.”

Bon Bon gave an evil grin as she had a sudden thought. “You know… I might not be able to bake muffins, but all you really need for candy is sugar.” She glanced at the pony still blocking access to the fridge. “Just think about it… sticky syrup, solidifying on every surface. Rock hard crusts of candy coating your cutlery. Heh heh.”

“You’ll wash up afterwards, right?” he asked.

“Do I look like a dishwasher?” Bon Bon asked.

“Actually –” Spike started, then thought better of it. “I could do the dishes?”

“Only if he pays you for it,” Bon Bon said. “Heroes don’t work for free. Now, get me a big sauce pan, and that sugar…”

===

Two hours later, they left the house with a big bag of hard candy. They’d used up all the sugar, so the stallion was going to have to go to the grocery store after all.

Spike sucked on a chunk. “Not bad,” he said. “But will it actually heal us?”

“I hope so,” Bon Bon said. “If I’m going to get shoe-horned into a ‘cook’ class, I’d better get something out of it.”

“Wish we had some way to test it,” Spike said.

“I could stab you?” Bon Bon suggested.

Derpy swooped down to stand between them. “Save the stabbing for the monsters! There’s got to be hordes of them lurking just outside of town, right? We can go try it on them.”

“Are you sure we’ve done everything we can here?” Moondancer asked. “I don’t want to leave before we’re ready.”

“We haven’t searched every nook and cranny, but we’ll be coming back after we rescue the princess,” Bon Bon said. “Maybe sooner than that, depending on how many random monsters we run into on the way.”

“Then let’s get this show on the road!” Spike said, lifting his sword. “Onwards, to glory!”

“And treasure,” Bon Bon added.

Derpy grinned and drew her cutlass. “In the name of the Great Muffin!”

Moondancer saluted, with her staff. “Let’s finish this game, and then wring Lyra’s neck.”

“Hey!” Bon Bon said, glowering. “Nopony gets to wring Lyra’s neck but me.”

“Can I watch?” Moondancer asked.

Bon Bon glared for a few more seconds, then shrugged. “Okay, but no helping. I wouldn’t want it to be over too quick.”

On the Map

The four heroes stood at the city gate, paused at the threshold.

“You go first,” Bon Bon said, nudging Spike. “You’re the big strong dragon.”

“But you’re the party leader,” Spike said. “Don’t you have to go first?”

“What? I’m the party leader,” Moondancer said. “And I’m not going in front. Wizard, remember?”

“I think Spike should be the leader, if the leader has to go in front,” Derpy said. “He’s got the most armor.”

“Fine, I’ll go first,” Spike said. “But you know it’s just going to drag you all along with me if something weird happens.”

“I’m ready,” Bon Bon said, setting her hooves in a wide stance and bracing herself. Derpy landed next to her, and Moondancer pulled her staff in close.

“Here goes,” Spike said, and took a step through the gate.

Nothing happened.

“Keep going,” Bon Bon said. “The transition might not be exactly at the gate.”

Spike shrugged, and ambled forwards, the others following cautiously about ten feet back. After about a mile, it was obvious that nothing was going to happen. The city was getting small behind them, and fields of tall grass rose to either side of the tidily maintained dirt road.

“Great,” Moondancer said. “We’re going to have to actually walk all the way to the dungeon, aren’t we.”

“Not me!” Derpy said, soaring in lazy circles over the rest of the party. “I get to fly!”

“Can you fly a little higher?” Bon Bon asked. “Keep an eye out for random encounters.”

“If you want,” Derpy said, flapping her wings a few times to gain a bit of altitude. “They’ll probably just jump out of the grass, though. It’s pretty high.”

Sure enough, after a few more miles of walking, they suddenly found their path blocked by a loose formation of chickens.

“Hey! Why did the chicken cross the road?” Derpy asked.

“I don’t think it was to get to the other side, or they wouldn’t have stopped,” Spike said. He drew his sword, made sure his shield was ready, and advanced on them, waving both in their general direction. “Shoo!”

“Bok,” said the chicken in the lead.

“Come on, get out of the way,” Spike said, taking a slow, lazy swing.

The chicken easily dodged. “Bok bok,” said a different chicken.

“Maybe we can just walk around?” Derpy suggested.

“Bok bok BAKAW!” crowed a chicken in the back, and then they all leapt at Spike, claws and beaks outstretched.

“Hey,” Spike said, as they pecked and clawed at his armor with a series of little ‘pings’. “Hey! That kind of stings!”

Bon Bon wound up with her fancy ladle, and whacked one of the chickens hard enough to send it flying in a cloud of feathers. It landed in a heap and didn’t get back up. Derpy and Moondancer joined in, whacking at the chickens and scraping them off of Spike, who was curled up in a ball behind his shield, making sure to cover any exposed bit of flesh from the flurry of attacks.

One of the chickens Moondancer had hit wobbled a bit and got back to its feet. “Bok,” it said.

“Dark Eidous,” Moondancer replied. There was a flash, and a crackle of thunder, and the charred remains of the chicken flopped to the ground, smoking.

“Good work, Spike!” Derpy said. “Are you hurt?”

“Why –“ Spike said, standing up and shaking his head to try to get his wits about him. “Why did they attack like that?”

Moondancer finally managed to look away from the roasted chicken, and gasped. “Oh Celestia, Spike! You’re covered in blood!”

“It’s not mine,” he said, looking around for something to clean off with. “Derpy was hacking at the chickens with a cutlass.”

Derpy focused her eye on her cutlass, and slowly wiped the dripping thing off on the grass. “Well, they were evil chickens. What else was I supposed to do?”

“If Fluttershy ever hears about this, she’s going to kill me,” Spike said.

===

A few hours later, they were attacked by another group of chickens, and Moondancer opened up by saying ‘Dark Eidous’ right away. While this did call down a lightning bolt to kill one of them, the other five leapt right at her, and she got pecked and scratched up painfully before Spike managed to attract their attention with an angry roar.

“Muffin?” Derpy offered.

“Let’s try the candy,” Bon Bon said, tossing her a piece.

Moondancer caught it in her magic, shrugged, and popped it into her mouth. “Not bad,” she said. “Is it working?”

“It’s hard to tell under your dress,” Spike said, walking around behind her and lifting up the skirt to check a nasty bite on her flank. There was a loud ‘clang’ as her staff rapped on his helmet, and he stumbled back. “What gives?”

Moondancer glared at him. “You were looking under my robes!”

Spike looked confused. “And?”

“Pervert.”

“Oh come on,” Bon Bon said, taking a hoof and flipping the bottom half of Moondancer’s dress up onto her shoulders, leaving her rear half bare. “He’s not going to see anything you didn’t flash around all day in Equestria.”

Moondancer curled her tail between her legs, but resigned herself to the examination. “You know I live in Canterlot, right? It’s not quite as much of a nudist colony as Ponyville.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bon Bon said, distracted, staring at her butt.

Moondancer looked back over her shoulder. “So is it working, or not?”

“Kind of?”

Derpy hovered over Moondancer’s back, and gave it a good stare herself. “It’s healing really slowly.”

“Regeneration?” Spike suggested. “We can eat the candy before we get hurt, and it’ll heal us a little all through the battle?”

“We’re all going to be really sick of candy by the time this is over, aren’t we,” Moondancer said.

“And muffins,” Bon Bon added.

Derpy gasped. “Blasphemy! Great Muffin, smite the unbeliever!”

After a few seconds of silence, nothing happened.

“Aww, I wanted to smite somepony,” Derpy said. “Dark Eye-Does?”

Nothing continued to happen.

“Leave the smiting to the professionals,” Moondancer said, magicking her robes back over her rear end, then cleaning and repairing them with a quick cantrip.

===

Spike dragged his sword along the dirt road, which seemed to go on forever. There were mountains in the distance, Derpy assured them, and they were making progress, but as far as the other three could see it was nothing but an endless channel of dirt carved through an overgrown field with grass taller than their eye level.

“How long have we been walking?” Spike asked, looking up at the sun. It was still directly overhead, just like it had been when they started. “Is the sun even moving?”

“Of course it isn’t,” Moondancer said. “They’ve never even heard of Celestia.”

Bon Bon scrunched up her forehead. “So it’s daylight all the time? How do they know when to go to sleep?”

Spike flopped forwards onto his shield, and curled up on top of it like it was his basket.

Bon Bon glanced at him, then sat down to get some rest herself. “I mean, they can’t all have baby dragons.”

===

“Wake up!” said Derpy urgently, jostling Bon Bon until she opened her eyes. “Wake up wake up!”

“I’m awake, relax,” Bon Bon said, yawning. “What’s on fire?”

“I don’t know, but there’s a big column of smoke from over by the mountains to the… the… the that way!” she pointed, perpendicular to the road. “Something’s on fire!”

While Derpy woke the others, Bon Bon looked up at the thin trail of smoke rising into the air. It didn’t look like a brushfire – it was too concentrated, all in one place.

“What is it?” Moondancer grumbled, laboriously rolling to her hooves and cleaning the dust off her robes.

“Something’s on fire,” Bon Bon said, then smiled. “I think it’s a sidequest.”

Farmer's Fields

Travelling through the grass made it easier for the evil chickens to sneak up on them, but it didn’t make them any more dangerous. There was a bit of a scare the first time Moondancer used ‘Dark Eidous’, but the grass wasn’t nearly as flammable as it looked.

Derpy estimated that they were halfway to the source of the smoke, when they stumbled across the farmhooves. They were the very image of country earth ponies, with plow harnesses, straw hats, and even bits of straw hanging from their lips for them to chew on.

The yellow one looked them up and down. “And just what the heck are you supposed to be, dressed up all fancy like that?”

“We’re heroes!” Spike said.

“You can tell because of how many chickens we’ve killed,” Bon Bon added.

The blue earth pony spat. “You been killing our chickens?”

“We had to!” Derpy said. “They were evil!”

“Typical,” said the red one. “Let’s teach these ‘heroes’ a lesson about sticking their muzzle in where it don’t belong.”

“Eeyup,” said the blue pony, rearing up and then slamming his forehooves into the ground. There was a noise like thunder, and the earth shook and cracked beneath their feet, as a rippling wave of tremors shot towards the party and left them off balance.

While Spike was reeling and trying to keep his feet without dropping his sword or shield, the red pony rushed forwards with an angry yell, and bucked him right in the face. Well, right in the shield. Which he was holding up to protect his face. It still knocked him back a few yards.

Moondancer held up her staff, pointing it at the blue pony. “Dark Eidous!” The lightning struck the yellow one, instead, but didn’t take him down. He shook off the shock and took a tomato out of his saddlebag, popping it into his mouth and healing himself.

“Allied with the nameless one, are ye?” the blue one snapped. “I’ll put you in the ground!” He stomped again, sending another shockwave at them.

“I really don’t want to hurt you…” Derpy said, taking her cutlass in her teeth. “This is all a misunderstanding!”

But the rest of the party was already fighting. Spike and Bon Bon double-teamed the red pony while Moondancer said “Dark Eidous” over and over, shooting more random lightning. As a bolt slammed into Bon Bon’s target, momentarily distracting him, the sneaky cook slipped around behind him and swung her jewel-encrusted ladle at his leg. There was a sickening crack, and he fell to the ground, screaming in pain.

“Eddy!” said the yellow farmer. “Let me get you some –“

“I don’t think so!” Spike said, leaping forwards sword-first and stabbing him in the side of the neck as he turned to get another tomato out of his bag.

The yellow pony screamed. Spike screamed, and let go of his sword, stumbling back as blood sprayed everywhere. The farm pony managed to get a hoof on the blade, and yanked it out of his neck, staggering and falling to the ground. With the last of his strength, he managed to crush the tomato between his own teeth, and the wound started to heal over, the blood slowing to a trickle.

Spike picked his sword back up and pointed it at the wounded pony. “Stay down, okay? I don’t want to have to stab you again!”

The blue pony managed to send out one last shockwave, that made Moondancer stumble and twist her ankle, but with his friends both down on the ground he seemed to draw all the lightning, possibly by virtue of being the tallest target. Bon Bon somehow appeared on his back, and clonked him over the head, downing him.

“Why did you fight them?” Derpy asked, kneeling down by the pony with the broken leg. She had a muffin she’d summoned, but wasn’t sure if feeding it to him would be a good idea.

“They attacked us!” Spike said. “We didn’t have a choice.”

“I don’t see what the problem is,” Bon Bon said. “They’re obviously evil farmers, if they own such a huge flock of evil chickens.”

Derpy frowned. “They don’t look evil.”

Bon Bon snorted. “Neither did the chickens, until they attacked us. That’s how you tell.”

“So anypony we fight is automatically the bad guy?” Spike asked. “That seems kind of…”

“Convenient?” Moondancer suggested, smirking.

“Yeah, what she said,” Spike said, “only in a bad way.”

Bon Bon rolled her eyes. “If we fight them and they’re not evil, then they’ll join us after we beat them. That’s how this sort of thing works.” She walked over to the yellow one, who was still conscious and not actively writhing in pain. “So how about it? Care to join our cause?”

He spat in her face. “Go to hell, demonspawn.”

Bon Bon glowered as she wiped off the spittle. “Definitely evil. What do you say, Derpy? Want to skin them and see if the armorer can make you a suit of pony leather?”

Derpy glared back at her. “No.”

“Then let’s get moving,” Bon Bon said, leaning down and yanking off the pony’s saddlebag of tomatoes. “Don’t forget to loot them.”

===

After that, they ran into more chickens, and then a group of chickens accompanied by a farm pony, this one a green pegasus who hovered overhead on a cloud and managed to lasso Spike and drag him up off the ground. Derpy bucked the cloud, bursting it and sending him and Spike tumbling to the ground, where Bon Bon and Moondancer beat him to a pulp with ladle and staff.

Derpy winced as she looked at what was left of their attacker. “Did you have to break his wings?”

“Didn’t want him flying back up out of reach,” Bon Bon said.

“Did you have to break both his wings?” Spike asked, looking a little nauseous as he struggled to free himself from the ropes he’d been wrapped up in.

Bon Bon scrunched up her nose a bit. “I thought it would take the fight out of him.”

“It must have worked,” Moondancer said. “He’s not fighting.” She clonked him on the head with her staff again. Since he was already unconscious, he didn’t react.

Derpy finished untangling Spike, and took the lasso in her mouth, swinging it around experimentally. “This is harder than it looks,” she said, finally managing to get it in a tight circle that at least kept the loop open. She twisted her head sharply to try to throw it at Spike, only to feel it yank against her wing as she accidentally looped herself. Trying to pull it off only pulled it tighter, so she flopped on her side and tried to pry it off with her hooves…

Spike and the others watched her for a while, until she was completely hog-tied. “I guess one of us should help her?” he said, uncertainly.

“No, wait!” Derpy struggled against her bonds, wiggling helplessly. “I’ve almost got it!”

===

Finally, they emerged from the endless grass into a small mowed lawn in front of a farmhouse. The farmhouse was on fire. The crops past the fences were on fire. Some of the fences themselves were even on fire. The farmer was not on fire, but she was rushing back and forth from the well in a panic, and failing to make much headway on saving her house.

“What’s going on here?” Spike asked.

“It’s chaos! Pure chaos!” the farmer cried, stopping to talk but hopping back and forth on her hooves, impatiently. “Ever since the meteor hit, out behind the old barn, the cows have gone mad! They’re attacking everypony and setting fires! My farmhooves all ran off when I tried to get them to fight! You’ve got to find out what’s going on and save my farm!”

Spike grinned. “Sweet! It is a sidequest!”

“I assume you’ll reward us, if we help?” Bon Bon asked the farmer.

“Anything!”

“I don’t know,” Derpy said. “Should we really be helping her?”

The other three looked at her in confusion. “I expected you to jump at this sort of thing,” Moondancer said. “We’re wasting time helping ponies.”

“But she was farming evil cows,” Derpy said, shaking her head. “She kind of brought this on herself.”

Cows and Crows

Despite the farmer’s desperation, the flames didn’t seem to be spreading very fast, so Bon Bon took the lead in searching the farm thoroughly for any sort of treasure. There were mad cows around, but they couldn’t really hide – not even in the wheat fields, which were too well-trampled – and part of their madness seemed to make them walk back and forth in predictable patterns.

“Shouldn’t we be fighting them?” Moondancer asked.

“I want to gather up all the treasure first,” Bon Bon said. “The way they’re moving, they’re meant to be avoided, which means some of the treasure might vanish if we start fighting too soon.”

“Like, they’ll trample the rest of the wheat?” Spike asked.

“Maybe,” Bon Bon said, turning and looking at some surviving stalks. “Huh, I guess wheat might count as treasure.”

They managed to find a bunch of wheat and some radishes in the parts of the fields which hadn’t been set on fire yet, some golz in a small bag hanging from an abandoned plow, and a fancy straw hat on the scarecrow, which Bon Bon wanted to give to Derpy.

“But I’m a pirate! I like my pirate hat,” Derpy said, frowning.

“But it’s so cute on you! No one will want to attack you with a hat like that,” Bon Bon explained. She grabbed the hat off the scarecrow – it was a bit out of her reach, but she was able to knock the fragile construct over, and then fish the hat out of the pile of hay and sticks. “Look! It even matches your mane.”

“It does kind of suit you,” Spike said. “Makes you look harmless, so you can heal us without being bothered.”

“If you don’t want it, I’ll wear it,” Moondancer said. “I’m all in favor of not being attacked.”

“Eh, it’d just look stupid on a wizard,” Spike said, trying to imagine the hat with her robes.

“Fiiine,” Derpy said, pouting.

“Caw,” said a nearby crow.

Derpy turned to look at it. “Excuse me?”

“Caw caw,” said another crow, as three more landed behind her.

Derpy took off into the air. “Bon Bon? I don’t think the hat is working!” More crows started to swarm around them, appearing from all directions.

“Quick! Act like a scarecrow!” Spike said.

Derpy froze in place, dropping to the ground as her flapping stopped, and wobbled on stiff legs. The crows all immediately lifted off and flew away from her, terrified.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Moondancer said.

“CAAAAW!” cried the crows, a cacophony of raucous shrieks, as they formed a giant crow made out of crows. Gusts of wind buffeted the ponies (and dragon) below as it flapped.

Spike raised his sword and gave a brave cry as he charged the monster, which dove at him in turn, skimming just off the ground. He swung at the side of its head, holding his shield to block the beak… but since it was made out of smaller birds, they just flowed to either side and engulfed him. After it passed he spun around several times, dizzily, and fell to his knees.

“Great Muffin…” Derpy prayed, summoning a muffin to heal the dragon.

“Let me try,” Bon Bon said, leaping into the air and falling towards the crow’s back, her ladle held ready to bash it in the base of its skull. Unfortunately, the swarm of crows didn’t have a solid enough surface for her to land on, and she plunged into its depths, emerging below it battered and dazed, just like Spike.

“Dark Eidous!”

Moondancer’s lightning bolt arced through the crow construct, illuminating the insides of dozens of crows as it incinerated them. Bones and ash rained down in its wake.

The massive head turned towards her, hundreds of beady eyes narrowing their gaze at their tormentor, and Moondancer curled up and cast a bubble around herself. The crows dove at her, with bloodthirsty caws, but when they passed she was unharmed, and instead dozens more of the crows lay unconscious on the ground where they’d fallen after knocking themselves out against the transparent force field.

“Ele—mmmph!” Bon Bon said, as Derpy shoved a muffin in her mouth. She quickly chewed and swallowed. “Elemental attacks seem to work best!”

“I think I knocked out a few with my shield, too,” Spike said. “But check out this!” He took a deep breath, and then, as the crows reoriented themselves for another pass on Moondancer, threw his head forwards and let out a massive belch of fire.

The birds shrieked as one as the belly and legs of their construct were consumed, and the giant crow-gestalt threw back its head and gave a thousand-voiced caw…

“Dark Eidous!”

Lightning struck it directly in its open mouth, running the length of its neck and through what remained of its body. There was a rustle of wings, as the individual crows scattered, and the construct was gone.

“Stupid hat,” Derpy said, throwing it to the ground.

“Hey!” Bon Bon snapped, picking it up and tossing it back onto her head. “We fought an optional boss for that hat! You’re going to wear it and you’re going to like it.”

“You aren’t the boss of me,” she grumbled.

“Actually, we made her party leader while we were searching for treasure,” Spike said.

Derpy sighed, and adjusted the hat on her head. She kept frowning, though. They couldn’t take that from her.

===

At Bon Bon’s insistence, they pushed aside the half-open doors and entered the old barn. The barn was on fire, but like the fields the fire didn’t seem to be spreading very fast, so she thought it was probably safe. Moondancer and Derpy weren’t so sure, but Spike thought it was silly to be afraid of fire in the first place, so as the party leader Bon Bon got to break the tie.

There were more mad cows walking back and forth in patterns inside, and Bon Bon and the others dodged past whenever they saw a gap in the pattern, weaving their way past piles of burning hay and large farm machinery. About halfway through, Moondancer pointed out one cow that wasn’t moving.

“Maybe she’s sane? We should try and talk to her.”

“I doubt it,” Bon Bon said, looking at her closely. “She’s got that crazy look in her eyes. But she’s standing in front of a chest.”

“More of a crate,” Moondancer said. “Probably full of farm equipment.”

Bon Bon shrugged. “Let’s take her out and see.”

The headed in that direction, but before Bon Bon could attack, Derpy rushed forwards and landed just in front of the cow. “Hi!” she said. “Are you evil?”

The cow seemed to see her for the first time, looking up with orange flames reflecting in her eyes. “Our lord Baalzebull has freed us from the cycle of milk and death,” she said, the cowbell around her neck giving a mournful clonk. “At last, we are free to do as we will.”

“Then why are you all walking back and forth, over and over?” Derpy asked.

“We are cows,” she said, bowing her head and letting her bell give another ‘clonk’. “We like walking back and forth. It completes us. No longer are we constrained to a single point by the walls of our prison – now we can expand our horizon to a one-dimensional line!”

Derpy nodded, frowning. “So why are you just standing here? Shouldn’t you be walking back and forth too?”

“Baalzebull has ordered me to guard his greatest treasure,” the cow replied. “And so I choose freely to stand in a single location, even without walls.”

“Maybe we could guard the treasure for you?” Spike suggested, from a couple places back in line.

“The task was given to me, but lo, my hooves do desire to wander,” the cow replied. She lifted her head, and her bell ‘clonk’ed. “Prove to me that you are worthy guardians, and I shall join my sisters in the blessed cycle.”

“So we have to fight her anyway?” Bon Bon asked. “Typical.”

“Let me,” Moondancer said, shouldering past Spike, Bon Bon, and pushing Derpy aside. She tried to do the same to the cow, but the cow didn’t move. She sighed heavily. “Fine, I’ll do it from here.” She pointed her staff past the cow, and said, “Big Bee’s Bubble.” A wobbling force field appeared around the chest. “There, it’s safe.”

The cow blinked, and turned to look at the chest. She poked at the bubble, which wobbled a bit, then lowered her head and bashed at it with her horns. Moondancer winced a bit, but the bubble held.

The cow nodded her head to Moondancer, with another ‘klonk’. “Yes, that will do. I go now to join my sisters.”

Derpy smiled to her, hovering up as the cow wandered past her. “Have fun!”

The cow blinked, a dull look in her eyes. “Moo.”

Once she was gone, Moondancer dispelled the bubble, and they opened the box, which was full of farm equipment, as predicted.

“Oh, this is nice,” Moondancer said, lifting a large scythe out of the box. The blade was razor-sharp, and the pole portion was heavily detailed. “Why does an earth pony farm even have this? It’s far too large to hold in your mouth.”

“You hook it behind your fetlocks,” Bon Bon said.

“Can you still do magic with it?” Spike asked. “I’m not sure it really counts as a staff.”

“I’m a unicorn, not Harry Trotter,” Moondancer said, “I do magic with my horn.”

“She who does magic with a staff has forgotten the face of her mother,” Derpy recited.

Moondancer stared. “What?”

Derpy chuckled nervously. “Um… never mind.”

Cow Level

At the back of the barn, past a few more patrols of pacing cows, was a thick, heavy door. Spike grabbed onto the handle with both claws, and managed to slide it to the side. It wasn’t stuck – on the contrary, it seemed to be on a well-oiled track – but it was very heavy.

A chill wind emerged from the room beyond, along with a rolling fog. In the depths of the fog, past rows of slowly swaying pony-sized lumps hanging on chains from the ceiling, was a dim flicker of flame. As the fog started to clear, a dark figure slowly came into view, shrouded in flames – a great red bull, standing on his hind legs. His eyes were like black pits, and he let out a mournful ‘moo’ that shivered its way through the party’s bowels and made them squirm in fear.

“Are those –” Spike asked, staring at the swaying lumps as the mist cleared enough to get a good look at them.

“I think that’s what’s left when you skin an evil cow,” Derpy said. “But why are they hanging here? You think they’d bury them, or put them in a compost heap or something.”

“Where are the heads?” Moondancer asked, taking a step back.

“Moooo,” said the demonic bull, again. Spike doubled over, holding his stomach, as the reverberating tones made his guts churn.

“Close the door,” Bon Bon hissed. Spike reached weakly towards the handle, but Moondancer’s magic was faster. With a rumble, it slid closed and clanked into place. Bon Bon let out her breath. “Okay. That must be Baalzebull.”

“The evilest of all evil cows,” Derpy said in a soft voice.

“And we’re supposed to fight that thing?” Spike asked.

Bon Bon frowned. “Did we miss any side passages? Or large areas outside?” Nopony could think of any. “Then I guess it’s time we stop dodging these cows, and start leveling up.”

“Can we level up?” Spike asked. “I mean, what do ‘experience points’ even mean when we’re actually in the game?”

“It’d be easy enough to simulate increases in strength and toughness, or even agility,” Moondancer said. “But I’m a wizard, so I’m going to be boosting my intelligence stat. Does that mean I’ll actually get smarter?”

“There’s no point theory-crafting,” Bon Bon said. “Let’s find one of these cows that’s patrolling on its own, and take it down. If they’re not too difficult to fight, then we can grind on cows until we level up, or give up trying.”

===

The only lone cow was the one that had been guarding the farm equipment. Bon Bon arranged the party in an ambush formation, and they waited for her to finish walking to the far wall and head back their way. “Remember,” she said. “If this goes really badly, I’ll run off and hide while you guys run interference. I’ll sneak back to retrieve your bodies, and bring you back to life with candy.”

“I don’t like this plan,” Moondancer said.

Bon Bon rolled her eyes. “Would you rather have us all die, and hope that someone drags us to a priest to revive us?”

“Yes,” said Spike and Derpy together.

Moondancer nodded. “If I’m going to get beaten to death, it’s going to be over all of your dead bodies.”

“Probably just Spike’s,” Derpy said. “Bon Bon is really sneaky, and I’ve got the hat!”

Moondancer’s aura lit up around the straw hat from the scarecrow, but Derpy’s hooves were too fast and held it in place on her head. She glowered out of her unpatched eye until Moondancer gave a heavy sigh and gave up trying to steal it. “Fine. Let’s do this.”

“Moo,” agreed the cow, bumping into Spike, who was standing directly in her path, to trigger the ambush. She looked confused for a second, then her eyes narrowed in anger. “The fools who stand before me shall be trampled beneath my hooves!”

Spike frantically raised his shield to block as she reared up and stomped down on top of him, but the cow’s weight was too much for him, and he fell onto his back with a grunt.

“Dark Eidous!”

Moondancer’s lightning arced down from the ceiling, and Bon Bon’s ladle smashed into the cow’s rear leg, but she barely acknowledged the attacks, instead lowering her horns and hooking them beneath Spike’s shield, flinging it to the side with a toss of her head and then rearing up to stomp on the dragon’s belly.

Spike stabbed up at the cow, but his sword only made a small cut in her shoulder as her hooves slammed into his armor, stealing his breath. A muffin appeared in his gasping jaws in a ray of heavenly light, and he tried to eat it, but before he could finish the cow rammed her horns into his side, and flipped him end over end, until he slammed into a hay bale. Lightning crashed through her, each strike eliciting another, angrier ‘moo’, as she charged towards the downed dragon to finish him off.

But Derpy was faster, flying down past the charging cattle and shoving another muffin into Spike’s mouth with her outstretched hoof. “Eat, damn you. Eat!” she said desperately, working his jaws.

Moondancer pointed her staff. “Big Bee’s Bubble!” The wobbling barrier briefly appeared between Spike and the cow, only to pop instantly as the cow crashed into it. It broke the momentum of the charge, at least, and before the cow could build up any more steam, Bon Bon’s continuous attacks on its legs finally bore fruit. There was a sickening crack, and the cow sat down heavily, one of her hind legs shattered.

The remaining hind leg lashed out, as the cow thrashed about in agony and rolled onto her side, and the blind kick caught Bon Bon right in the face. She screamed, and dropped her ladle, staggering around with a hoof to her bleeding muzzle.

With a thwack, Moondancer’s scythe stabbed into the cow’s side, point-first. The cow struggled to stand, but the wizard dragged her blade through its guts until it hooked on her ribs, then wrenched the handle forwards, driving the blade deep into her chest. The cow gave one last shudder, and collapsed.

As Spike slowly got back to his feet, one claw on the hay bale for balance, Derpy flew over to tend to Bon Bon.

“Yeah,” Moondancer said. “They’re pretty strong.”

“Too strong,” Derpy said, as she waved a muffin in Bon Bon’s face. “She was hurting us faster than I could heal!”

Bon Bon tried to talk, only to give a pained cry as her broken jaw moved. “Fffffff!”

“Come on, open up!” Derpy said. “It won’t get better until you eat!”

Bon Bon held up a hoof, eyes wide and nostrils flaring, and tried to wave Derpy off, but the muffin pirate was relentless. She wedged her hoof between her friend’s jaws and pried them open, then stuffed the muffin inside. Bon Bon shrieked in agony, but as the sugary snack softened in her mouth and she was able to swallow bits of it, the cries slowly softened to mere whimpers as the bones healed.

“See?” Derpy said, smiling. “All better now!”

“Okay, new rule,” Bon Bon said, slowly and carefully. “Don’t let anypony kick you in the face.”

“How are we supposed to fight more than one of these things?” Spike asked. “They’ve got one heck of a kick.”

Bon Bon furrowed her brow. “Moondancer can bubble one of them, and let us fight them one at a time.”

“In case you didn’t notice, she popped my bubble like it was made out of soap,” Moondancer said.

“Only once she was angry,” Bon Bon said. “She couldn’t do it earlier. They must enrage as we hit them. So if we bubble a fresh cow, she’ll be trapped.”

“What if there’s three?” Spike asked.

“Then she can bubble two of them,” Bon Bon said.

“I can only do one real spell at a time,” Moondancer said. “It would need to be a more advanced spell to bubble two cows, and I only studied the basics.”

Bon Bon frowned, then turned to Derpy. “Do you still have that lasso?”

Derpy tilted her head. “Yeah, but I don’t see how tying myself up is going to help.”

“Give it to me, I know how to use it,” Bon Bon said.

“Really?” Spike asked. “I didn’t know you were a rodeo pony.”

Bon Bon smirked. “There’s a lot of things about me you don’t know.”

===

“Okay, everypony ready?” Bon Bon asked. “Got your candy?”

Spike opened his mouth, showing the piece of hard candy resting on his tongue. “Theck.”

“I’ve got all the muffins,” Derpy said, her arms wrapped around the bundle of healing treats, pre-summoned from the aether.

“Ready with the bubble on cow three,” Moondancer said.

Bon Bon tied the lasso to her tail, and started it spinning. “Then let’s do this thing.”

They leapt out in front of the cow patrol, and the three bovines lowered their heads to charge. One of them quickly bounced off the bubble surrounding it, and a second was dragged off course by the lasso looped around its neck. Bon Bon tugged it to the ground and forced it to roll over, then ran in circles, wrapping the rope around its legs and tugging them together to leave it helpless.

The third slammed into Spike, but he was braced and ready, and while his claws left furrows in the wooden floor as he was pushed back, he wasn’t really hurt. As the cow tensed to toss his shield aside, he stabbed his sword into its neck, weakening the blow, and managed to windmill his arms and keep his balance, and get his shield back into place to block the hooves as they came down on him.

“Careful,” Bon Bon said, as she held her cow tied up tight. “She’s going to get stronger. Make every hit count!”

Derpy drew her cutlass in her mouth, and as Spike hacked at the cow’s face, only leaving a shallow gash across her cheek since most of the blow was deflected by her horn, she and Moondancer rushed in on either side. The cow flinched away from the scythe, keeping the awkward blade from hitting anything important, but the cutlass dug in deep, spraying blood across Derpy’s face as she wrenched it free.

“I can’t see!” she cried, flying back. Moondancer’s aura lit up around Derpy’s eyepatch, and switched it to her other eye. The pegasus gasped. “It’s a miracle!”

Meanwhile, Spike was slowly withering under the cow’s increasingly deadly blows, his shield taking a few dents and his sword barely able to reach anything vulnerable.

“Start dodging!” Bon Bon shouted as she noticed that the cow was nearly blind, with blood from several blows to its forehead and scalp running down its face. “It can barely see!”

Spike backed off a way, letting the cow kick and gore at nothing, while Derpy fed him muffins until he felt better. He popped the candy back in his mouth, and gave a loud roar to get the cow’s attention. It turned towards him and charged, and he stepped to the side, hacking his sword at its neck as it passed. The cow slammed into a wall, splintering the board, and Spike and Derpy stabbed deeply into its side while it was stunned. With a last low groan, the cow collapsed.

“Right. Round two,” Spike said, facing the cow in the bubble.

“I’m not going to go down as easily as Maribell,” the cow said, slamming its horns against the wobbly barrier again, then scraped its hoof against the floor.

“Yeah, yeah,” Spike said, motioning with his shield. “Bring it.”

Moondancer dropped the spell, and the cow charged.

The second fight was actually a little easier, since Spike had figured out how to blind a cow on purpose, and Moondancer didn’t need to maintain a bubble.

On the other hoof, she wasn’t sure what to do to help. “I don’t want to use Dark Eidous in case –” Bon Bon cried out as lightning arced down to strike the cow she was holding, the electricity crackling through her body as well. “Right, that. And the scythe isn’t a very good weapon against cows.” She swung at the cow again, trying to hook the blade into it like she had the lone cow earlier, but with the cow up and moving around the thing was just too awkward. “Why is the sharp part on the inside?”

“It’s fine,” Spike said, as he stabbed the blindly flailing cow in the neck. “We’ve got this.”

Soon enough, the second cow was down, and they advanced on the third, hogtied and helpless in Bon Bon’s lasso.

“Let her up?” Spike suggested, after eating a few more muffins to make sure he was at a hundred percent.

“Don’t bother,” Moondancer said, hooking the blade of her scythe around the cow’s neck.

“Hey,” the cow said, trying to wiggle away from the blade, but unable to move far enough. “That’s not fair!”

Moondancer wrenched the scythe up, cutting deep into the cow’s throat. It twitched a few times, then went still. “At least it’s good against helpless targets,” she said. “I think I’ll call that ‘Reaper’s Strike’.”

===

After a few minutes rest from the hard-fought battle, and an abortive attempt to skin the evil cows during which they discovered that skinning animals was a lot harder than it looked, they looked around at the barn, still full of at least a dozen more cows, not to mention all the ones outside in the fields.

“This is going to take a while,” Moondancer said. “How many cows does it take to level up, anyway?”

“Maybe we already did?” Bon Bon suggested. “You and Spike have new powers. Reaper’s Strike for you, and Spike’s blinding attack.”

“I don’t think Reaper’s Strike is a new spell,” Moondancer said. “It’s more of a special property of the scythe.”

“So maybe I’m the only one that levelled up,” Spike said. “I did feel like it was getting easier.”

“We should keep fighting these cows until we all level,” Bon Bon said. “Or until we get really tired of fighting cows, anyway.”

“I’m already kind of sick of it,” Derpy said, still wiping off her face with some hay. Hay wasn’t really very good for wiping up blood, but there wasn’t much else available. “It’s so messy. And stinky.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Spike said, wrinkling his nose as he glanced at the bodies. “I thought they smelled bad on the outside!”

“Do you really think we’re ready to fight Baalzebull?” Bon Bon asked.

The two quieted down.

Moondancer groaned, and climbed to her hooves. “Let’s go kill some more cows.”

Total Bull

“Okay, that’s the last one in the barn,” Bon Bon said, unwinding her lasso from the latest dead cow after it stopped twitching.

Derpy collapsed to the blood-soaked floor, her wings flopping loosely at her sides. “Can we stop now? I am so tired of fighting cows.”

Moondancer held her scythe in her fetlocks and leaned on it for support. “I don’t know if we’re levelling up or not, but I don’t think I’m going to spontaneously develop a new spell. That takes study and focus, not being constantly distracted by monsters trying to kill you.”

“And I’m getting really sick of these muffins,” Spike said.

Derpy was instantly on her feet, her nose pressed against his face as her eye narrowed dangerously. “You take that back.”

Bon Bon, for her part, didn’t look entirely fresh either. “Maybe we could head back to Castle Town and find an inn, rest for whatever passes for a night here, and come back later to finish the quest.”

“Uh…” Spike said.

Bon Bon blinked. “What? I’m sure we’ve got enough left in us to fight some random chickens and farmhands.”

“The farm is on fire,” Moondancer said.

Bon Bon shrugged. “It’ll still be on fire when we get back.”

“That makes no sense,” Spike said.

“Games don’t need to make sense,” Bon Bon replied.

Moondancer shrugged. “I guess it would prove once and for all whether or not this was a game.”

“Not really,” Spike said. “Even a game could have the farm burn down if we left while it was on fire.”

The unicorn nodded. “But if it’s still burning?”

Spike frowned. “Okay, that would prove this is a game. But if that doesn’t happen we just burned down this pony’s farm for no reason.”

“Big deal. We’ll miss out on a reward for a sidequest,” Bon Bon said. “That’s a lot better than trying to test it with something important.” She headed for the barn entrance, weaving her way around the bodies scattered across the floor. “Come on, let’s go rest up.”

But as they approached the door, there was a rumble from above, and they all had to scramble back as the front wall of the barn collapsed into a barrier of flaming planks and roof tiles. All throughout the barn, embers scattered from the collapse and landed on bales of hay, setting them on fire as well and filling what was left of the barn with a dire red glow and a cloying heat.

“Quick, girls!” Derpy said. “We need to get to the boss room! It’s got metal walls!”

“Well played, gamemaster,” Bon Bon muttered under her breath, following the others as they ran towards Baalzebull’s chamber.

===

Baalzebull mooed, and Spike doubled over, retching.

“Oh right,” Derpy said. “Spike’s allergic to devil-cows.”

“I guess that makes you our back-up tank?” Moondancer suggested. “You’ve got the next heaviest armor.”

“You can’t have the healer tank!” Bon Bon said. “That’s just – no!”

“You could be the healer, I guess,” Derpy said. “You’re a chef after all. That’s more of a healer class than a pirate.”

“Girls, stop. I’m fine,” Spike said, standing back up, and looking extra green and a bit less purple. “I can do it.”

“Mooooo,” said Baalzebull.

Spike flinched, but grit his teeth and swallowed the vomit bubbling up in his throat. “You’re making me really mad,” he said, pointing his sword at the giant red bull.

“That’s nausea and rage,” Moondancer said. “Do you really want to go into this fight with two status effects on our tank?”

“They cancel out,” Spike said, through clenched teeth. “I’m fine.” He started jogging towards the devil bull. “And you’re going down!”

Baalzebull did not moo. Instead, he let forth a giant gout of greenish flames, entirely enveloping Spike, that stuck to his armor and kept burning.

“Three! Three status effects!” Moondancer cried.

“I’m a dragon, I’m fine!” Spike shouted back, stabbing the devil-cow in the gut.

“Great Muffin,” Derpy said, “I know you don’t like doing anything but sending me muffins so far, but Spike needs your protection! Shield him with some sort of armor or something. Please?”

A spotlight shone down on Spike, and a river of thick, gooey muffin batter spilled out, glopping onto his head and running down over his body, covering him in viscous goop.

“Please don’t ever use that spell on me,” Moondancer said. “Also, Dark Eidous.”

Lightning flashed, crackling over Baalzebull’s body.

“Right, right,” Bon Bon said, crouching low and then darting forwards to attack Baalzebull from behind.

Spike flailed about wildly, not really sure what was going on anymore, between the aura of fire and the slowly baking muffin batter covering the eye-slits in his helmet. Luckily, Baalzebull mostly relied on flame attacks, which he could ignore, and was too large for even a terribly-aimed sword swing to miss. Even better, when he next tried his nauseating ‘moo’, enough batter had gotten in Spike’s ears to keep him from hearing it clearly enough for it to affect him.

“Is it just me?” Derpy said, as she hovered around Baalzebull’s head, stabbing at him while keeping out of the line of fire as he futilely attempted to roast Spike over and over again, “or is this way too easy?”

“It’s supposed to be easy,” Bon Bon said, whacking at Baalzebull between his hind legs with her ladle. There was no apparent effect, but she was sure it was hurting him. “We spent all that time levelling up on his cows.”

Baalzebull’s horns crackled, and with a flash, a dark portal opened next to him. From it, emerged a cow, wearing a large black cow bell.

“As my master calls, I return,” she said.

“You!” Moondancer said, pointing. “We killed you!”

“And I have been granted a second chance to die for my master,” she replied. “I must thank you for this gift. Do you accept horrible pain?” She lowered her head, with a ‘clank’ from her bell, and charged at Moondancer.

“Don’t talk to the summons,” Bon Bon said, readying her lasso and flinging it around the cow’s neck, setting her hooves to drag the cow off-course, and then flipped her onto her side.

Moondancer danced back as the cow slid to a stop next to her. She set her scythe blade beneath the struggling creature’s neck, and yanked it upwards, calling her attack. “Reaper’s Strike!”

Baalzebull’s horn crackled again, and another portal opened, depositing another cow onto the battleground. It wasn’t the same one they’d just killed, but she still looked familiar.

“I’ll get you this time!” the cow said, immediately charging at Spike’s back.

“He’s going to summon all the cows we killed, isn’t he,” Moondancer said, waiting with her scythe as Bon Bon went to work with her lasso.

“As long as he keeps summoning them one at a time, it shouldn’t be a problem,” Bon Bon said, holding down the thrashing cattle as Moondancer slit her throat.

Baalzebull’s horns crackled again, this time summoning two portals.

“Stop giving him ideas!” Moondancer shouted, bubbling the cow on the left as it emerged.

Still, they’d had plenty of practice taking out pairs of extra cows during their fights. Bubble one, kill two. It took longer, but it was still fast enough to take down both before he summoned the next set – or maybe he simply wasn’t able to summon a second set until the first was gone.

That left Derpy and Spike alone on the boss, so he wasn’t dying quickly, but his attacks did almost nothing to Spike and Derpy’s hat kept her from drawing his attention.

Then his horns crackled, and he opened three portals.

Moondancer bubbled the first cow, and Bon Bon lassoed the second, but that left one cow free. “You killed me,” she said, focusing on Moondancer. “Now it’s your turn!”

“Spike!” Moondancer screamed, “Save me!”

But there was no reaction from the dragon, almost as if he couldn’t hear. The cow crashed into her with bone-crushing force, and she flew through the air until she smacked into one of the bodies hanging from the ceiling, landing beneath it in a heap. She tried to scream in pain, but it hurt too much to breathe. The cow reared up over her, ready to crush her beneath her hooves, and a muffin appeared in her mouth.

She bit down, letting the sweetness heal her wounds, and rolled out of the way of the cow’s attack. Somehow, she’d managed to keep the bubble spell running, but that meant that she didn’t have a lot of options for fighting back – and anything she tried would just make the cow mad, and increase its strength.

Her next dodge was too slow, and the cow’s horn tore into her, her side exploding in agony. Another muffin appeared, taking the edge off the pain, but she had to do something or this wasn’t going to end well for her.

She almost tripped over the solution, scrambling to keep her feet after her hind leg almost kicked Bon Bon in the face. Ignoring the cow bearing down on her, she used Reaper’s Strike on the helpless cow beneath her, killing it instantly.

She felt her neck crack as the cow managed to headbutt her right in the forehead. Darkness started closing in around the edges of her vision… only to recede as Derpy came to the rescue once again with another muffin. She whimpered at the feeling of her vertebrae wriggling back into place.

But with only two cows left, the situation was manageable again. She re-bubbled the first cow before she could get an attack off on Derpy, and Bon Bon lassoed the one who’d almost killed her.

“Nice try,” she said, as she set her scythe.

“I know! I was this close!” the cow said, pouting, and then Moondancer slit her throat.

Baalzebull’s horns crackled, and fifteen portals started to open, all around the room.

“Run,” Bon Bon said, her eyes going wide.

But before the portals could open fully, Spike managed to plant his sword firmly into Baalzebull’s eye, and the magic went out of control, shooting lightning all around the room but somehow managing to miss all of them. Baalzebull gave one last angry moo, and then collapsed, smoking. The bodies of all the summoned cows – as well as the two cows they hadn’t yet killed – vanished into smoke as their master died. The only thing left was a single black cowbell.

“Did we just beat an instant-death timer by about half a second?” Moondancer asked.

“I think it was a cut-scene,” Bon Bon said. “I hope it was a cut-scene.”

Spike set down his sword and shield, and pawed at his batter-covered helmet, twisting at it until he could pull it off. “What was wrong with you girls?” he said. “I felt like I was fighting that boss all by myself. What were you all doing?”

Just Reward

Spike carefully nudged open the door to Baalzebull’s lair – which the ponies had closed behind themselves to keep out the flames – and braced himself against the expected heat – but beyond was only darkness. He pushed it open the rest of the way.

The barn was dark, but sunlight filtered through a few gaps in the roof. The flames were all out, and it didn’t look like they’d burned out naturally. The wood and hay was charred and damaged, but there was plenty left to burn, if there’d been any fire left to burn it. The entrance was still blocked, of course, but some of the partially-burned hay bales looked like they’d be easy enough to climb, and led to a collapsed part of the wall, so they had a way out.

“It looks safe,” Spike said. “The fire must have all gone out when Baalzebull died.”

“Then I guess we saved the farm,” Bon Bon said. “Well, except for the cows. I don’t suppose they all came back to life?”

Spike blinked, suddenly noticing what was missing. “Maybe? I don’t see any bodies.”

They made their way across the dimly lit floor, careful not to slip on the debris, or get their hooves wet in the pools of blood scattered here and there. Bon Bon volunteered to climb up the hay bales first, and prodded at them carefully for a while before giving them her approval. Spike and Moondancer followed her up. It was a short drop to the ground outside.

“There’s no cows left out here either?” Derpy said, looking confused. “But we didn’t even kill them.”

They didn’t have a chance to investigate the mystery, since the farmer was bouncing up and down and waving at them from the front yard.

“You did it!” she said, once they approached. “I don’t know how I can thank you!”

“Do you know how to skin evil cows?” Derpy asked. “Most of them went away but there’s a big devil-bull. I bet he’d make really good armor.”

“Sure!”

“Do you mind if I keep this scythe?” Moondancer asked.

“We’re adventurers, we don’t have to give anything back,” Bon Bon said.

The farmer chuckled. “It’s okay, I had that old thing shoved in a box since I normally use the thresher. Go ahead and keep it.”

Bon Bon snorted. “Can I use your stove? I made a bag of healing candy, but it’s pretty plain. I was thinking adding some flavoring would make it work better.”

The farmer glanced at her house. It was damaged, but mostly intact, and it didn’t look like the kitchen had collapsed or anything. “Sure, I guess.” She turned to Spike, and smiled. “What about you? Anything I can do for a big handsome dragon hero?”

Spike shrugged. “Nah, I’m good.”

The farmer pouted, and walked over to him, leaning close and almost nuzzling him as she spoke quietly into his ear. “Are you sure I don’t have anything you want?” she asked, waggling her tail.

Spike blushed under his armor, and gently pushed the pony away with one of his claws. “Um… got any gems?”

===

Spike was counting the large pile of golz the farmer had given him as a reward for saving her farm, when Derpy flew up to him all excited. “Hey, Spike! I think there’s something down the well!”

Spike looked up. “Is it water?”

“Besides that! Come on!”

Bon Bon was still mixing up her batch of hopefully tastier candy, but Moondancer was already waiting by the well. “Neither of us fit in the bucket, but between the two of us we should be able to lower you safely,” she said. “If you need to get dragged back up in a hurry, tug on the rope three times.”

“Or yell ‘hey guys pull me up!’” Derpy suggested.

“Is it really a good idea to go swimming in their water supply?” Spike asked.

“Yes,” Moondancer said.

“It’s the best idea ever! I just wish I could go,” Derpy said. “I always wondered what it was like at the bottom of a well, but when I tried to fly down one like Rainbow did that one time, I got stuck halfway and they had to send down a little foal to tie a rope to me so they could pull me out. So embarrassing.” She cringed.

“Just remember the signal,” Moondancer said, lifting Spike in her magic and plopping him in the bucket. “Ready?”

“Hey!” Spike said, squirming around until he was at least upright.

“Good luck,” Moondancer said, dropping the bucket into the well.

Spike fell for about ten feet, before the rope suddenly went taut, smacking him in the side of the face. Luckily, he was wearing a helmet. He grabbed hold of the rope, and tugged on it to hold the bucket away from the sides of the well, as it slowly descended into the darkness.

Although it wasn’t quite dark, was it? As the ambient sunlight faded, he started to make out a blue glow illuminating the walls and the bucket from below. Then the walls of the well receded as he was lowered into a small cavern, and a few seconds later the bucket splashed down in the central pool. Spike hopped out onto the shore.

Everything was wet, as if it had just recently been underwater. There was a small dribble of water from a crack in the rock, that was slowly refilling the pool – but for now, the contents of the little cavern were exposed. There was a rotting crate covered in seaweed, various poisonous-looking mushrooms, and the ancient skeleton of a pony knight.

The armor was rusted and ruined, and sized completely wrong for a dragon anyway, and the shield had been sliced in two by a blow that also crushed the hapless knight’s ribs, but the sword was undamaged and sharp, and the source of the pale blue glow. Spike worked at the knight’s jaw until he could pull it loose, and gave a few practice swings. It was a little larger than the sword he’d found in Lyra’s basement, but light as a feather, and very sharp.

There was a grinding, rattling noise as the skeleton of the knight started to stand up, a faint light glimmering in its eyes. Spike gave a yelp, and swung his new sword at its neck, slicing off its head like a hot knife through butter. The bones collapsed in a heap.

“You okay down there?” Derpy asked, from above.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Spike said. He gave one last look around, then climbed back into the bucket and tugged on the rope three times. “I think I’m done here. Pull me up!”

===

Bon Bon was done with her candy by the time Moondancer finished examining the sword’s magic.

They’d all camped out in the farmer’s front yard to rest up, since there wasn’t enough room in her house for all of them, and while the farmer told Spike that she had some extra space in her bed if he wanted, he didn’t think it would be fair for only him to sleep in comfort while the rest of them made do with grass and blankets.

“It’s magically sharp, and glows,” Moondancer said, as she came out of her trance.

“Kind of figured that part out on my own,” Spike said.

She glowered at him, but continued. “It’s also enchanted to increase your speed, including your mental speed.” She floated it back to him. “I could use it myself. It’s light enough. But I only really know how to fight with staffs.”

“I’m sure we’ll find a magic staff soon enough,” Spike said, shoving the magic sword into his old sword’s scabbard without thinking. Surprisingly, it was a perfect fit.

“Everyone’s got a new weapon but Derpy,” Bon Bon said. “We should have taken that crossbow the pegasus farmhand was using.”

“Pirates don’t use crossbows,” Derpy said.

Bon Bon shrugged. “They could, and it makes sense for a flyer to want a ranged weapon.”

“Maybe you could think of it as a tiny, spring-loaded cannon?” Spike suggested.

“I don’t think I’m that good at playing pretend,” Derpy said. “If you find me an actual tiny cannon, I’ll use that. But it has to make a big ‘boom’ noise.”

===

They slept for a while in the burning sun, until the farmer woke up them up with a hot breakfast and a paper-wrapped bundle that she said contained Baalzebull’s hide. It wasn’t tanned yet, but any armorer would be able to take care of that for them.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay for a while?” she offered. “We have a lot of work to do to get everything back in shape. I’d be really grateful for any help you could give.” She smiled at Spike while she said the last part.

“Can’t your farmhands take care of that?” Spike asked, motioning to the colorful ponies who’d wandered back out of the grass, and were currently working on fixing the fences.

“Is there any kind of reward for the farmwork?” Bon Bon asked. “I mean, for the rest of us. I think we all know how you’d like to reward Spike.”

The farmer blushed.

“You think she’s hiding her gems?” Spike asked, tilting his head at Bon Bon.

“Let’s just go,” Moondancer said. “We’re supposed to be rescuing a princess, remember?”

“Oh! She’s been kidnapped again?” the farmer said, looking shocked. “Well, don’t let me hold you here then, heroes. I’m sure we’ll still have work for you if you ever come back. And until then…” she handed Spike a slip of paper. “Here’s a map to the farm, so you don’t forget about me. If you want to send a letter, just tell them to deliver it to Ferdy’s farm.”

“Er, thanks, Ferdy,” Spike said, taking the paper.

She giggled. “Oh, I’m not Ferdy. Ferdy was my grandma. I’m Felicia. But you can call me Ferdy if you want.” She smiled at him. “Just call me, okay?”

“What?” Spike asked.

Felicia looked around, to make sure nopony else was nearby, then said in a low voice. “I’ve got a phone.”

“What’s a phone?” Moondancer asked.

She put a hoof up to Moondancer’s mouth. “Shh! Not so loud.” She checked for ponies listening again, then added, “but if you find one, I wrote my number on the map.”

“Oh… kay,” Moondancer said. “We’re leaving now.”

“Come back soon!”

Spike turned and waved at the edge of the fields, and then they left the farm behind, heading into the tall wild grass.

Swear to God, Derpy

The party stood in a clearing at the base of a hill. A wide stone staircase, flanked by statues, led up to a gothic-styled building halfway up the slope. In the bright sunlight of the eternal day, it completely failed to be menacing or even sinister. Also, the windows were all stained glass depicting happy figures in various shades of pastel.

“Are you sure this is the place?” Spike asked.

“They said to head south around the mountain range, and then we’d find it in the large valley to the north,” Moondancer said. “We did exactly what they said, so this should be Orcus’ castle.”

“It doesn’t really look like a castle,” Derpy said. “It’s all pointy.”

Spike nodded. “And small. It’s even smaller than Twilight’s place.”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Bon Bon said. “Let’s go inside and ask around. If they attack us, that means we’ve found the right place.”

So they made their way up the staircase, glancing at the statues to either side. Many of them seemed to be statues of heroes – wizards, priests, thieves, and warriors – but more than half of them were all of the same robed wizard, with a hood hiding his face. A bright brass placard on the base identified the figure as ‘The Immortal Emperor Destiny’.

Near the top, one statue was smashed and defaced. “I wonder who this was,” Spike said.

“That was a statue of the nameless one,” said a young mare in black robes standing out front of the building. “The Immortal Emperor Destiny ordered all statues of the nameless one destroyed, at the same time that he cursed his name so that none could speak it without calling down Destiny’s wrath.”

“Why would there be statues of a dark lord?” Moondancer asked. “Did he conquer the land before being defeated?”

The mare lowered her head. “He was not always dark. Once he was a champion of the common ponies… or so he said. But he would not listen to reason, even when his foolish experiments led to disaster after disaster, and so The Immortal Emperor Destiny took it upon himself to protect the world from the nameless one’s evil.”

“Oh,” Bon Bon said, nonplussed. “So this is a civil war.”

“There is only one true leader, and that is The Immortal Emperor Destiny,” the mare said, bowing her head further.

Bon Bon snorted. “Or at least that’s what you’ve been ordered to say.”

She looked up at Bon Bon, shocked. “To say otherwise would be unspeakable heresy,” she replied, then turned and raised a hoof to motion towards the building. “And if there is one place where heresy should remain unspoken, is it not here, in the Church of God?”

“What’s a church?” Spike asked, at the same time as Derpy asked, “Who’s ‘God’?”

The black-robed mare smiled. “Come inside, visitors, and see for yourselves.”

===

After having spent several periods that they were guessing were approximately equal to days in the wilderness, eating mostly what they could forage, the Church of God’s Gift Shop and Café was like a blessing from the heavens.

“So it’s a temple,” Spike said, munching on his hamburger. He’d picked up a taste for them at Canterlot High, but they were hard to find in Equestria. “She could have just said ‘temple’.”

“To be fair, we did immediately recognize it as soon as we walked through the door,” Bon Bon replied, picking at what definitely were not hay fries, although she’d been assured they were safe for vegetarians. “It’s not where I’d hold a kidnap victim, though. Even if you somehow got everypony who works here in on the plan, there are too many travelers.”

Moondancer’s salad was, thankfully, a completely normal salad. “According to this map, there’s another valley farther to the east,” she said, putting her hoof down on the map of the region she’d bought from the gift shop. “There’s a little castle drawn in it.”

“Ah,” Spike said.

“So we’ve basically been wasting our time since we turned north.”

“Mmo we havemmp,” Spike said, around his food. He swallowed, loudly. “They’ve got hamburgers.”

===

Meanwhile, Derpy was talking to the priest. “I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on, okay? I always believed in the Great Muffin but I never really believed believed. It was just a joke to me until it suddenly started working.”

“Ah, I’ve seen this before, my child,” the old gray pony said in a calm voice. “You are not a priest, whose faith in God is strong enough to survive even in the face of silence. You were called to the service of this ‘Great Muffin’, to show the world that he –”

“She,” Derpy corrected him.

The priest nodded. “That she exists. You are an oracle. A prophet.”

“I’m a pirate,” Derpy said. “Can’t you see the eyepatch?”

“Indeed. And if the holy folk of the Great Muffin are indeed pirates, then I think that perhaps your goddess is an angle of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.”

Derpy narrowed her eye. “She can’t be an angel. She answers prayers! With muffins! If they were angel-muffins there’d be more feathers.”

“Not an angel, my dear. An angle. You are a vegetarian like most of your friends, correct?”

“I don’t eat meat,” Derpy admitted, “but I don’t really like vegetables either.”

“But you would turn your back in disgust if offered a big sloppy plate of spaghetti, topped with meatballs.”

“What’s a meatball?”

“It’s a ball made out of meat,” the priest explained.

“Oh, of course,” Derpy said, then shuddered. “Ewww.”

“Precisely. For those like you, the Flying Spaghetti Monster cannot appear in his true form, so he comes at you from another angle. Perhaps as a muffin.”

“So you think she’s a big fake,” Derpy said, frowning.

“It seems likely,” the priest said.

“And god is really a big plate of spaghetti.”

He laughed. “No! Oh my lord, no. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is not God. God is the true God, the creator of the universe. He is above any physical manifestation, or anything as blatant as responding to prayers with instantaneous healing! He has no prophets, no oracles. He is worshipped by those whose faith is true.”

“So you can’t cast spells?” Derpy asked.

“I can cast them, but they do not work for me, since my god is above such petty concerns.”

“Then how do you even know he exists?”

The priest smiled. “I have faith.”

===

“So where’s Derpy, anyway?” Moondancer asked, once she’d finished her salad, gone over the map a few more times, and basically gotten bored of waiting.

“I saw her go into the back room with the priest,” Spike said. “They were going to talk about god or something.”

“He probably wants to show her what it’s like to be touched by the divine,” Bon Bon remarked. She’d gotten up and was browsing the shelves in the gift shop.

Moondancer stared. “And you let her go? All on her own?”

“I didn’t know where she’d gone until Spike mentioned it just now,” Bon Bon replied. “I was keeping an eye on the enemy, since we thought this was Orcus’ Castle.”

“What?” Spike said. “She’s an adult. If she wants to exchange a few private words with someone she’s allowed.” He paused. “I mean, I’m allowed to hang out with strangers like you girls now, and Derpy’s about five years older than me.”

“That’s because Twilight is a terrible parent!” Moondancer replied, standing up.

Spike scowled. “She’s not my mom!”

“Come on, you two!” Moondancer said, “We have to rescue her from that pervert!”

===

“So I guess you’re the wrong person to ask about learning more spells then,” Derpy said. “I guess I’ve been figuring them out on my own so far…”

“No, I know some divine spells,” the priest said. “Even if they don’t work for me, there are plenty of so-called priests of the Flying Spaghetti Monster who can cast them. I imagine you could cast them too.”

“Really?” Derpy asked, her eye lighting up. “Teach me!”

“Of course, of course,” the priest said, smiling. “But there’s the small matter of my fee…”

===

“Get out of my way,” Moondancer said, to the two black-robed holy mares guarding the door to the back of the church.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but the priest gave us strict instructions that he was not to be disturbed.”

“Our friend’s been back there for a really long time,” Spike said. “We’re getting worried.”

One of the guards giggled. “Oh, I imagine she’ll be back there for a while.”

The other gave a beatific smile. “Father Antony is very skilled, and always takes such joy in teaching new students. They might be in there for hours. Why don't you make camp, and check for her again when you awake?”

“Get out of my way,” Moondancer said, brandishing her scythe, “or I’ll say ‘Dark Eidous’ again.” Lightning crashed, and the guard on the left gave a strangled squeak, then collapsed to the ground, smoking.

The other guard stepped aside. Moondancer pivoted to buck with her hind hooves, and kicked the door off its hinges. The three of them rushed inside – there was no time to lose!

“No!” came Derpy’s voice from one of the side rooms to the left. “Please mister!”

“Derpy!” Moondancer shouted, racing towards the sound.

“No. No no no! This can’t be happening!” Her voice cracked with anguish, and they heard a muffled sob.

Moondancer kicked the door open, and the three of them barreled into the small office, to find Derpy kneeling down over the priest, crying and pressing her front hooves to the gaping, bloody wound on his chest.

She looked up at them as they entered. “Why won’t it work?”

“Uh…” Spike said, staring at the dead body.

“What in Celestia’s name happened here?” Bon Bon asked.

“I guess you really can take care of yourself,” Moondancer said, lowering her weapon. “Did he hurt you?”

“What?” Derpy asked, staring at Moondancer, confused.

“Uh…” Spike said again. “Did you just kill the head priest?”

“I didn’t mean to!” Derpy wailed, stomping on the corpse’s bloody chest a couple times in frustration.

“Just tell us what happened, okay?” Bon Bon asked, putting a comforting hoof on her shoulder.

“He was so nice,” Derpy said. “He knew so many spells, but I could only afford one of them, since he wanted a lot of golz and you have most of it still.”

“Okay…” Spike said.

“So I paid him, and he taught me the spell, and then I stabbed him in the chest with my cutlass.”

“Derpy,” Bon Bon said, “that kills ponies.”

“I know!” Derpy said, sniffling, and tried to wipe the snot off her muzzle with a bloodstained hoof, with mixed success. “But how else was I going to test the resurrection spell?”

Moondancer spotted an unfurled scroll lying on the floor next to the body, and lifted it up with her magic to read it. “This is the spell?” she asked.

Derpy nodded. “Do you think you can cast it?”

“It’s not unicorn magic,” Moondancer said. “So, probably not.”

Derpy looked down, “Oh.”

“I can read the warnings at the top, though,” she continued, “and it says it only works on members of your adventuring party. It relies on the bond of shared destiny to retrieve them from the shores of death.”

Derpy stared at her.

Moondancer grimaced. “You can’t just use it to resurrect random ponies. You can only use it on us.”

“Oh,” Derpy said, wiping off her eye with a fetlock. She looked down at the priest, who was still dead. “My bad?”

“Maybe we should leave,” Bon Bon said. “Now.”

“That would, um,” Derpy stopped trying to hide the priest’s body under the desk, since it was too wide to fit. “Yeah, we should go.”

Moondancer scowled. “Is there a back door? I kind of made a scene in the front room.”

Pigheaded

They ran from the church with all due haste, and possibly a bit more, just in case, and travelled back south to the main east-west road. They were tired, and hungry, so they gathered some firewood and Spike cooked up something not entirely unlike hayfries from the local grass.

“Why isn’t our chef doing the cooking?” Moondancer asked, looking up from the book she was reading. She’d grabbed a few on the way out of the priest’s office.

“I’m standing guard,” Bon Bon said.

“But you’re lying down,” Derpy noted.

Bon Bon grunted.

Derpy squinted a bit at her. “And your eyes are closed?”

“I like cooking,” Spike said.

They sat in companionable silence for a while, until the meal was ready. It tasted a lot like grass.

After a short nap, they continued on down the road. After a few more hours of travel, Moondancer consulted the map and suggested they head north into the dense forest. “I don’t think there’s a road, but it’s a coniferous forest, so there won’t be much underbrush.”

“And yet somehow, all the enemies are going to suddenly jump out of the bushes before we can react,” Spike said. “You’d think we’d hear them coming.”

“At least they usually seem as surprised as us,” Derpy said. “If they actually got the drop on us that could really hurt Moondancer.”

Moondancer looked up. “What? Why are you singling me out?”

“Because whenever there are enemies everywhere attacking everypony I always have to heal you the most,” Derpy said.

Bon Bon gave the wizard a look. “You do seem to be a trouble magnet.”

“Maybe because you’re the only one not wearing armor?” Spike suggested.

“This is wizard armor,” Moondancer said, picking at her robes with her magic. “I bought it at the armor shop, just like the rest of you.”

“Except Bon Bon,” Derpy said.

“A kitchen is a kind of armor shop,” Bon Bon said, “apparently.”

“Maybe there’s some sort of armor spell you’re supposed to be using?” Spike suggested. “Like the bubble spell only not as, um, two way?”

“Well, maybe if I find some actual unicorn magic spellbooks I can learn one,” Moondancer said. “Until then these robes will have to do.”

“I don’t think they’re actually doing anything,” Derpy said. She drew her cutlass, and waved it around as she continued, “I mean, if I try to stab Spike it’ll just bounce off, but if I stab you –” She stopped, finding herself encased in a bubble. “What?”

===

Sure enough, they hadn’t gotten far into the forest before two strange creatures stepped out from behind a tree.

“You stop!” said the larger one. They were both green-skinned, with two legs and two arms with Spike-like claws, and faces that looked kind of like pigs, with giant tusks. They were wearing armor and carrying weapons – the big one had a sword and shield, and the smaller and thinner one had a spear.

They stopped. “Are you here to talk to us, or do we have to fight?” Spike asked.

“What? Don’t be stupid. Never have to fight,” said the little one. “Can’t make you fight.”

“Easier to eat you if you don’t fight,” the big one added.

“You can’t eat us!” Derpy said.

“Stupid pony. Of course we can. Want me show you?” the little one asked.

Derpy shook her head. “Eating us would be wrong! We can talk!”

“Ha, pony so stupid,” the little one said. “Lord Orcus say we not eat smart animals anymore. Not eat smart ponies. But we only see stupid ponies, so we eat.”

“Smart pony not come in forest,” the big one said.

“I’m sorry if we invaded your territory,” Bon Bon said, “but our map told us that this was the way to Lord Orcus’s castle, and we need to speak to him, urgently.”

The big one frowned. “Map… talk?”

The little one slapped him. “Don’t be stupid. Paper not talk. Ponies just stupid and think paper talks. These ponies so so stupid.”

“Oh, okay.”

“So, basically, you just told us that you don’t even know how to read,” Moondancer said. “And you’re calling us stupid?”

“We not join stupid reading cult,” said the little one. “We want join cult, we go join priest.”

“It’s not a cult,” Moondancer said.

“You take little ones, tell them that paper talks, make them stare at paper until they think it talks too,” the little one said. “It cult! You make little ponies stupid just like you.”

“No she don’t,” the big one said. “She get eaten by orcs.”

“Orcs?” Spike asked. “You’re supposed to be orcs?”

“Am orc!” the big one roared. Then he opened his mouth and let out an ear-shattering series of grunts and snarls. “Am best orc!”

“Look, this whole conversation is stupid,” Spike said. “You’ve got a choice, okay? Either you try to eat us, and we kill you, or you let us past.”

“And we kill you,” added Moondancer.

“What?” Spike asked.

Moondancer lifted her scythe. “They insulted reading. They have to die.”

Spike rolled his eyes, but readied his sword and shield, moving to stand between the orcs and his friends. “Okay then, you heard the mare. Which of you wants it first?”

The two orcs strode forwards, the big one slamming his own shield into Spike’s helmet as he passed. “No eat dragon. Eat ponies.”

“You get noisy pony,” the little one said. “I get quiet one.”

A bubble appeared around the big orc as he tried to head for Moondancer, surprising him as he bounced off the resilient membrane. “Bubble pop,” he said, poking it with his sword. It didn’t pop. “Bubble pop!” he said again, louder, and stabbed it full force. The bubbled shattered.

Moondancer swung her scythe at him, bonking him on the head with the shaft. He shrugged it off, and blocked her next swing with his shield. Then he raised his sword like a cleaver and brought it down on her, aiming for her head. She tried to dance aside, but it still caught her in the shoulder, the immense strength behind the blow crumpling her to the ground, her foreleg almost severed. She opened her mouth to scream, only to have her cry silenced by a suddenly-appearing muffin.

Bon Bon, meanwhile, had vanished, the smaller orc looking around, trying to spot her. “Where you go? Not see you,” she said loudly and slowly, looking left and right with exaggerated motion. Bon Bon leapt out of the tree she’d taken shelter in, swinging her ladle at the back of the orc’s head, only for her swing to stop short of her target as she found herself impaled on the orc’s spear in midair.

“Stupid pony. You think I not fight sneaky pony before?” The orc shook her spear, and Bon Bon’s eyes rolled in agony as she slid down further onto it, the tip emerging from her back.

Then she fell to the ground as the orc dropped her spear. The little orc was confused, looking at her weapon lying on the ground, her hand still clutched around its shaft… attached to her severed arm. She looked at her shoulder, spurting blood. “What?”

“Stop ignoring me!” Spike said, cutting off her other arm.

“Stupid…” the little orc mumbled, before slumping to the ground.

Bon Bon grabbed the spear and dragged it out of her body, gritting her teeth and squinting her eyes shut. “I’m fine,” she said, once it was out. “I popped a few candies into my mouth while everypony was talking, just in case.” Sure enough, the spear wound was slowly healing.

Spike nodded, and ran towards Moondancer and the larger orc, who were still fighting. Kind of. Moondancer was lying on the ground beneath him, smacking him with her scythe to no apparent effect, while he kept stabbing her over and over. Every so often she’d try to croak out ‘Dark Eidous’, only to have another healing muffin shoved in her face before she could finish.

Spike ran up and swung his magic sword at the orc’s shoulder, only for it to bounce off his giant shoulderpad. The orc hacked at Moondancer’s back, sinking his sword several inches into the meat of her flank.

Spike screamed, and stabbed his sword at the orc’s back, only for the point to skitter off the back-plate of the orc’s armor, leaving the little dragon off-balance. The orc stabbed Moondancer in the neck.

Spike growled, took a deep breath, and exhaled a big blast of green flames on the orc’s armor, which started to glow, and then sagged as the metal melted. There was a sizzling sound, and the smell of cooking meat, and then the large orc caught fire. And swung his sword in a side-to-side motion, slashing open Moondancer’s belly.

But the flaming orc finally seemed to notice that somepony was fighting him. He turned on Spike and bashed him with his shield, knocking him to the ground. “Stupid dragon! Me eat pony now. Fight you later.”

Spike breathed more fire at the orc, who held up his shield to block – until it, too, melted, the drooping metal sagging over the orc’s shield arm like a pancake before dripping to the ground and setting the pine needles on fire.

He turned to look at what was left of his shield, confused, and Spike lunged at him with his sword, stabbing at his belly. His aim was a bit off, though, since he was lying on his back underneath the giant foe, and the tip of the sword sank into the orc’s crotch instead, slipping between the breastplate and the leg guards. The orc grunted, but didn’t seem all that bothered.

“Dark Eidous!” Moondancer said, at last, and lightning crackled down over the metal-clad orc. “Dark Eidous Dark Eidous Dark Eidous!” Finally, the enemy collapsed to the ground in a smoking heap.

“Moondancer! You’re okay!” Spike said.

Moondancer nodded, and cast her cleaning cantrip to banish all the blood and dirt from her robe. “I should have been dead after the second stab, but Derpy kept healing me.”

“You’re welcome!” Derpy said, smiling happily.

“You should have let me die,” Moondancer said. “We could have tested the resurrection spell.”

“Oh…” Derpy said, looking down. “I didn’t even think of that.”

“Is that really something we want to test?” Spike asked. “I mean, what if it didn’t work?”

Moondancer grimaced. “Then I still wouldn’t have had to get stabbed fifteen times by an orc.”

River Town

They managed to get to River Town without being jumped by any more wolves, or anything else for that matter. What they found was a small riverside town with only a dozen or so houses and shops, stretched along a riverside with a small fort next to a bridge at the far end.

“Any news?” Bon Bon asked the guards standing near where the gate would have been if the town had a wall.

“The Nameless One is on the move,” one of them said. “The Immortal Emperor Destiny has temporarily restricted access to the capitol. This isn’t normally a checkpoint, but we’ve got an imperial patrol at the bridge blocking all traffic. King McGuffin has been acting strangely lately, and there’s a rumor that he might be in league with the Nameless One’s forces.”

“That can’t be good for trade,” Derpy said, frowning.

The other guard shrugged. “They’re not stopping the boats, so we’re still in business. Most of our land traffic is from the Kingdom of McGuffin anyway.”

“This place is a lot smaller than I expected,” Moondancer said. “Is there anywhere I could find some books on magic?”

“Ah, you want the Preposterous Mage Tower,” the first guard said. “It’s just across the bridge.”

Moondancer sighed. “Of course it is.”

“We’ve got most of the other sorts of shops on this side – an armor smith, a weapons shop, a general store, some weapons training in the fort, and of course a giant floating crystal in the inn.”

“A what?” Spike asked.

Bon Bon smacked him. “A giant floating crystal. You know what a giant floating crystal is.”

The guards laughed. “It wouldn’t be an inn without a giant floating crystal.”

Bon Bon gave a fake laugh in return, while the rest of them smiled and tried to look a lot less confused and uncomfortable than they were.

Once they were out of easy earshot of the guards, Bon Bon hissed at Spike, “What were you thinking? Don’t give us away.”

“Don’t give what away?” Spike asked. “I thought everypony knew we were heroes.”

Bon Bon sighed, and rubbed her forehead with a hoof. “Spike… those imperial agents at the bridge are looking for us! They think we’re in league with the Nameless One.”

“So… do we have to fight them?” Derpy asked.

“We came here early,” Bon Bon replied. “They’d wipe the floor with us. Come on, let’s see if we can figure out what a giant floating crystal is for.”

“Oh, you’ve never used a giant floating crystal?” said a random pony passing by, making Bon Bon jump. “It’s easy, just touch it with a hoof, and zap.”

“Zap,” Moondancer said, flatly.

The pony nodded. “I wouldn’t go anywhere without a crystal’s protection – even if you stick to the roads, it’s really dangerous out there.”

“So it’s some sort of save point?” Spike asked.

“Just touch it, it’s pretty self-explanatory.”

===

The inn was small and homey, with a maritime theme. The rooms were upstairs, the front desk was near the door with a smiling pegasus behind it, and there was a crude but spacious lobby with a giant floating crystal right in the middle. It looked similar to the magic crystals the wizards in Castle Town had used to summon them, but where they were all tinted in different colors, this one had a clear mirror-like shine, although still slightly translucent.

“Spike, go touch it,” Moondancer said.

“They said you had to touch it with a hoof,” Spike said. “Bon Bon?”

She shook her head. “If it’s a trap, you’re the best equipped to survive it.”

Their argument was interrupted as Derpy flew over them and bonked headfirst into the crystal. There was a flash, and everything went blue.

Eventually, things stopped being blue. The four of them sat around the crystal, dazed.

“What happened?” Spike asked.

“I can’t…” Moondancer said, burying her head in her forehooves. “I can’t get my head around it.”

“Everything was blue!” Derpy said.

Bon Bon glared at the crystal. “I think it brought up some sort of control panel for the game… but we weren’t in control.”

“Yeah, okay,” Spike said. “There were words, right? Save… Skills… Exit! One of the words was ‘exit’!”

“And it does us no good because we’re not in control,” Bon Bon growled. “We’re so close. So CLOSE!” She slammed her hoof into the crystal, and everything went blue again.

===

After being chased out of the inn because the owner was worried they’d damage the giant floating crystal, it was finally time to go shopping. Bon Bon led them towards the weapon shop first. “We’ve got a few thousand golz saved up, so we should be able to get some good equipment for everypony.”

Then they saw the prices. The cheap weapons on display were around five hundred golz, but the best weapons were more than a thousand.

“There’s no sense buying the cheap ones if we have to upgrade to the expensive ones later,” Bon Bon said. “Let’s see if the armor is more reasonably priced.”

The armor was a little cheaper, but it wasn’t just one piece of armor per pony. There was the main body piece, hats, boots, and ‘accessories’ that ranged from ribbons to bracers.

And of course there was no equipment for cooks.

Derpy plopped the bundle of demon-cow leather on the counter. “Can you make us armor out of this? It’s from a really really evil bull.”

The shopkeeper looked it over. “Yeah, I can work with this. Say… 500 golz.” He glanced at her eyepatch. “Do you want a suit of pirate armor?” He looked over at Bon Bon. “Or I can make a chef’s apron, although you’ll have to promise not to tell anypony. I don’t want to get on the cooks’ bad side.”

“Can you make wizard robes?” Spike asked. “Moondancer really needs something more protective.”

“Hmm,” the pony lifted a hoof and stroked his chin. “It won’t be a robe, exactly, but I think I can make something light enough not to interfere with her spells.”

“Let’s do it, then!” Derpy said. “Bon Bon, can we have 500 golz for a special order?”

“Huh?” Bon Bon said. She and Moondancer had been comparing the accessories.

“We’re making some armor out of the Baalzebull hide,” Spike explained. “It’s a quest reward, so it’ll be better than the standard stuff, right?”

Bon Bon frowned. “I guess it’s worth 500 golz to see.”

“I promise, you won’t be disappointed!” the shopkeeper said, taking the money and the hide, and heading into his workshop in the back.

===

When it was obvious that it was going to take him a while to get back, they left the shop and decided to split up.

Everypony agreed that Bon Bon was most in need of a new weapon – Spike and Moondancer had the recent upgrades they’d found at the farm, and there weren’t any ranged weapons for sale except crossbows, which Derpy still insisted weren’t piratical enough. So Bon Bon took most of the remaining golz and headed off to find a restaurant with a large enough kitchen to supply a battle cook.
Moondancer, for her part, headed down to the riverbank. “I’ve got an idea, but it’s going to take me a while,” she said. “I’ll need a little money for supplies…”

Spike handed over the golz that was left. “It’s not like there’s enough to buy anything good.”

Moondancer smirked. “Oh, this should be good,” she said, “if it works.” She frowned. “I really wish I had my reference materials.”

That left Spike and Derpy to explore the town. Derpy laughed and bounded ahead of him. “Let’s break into some houses!”

===

They all met back at the armor shop after a few hours. Bon Bon had a very nasty-looking cleaver strapped to her side. Derpy and Spike had a small bag full of random items they’d managed to steal from ponies’ houses.

“We couldn’t take anything from the houses with ponies in them, since we’re not supposed to tell anypony we’re heroes,” Derpy said. “But most of the houses were empty, so we still got plenty of stuff.”

“Not much golz, though,” Spike said. “We did find a ribbon. Ribbons block status effects, right?”

Moondancer lifted the pink ribbon, and examined it carefully. “Not this one. It’s not magical.”

“Oh,” Spike said. “So what does it do?”

“It’s not magical,” Moondancer repeated, a little slower. When Spike continued to stare at her, she added, “It looks pretty?”

“Mine!” Derpy said, pouncing on it and tying it in a bow around her tail. “How’s it look?”

“Very, um, piratical?” Spike said.

Derpy grinned. “Yep! Pirates need all kinds of fancy things.”

“So,” Bon Bon said, rooting through the rest of Derpy and Spike’s loot and fishing out the golz. “Your secret project?”

Moondancer smirked, and opened a small satchel hanging near her shoulder, bringing out a tiny pot. It was somewhat crude and undecorated, but it had been fired, and looked sturdy enough.

“You made pots?” Spike asked.

“I study more than magic,” she explained. “I also study history, chemistry, and pottery. This is a replica of a Minoan firebomb from the Labyrinthine Age.”

“Shouldn’t a bomb have a fuse?” Bon Bon asked, leaning closer.

“It ignites when exposed to air,” Moondancer said. “All I have to do is break the pot.”

The other three took a step back.

“How many did you make?” Bon Bon asked, glancing at the satchel nervously.

There was a sparkle of magic and the bomb dissolved into thin air. “Enough to prime a cornucopia spell, so I can have as many as I need,” Moondancer explained. “They should last long enough to explode.”

“Heh, I guess you’re a real wizard now,” Spike said. “You’ve got fireballs.”

“Fire bombs,” Moondancer corrected.

“Just try not to blow yourself up,” Bon Bon said, her eyes still locked on the satchel.

Moondancer raised an eyebrow, then lifted the satchel’s strap up over her head, and threw it to the ground. As the others scrambled for cover, she reared up and brought her hooves down on it, stomping on it a few times, lifted it up into the air with her magic and crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it hard against the wall of the building, where it hit with a smack, then flopped to the ground.

“It’s a cornucopia spell,” she said again to her friends as they peeked around the corner of the buildings and boxes they’d hidden behind. She took the satchel and replaced it around her neck. “It’s empty as long as nopony’s looking.”

“Oh,” Bon Bon said, gingerly coming out from cover. “You could have said something.”

Moondancer scowled. “I did. I said I used a cornucopia spell. It’s not exactly obscure. Did you really think I’d hang a bag of volatile explosives around my neck?”

“Sure!” Derpy said.

“Maybe?” Spike said, sheepishly. “You did go into battle wearing a dress.”

“More than once!” Derpy added. “But you won’t have to any more. Let’s go see if he’s done with your new armor!”

===

“What. Is. That.”

“You like it?” the shopkeeper asked, holding the red leather outfit up proudly. “I call it a Battle Saddle, although it’s actually got a full set of tack. Minus the bit, of course – wizards sometimes need to talk to cast their spells.”

“That is not armor,” Moondancer said. “That’s not even clothing!”

“It’s more protective than it looks?” The shopkeeper lifted up some strands dangling from the saddle. “You braid these around your legs and into your tail – you’ve got nearly full coverage.”

“Come on, try it on,” Spike said. “I’m sure it’ll look great once it’s on you.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” Moondancer said, glowering at the young dragon.

“Yes?” Spike said. “I mean, I just asked you to?”

She looked at the others, who were watching her expectantly.

“Derpy used up her demon-bull hide to get it,” Bon Bon said. “You should at least try it on.”

“It’s okay, I can wear it if she doesn’t want to,” Derpy said. “It’s not the most pirate thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s awfully fancy.”

“Fine,” Moondancer said, snatching up the skimpy saddle and tack. “I’ll try it on. Do you have a dressing room?”

The shopkeep indicated one of the doors in the back of the shop.

“Spike, go help her,” Bon Bon said, as Moondancer headed back. As she turned her head in shock, Bon Bon continued, “it’ll take a lot of braiding to get it on properly, and you’ve got those nimble little claws.”

“She has magic,” Spike noted.

Bon Bon shook her head. “She won’t be able to see what she’s doing for the back part.”

Moondancer blushed. “Fine, Spike can help,” she said. “But only because he’s too oblivious to know when something’s supposed to be sexy.” She walked through the door, and slammed it behind her.

“Um…” Spike said, glancing at Bon Bon. “I mean, I’m not saying anything because I know it would bother her, but –”

The door opened again. “Are you coming?” Moondancer asked.

“Right away Ma’am!” Spike said, giving a grin and a salute before running for the dressing room.

Back in the General Direction of the Track

“I don’t want to go out there,” Moondancer said, pausing at the door to the armor shop. “Everypony’s going to stare.”

“The shopkeeper’s already staring,” Spike said. “Is it really that bad?”

“Yes,” she hissed, trying once more to tuck her tail down, but the little loop around its base stubbornly kept it perked up. It wasn’t revealing, exactly – it was the same pose most ponies took whenever they were happy, and often wearing nothing at all – but she still felt exposed. “Are you sure I can’t wear my old robe over it?”

“The magic would clash,” the shopkeeper said.

“And it would look really stupid, since the saddle’s kind of lumpy,” Spike added. “I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of this. You look great!”

Moondancer frowned. “I look like a two-bit riding horse!”

“Hey! That’s quality craft there,” the shopkeeper said. “No two-bit riding horse could afford my work. You’d have to be one of the mid-range working fillies, at least.”

“I’m going to kill him if he doesn’t shut up,” Moondancer growled under her breath.

“No you’re not,” Bon Bon said, from just outside the shop. “Stop being a drama queen and get out here. I promise, nopony’s going to bat an eye.”

After a few seconds, Moondancer emerged into the bright sunlight shining down onto River Town, the bright red leather of her Battle Saddle contrasting wonderfully with the light cream of her coat, and matching the red streaks in her mane. With a scowl on her face, and her slightly-blood-encrusted scythe clutched tightly in her magic, she was a sight to behold.

Apparently. Everypony was staring at her, most of them too terrified to blink.

“Okay, plan B,” Bon Bon said softly, then stood between Moondancer and the bulk of the crowd. She dragged an empty wooden box over, and stood on top of it. “Ah, I see I have your attention! Who wants to go one on one with Mistress Moondancer? Only 1000 golz…”

“I am going to KILL YOU,” Moondancer hissed.

The crowd scattered.

“There, problem solved,” Bon Bon said, stepping down off her makeshift podium. “Come on, let’s – hey!”

Moondancer’s scythe sparked against the pavement, directly beneath where Bon Bon’s neck had been. “I can’t believe you!” she said, her teeth bared and her eyes tearing up.

As Bon Bon dodged back from the blow, she stumbled against the box and toppled over backwards. She twisted like an acrobat and managed to convert it into a graceful roll into a ready position, but Moondancer was already running away, knocking Derpy and Spike aside as she headed for the edge of town.

Bon Bon relaxed and brushed herself off. “I think she took that well.”

Spike got back to his feet, twisting his helmet back around so that the face hole was in front. “Really?”

“No, not really,” Bon Bon said. “That filly’s got issues.”

===

They found her just outside of town, sitting in the middle of the road, crying.

“Here,” Bon Bon said, tossing her a bundle of black fabric. “You can cover up with this.”

Moondancer stared at it for a bit, then lifted it and unfolded it into a hooded cloak. “I thought that would ruin the magic,” she sniffled.

“Cloaks of Concealment are classified as accessories, so they should work together,” Bon Bon said.

“It’ll still look all lumpy, though,” Spike said.

Moondancer put on the cloak. Somehow, it sat flat across her back, concealing the saddle. She put up the hood, and it similarly lay flat across her forehead, concealing her horn.

Spike shrugged. “Or not.”

Derpy frowned at the result. The unicorn’s face was shadowed, but you could still clearly see the red leather harness on her muzzle. Similarly, the braided straps on her legs and tail stuck out under the edge of the cloak. “I’m not sure that makes her less scary.”

“I can deal with scary,” Moondancer said.

“Feel better?” Bon Bon asked.

“A bit,” Moondancer said, lifting a foreleg to wipe her eyes. “I can’t believe you actually tried to sell me!”

“If it makes any difference, I was thinking ‘fighting tournament’,” Bon Bon said, scratching at the road with a hoof.

“Yeah, that’s how I heard it,” Spike said. “I mean, a sexy fighting tournament, yeah…”

“Ugh,” Moondancer said, scowling. “Just forget it. Nothing actually happened, so we can repress this memory forever and never speak of it again. It’s not like this is the most embarrassed I’ve ever been in my life.”

Spike laughed. “Yeah, remember that time Twilight ditched the party you set up just for her?”

Moondancer grit her teeth. “What part of ‘never speak of it again’ do you not understand, Spike?”

Spike slammed his mouth shut with a clack.

Moondancer closed her eyes, and let out a breath. “Right. Are we ready for Lord Orcus?”

“Not as ready as I’d like to be,” Bon Bon said. “But grinding random encounters for golz would be boring enough even in a normal game where you skip from fight to fight, and don’t have to actually walk around for a few days in between.”

“And we have a save point,” Spike noted.

Bon Bon gave a sharp nod. “And that. So I think it’s worth making the attempt.”

Moondancer stood up and stretched out her shoulders, making her dark cloak ripple across her back. “Then let’s go. The sooner we make progress on the story quests, the sooner we unlock the next tier of equipment.”

===

They had to fight three groups of wolves on the way back, before they even got within sight of the forest.

The first group wasn’t much trouble. There were six of the small wolves, but no alpha to draw the party’s attention and leave them open to an ambush. Spike managed to distract three of them with a fearsome roar, which left the rest of them facing off one on one, since Derpy and Moondancer knew better than to abandon Bon Bon to the pack.

“Dark Eidous!”

Sadly for Moondancer, the lightning crashed down on one of the wolves fighting Spike, so she had to fend off her wolf with her scythe. It didn’t really work – the little wolf took the blow to the side of the head and darted past her, sinking its teeth into her left hind fetlock and dragging her to the ground. She cried out as she landed on her side, and kicked ineffectually as the wolf stayed latched on, growling and gnawing painfully on her leg.

But that meant that it couldn’t dodge without letting go. It never saw the blade of the scythe slip under its neck. It probably felt it when Moondancer jerked it upwards and sliced its throat, but not for very long. She was still trying to pry its frozen jaws off of her ankle when the rest of the group finished their wolves and came over to check on her.

“I don’t think this armor is working,” Moondancer hissed.

Bon Bon gave a sharp kick that broke off the dead wolf’s teeth, and together they managed to dislodge it. The leg below was completely unharmed.

Derpy squinted at the lack of blood, but fed Moondancer a muffin anyway.

“Do you mind if I try something?” Bon Bon asked, raising her cleaver.

“Mmmph!” Moondancer said around the muffin.

Bon Bon rolled her eyes, and lowered her weapon. “Well, the wolf fangs weren’t able to chew through it, so it looks pretty effective to me.”

Moondancer grimaced. “Just what I need. Armor for masochists.”

===

The second group of wolves was similar, but had one of the orcish shamans tagging along with the annoying blizzard spell, which the wolves seemed to completely ignore. Moondancer was also able to ignore it, either from the cloak or from the armor, she couldn’t tell. She pushed on through the snow until she was in range to smash the stupid caster in the face with her staff, over and over until the blizzard stopped, and then a few more times for good measure.

As her vision cleared, she could see Derpy and Bon Bon hacking at the backsides of the little wolves as the whole pack of them dogpiled Spike.

“Stand back!” she said, pulling out a fire bomb, and chucking it at the wolves.

Derpy and Bon Bon looked up just in time to see the jar hurtling towards them – and Derpy hovered up and caught it. “Your aim was a little off,” she said, as it dissolved harmlessly in her hooves.

“That wouldn’t matter if you’d backed up when I told you to,” Moondancer said, tossing another bomb. This time they scattered… and the bomb went wide, splattering into a pool of fire a few feet to the left of the wolves.

Eventually, she found the range, and a direct hit sent two flaming wolves running off howling into the distance. The rest of the flaming wolves didn’t even manage to untangle themselves from the pile before collapsing.

“Do we have enough golz left to resurrect Spike?” Derpy asked, hovering over the pile of bodies.

The pile shifted, and Spike sat up. “I’m fine!” he said, climbing to his feet, as flaming corpses rolled to either side. “I’m okay. They just had me pinned. One of them was holding my sword arm and the rest kept tripping me every time I tried to get up, but they couldn’t get through my armor.”

He brushed himself off, sending some stray flaming liquid spattering into the dirt. “Oh, and I’m immune to fire, but you already knew that, right?”

“You offered to go swimming in lava when we first got here,” Moondancer said. “Minoan fire is non-magical, so there was no reason to expect it to penetrate your natural resistance.”

“We also thought you were dead already,” Derpy said. “Being set on fire after you were dead wouldn’t make you any more dead.”

“Unless he burned to ash,” Moondancer suggested. “That would take more than a few firebombs, though.”

“Would that actually stop a resurrection?” Spike asked.

Moondancer frowned. “You know, I’m not sure.” She took a firebomb out of the pouch. “Bon Bon, stand right there – I want to test something.”

“No!” Derpy said, swatting the bomb out of her hoof. “Bad wizard.”

“I’m sure she was just kidding,” Spike said.

He noticed that Bon Bon didn’t take her eyes off Moondancer for the rest of the day.

===

The third group of wolves had three of the alphas.

“Um…” Spike said, looking at them uncertainly. “Those things can bite through my armor…”

“We’d better run,” Bon Bon said. “Derpy, get Spike!”

Derpy swooped down and grabbed him under his arms and flew off with Bon Bon right on her tail.

“Um… girls?” Moondancer said, galloping after them, but watching them inevitably pull ahead of her. “Girls! Wait! I’m not as fast as – aaiieee!”

She screamed as the lead wolf’s claws latched onto her flank, and stumbled and fell, skidding through the dirt. She hadn’t even stopped moving before the other wolves were on her. There was a flash of teeth, and then –

…and then there was a muffin in her mouth, and everything hurt. Chewing on the muffin made it hurt a little less. Once she finished, she asked, “What happened?”

“You didn’t get away,” Bon Bon said. “We circled around once the wolves lost interest, and brought you back to life.”

“You were dead for like an hour,” Derpy said, feeding her another much-appreciated muffin. “Did you make it to heaven? Was the Great Muffin there?”

Moondancer shook her head. After swallowing the bite she was chewing on, she added, “there was nothing. Just death, and then this again. Like no time had passed in between.”

“That’s how I remember it too,” Bon Bon said. “I guess there’s no afterlife if you die here.”

“You didn’t really die,” Spike said. “I mean, you can’t really die in a game, can you? So it’d just be the game’s version of the afterlife, and they didn’t know what to put there so they left it out.”

“Or maybe they erased your memory when you had to leave,” Derpy said.

“Or maybe there’s no such thing as a soul, and the ‘eternal rest’ of death is just a metaphor for oblivion.”

Everypony stared at Moondancer.

After a few seconds, Derpy giggled. “I think that sexy grim reaper outfit is going to your head.”

The Castle in the Forest

“You stop!” said a giant orc, as they made their way through the forest towards Lord Orcus’ castle.

“These guys again?” Spike asked, drawing his sword.

“We knew it was going to happen,” Bon Bon said. “Like we planned it, on three.”

“Stop talking! Stupid ponies talk too much!” said the orc, pointing his sword at them. “Battle pigs, attack!”

“Three!” Bon Bon said hastily, looping her lasso around a tree branch and swinging herself up out of reach.

Derpy summoned a layer of batter to help protect Spike, who used his fire breath to attack the giant black boars that rushed out of the undergrowth. Moondancer aimed carefully, and tossed a fire bomb at the orc, who’d hung back out of range. Once all the enemies were on fire, Bon Bon dropped out of the trees onto the orc’s back and buried her cleaver in the back of his neck.

“Yowch!” she said, kicking off him as he toppled to the ground. “Hot hot hot!” She did a little dance to make sure her hooves didn’t catch fire.

The pigs, half-blinded by the flames licking over them, charged in Spike’s general direction and were easily caught on his shield. His sword was sharp enough to penetrate their thick hide, but not long enough to take them down quickly. Lightning rained down on them at random as Moondancer kept taking Dark Eidous’ name in vain, and Derpy hovered to the sides and stabbed with her cutlass when she saw an opening.

The big orc groaned, dropping his shield and rubbing at the back of his neck as he started to stand up. Bon Bon darted in and hacked at his ankles, and he toppled over again, flopping onto his back and nearly crushing her. He flailed at her, trying to grab hold, but she met his grasp with her cleaver again, cutting off his hand at the wrist.

“Argh! Stupid pony! How I fight with no hand?”

“You had two,” Bon Bon reminded him. He looked down at his other hand just as she chopped it off as well. “Now I think you just lie there and bleed to death, okay?”

The orc didn’t think it was okay, apparently, since he immediately clubbed her with his stump. She cried out and stumbled back as blood splashed in her eyes.

But by that point all the battle pigs were down, and the orc didn’t have a lot of fight left in him. They searched his pockets for golz while he lay there moaning, and were about to move on when they noticed Spike hanging back, staring at the dead pigs.

“They smell really good,” Spike said, staring at them. “Do they smell really good to you girls?”

“They’re dead burnt bodies,” Moondancer said. “So no, they smell terrible. Let’s get out of here before I vomit.”

===

Three orcs were sitting around a campfire, roasting a deer. One of them frowned. “Go away, ponies. Not hungry now.”

Spike nodded. “Okay. We’ll just go away heading north, if that’s alright.”

“No, you go south.”

“Wrong,” Bon Bon said.

“If you go north we eat you. We not hungry. So you not go north!”

Moondancer drew out one of her firebombs. “Allow me to offer an alternative solution.”

===

And orc dropped out of the trees, her spear nearly impaling Spike, although his armor deflected it just enough. She kicked him onto his rear, and glowered at the rest of the party. “How you ponies get this far? Stupid ponies. You supposed to be eaten at forest edge!”

“Sorry,” Moondancer said. “Wait – I’m not sorry. I meant to say ‘Dark Eidous’.”

===

Two orcs were standing by the rocky shore of a lake. “Okay, if I win, you search south part and I search north part, but if you win, I search north part and you search south part.”

The other orc nodded, then frowned. “What if we tie?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we play again?”

“What do you do if both of you are killed by intruders?” Moondancer asked.

The second orc laughed. “Then we play again for sure! Not fair if we both dead.”

“We’ll just continue on our way then,” Spike said. “We wouldn’t want to ruin your game.”

The first orc squinted at them. “Wait – you not orc!”

Spike sighed. “So… it’s a fight then.”

The orc shrugged. “Not have to fight. You let us eat you, not need fight.”

Moondancer sighed. “Spike! Just breathe fire on them already?”

===

“They’re definitely getting easier,” Bon Bon said, as they looted the corpses of their latest victims.

“And that must be the castle!” Derpy said, pointing to a small fort on an island in the middle of the lake.

“It’s not very big,” Spike said.

“Well, duh,” Derpy said. “It’s a monster castle, and monsters live in dungeons. So most of it is underground!”

Spike frowned. “You’d think there’d at least be the ruins of the real castle.”

“Is there a lake on the map?” Bon Bon asked.

Moondancer unrolled it. “Sort of. It’s more of a bay?” She turned to the right. “If we circle around this way we should find a bridge.”

They made their way along the path, which wound in and out of the forest, following the edge of the water. Eventually it led to a wide open grassy field, bordered on the north by a wooden palisade with a wide gateway with no sign of a gate. There, in front of the gap, was a giant floating crystal.

“Hey cool!” Spike said, breaking into a jog. “Another save point!”

The crystal started to glow as he approached, brightly enough that he had to cover his eyes… and when the light faded, a pair of orcs were standing in front of it.

“Stupid ponies,” one of the orcs grumbled. “This not forest! We eat ponies in forest.”

“Uh…” Spike said, gradually slowing to a halt. “Are those the same two we just fought?”

“Great. The orcs have a save point,” Moondancer said, as the others caught up with Spike.

“It’s only fair,” Derpy said.

Moondancer gestured to the orcs, who were still arguing with each other, and hadn’t seemed to notice the party yet. “But doesn’t that make this completely pointless? If we kill them they’ll just come right back.”

“I don’t see why it matters,” Bon Bon said. “It’s not like we were going to run out of orcs.”

“I was hoping we might,” Moondancer said. “Genocide is the only cure for their abuse of the Equestrian language.

“Look, it obviously takes some time for them to respawn. All we need to do is kill them, tag the crystal, and move on before they return.” Bon Bon motioned Spike forwards. “Go, breathe fire.”

But before he could attack, both orcs turned to look at the party. “You want use crystal?” one of them asked.

Spike paused. “Yes?”

Both orcs grinned wide, and stepped aside, bowing and gesturing for him to proceed. Spike walked closer, keeping a close eye out for signs of an ambush as he passed between them, but they didn’t do anything except grin even wider as he lifted his claw towards the giant floating crystal.

He pulled his claw back. “Um… maybe we shouldn’t use this one.”

“We know it works,” Bon Bon said. “We just saw them using it.”

“Maybe it turns us into orcs?” Derpy suggested.

Bon Bon looked thoughtful. “Do you think it would? That could be a useful disguise.” She paused. “Assuming it eventually wore off.”

“Okay, talk,” Spike said, pointing his sword at one of the orcs. “What’s the deal here?”

“No deal,” said the orc, licking his lips. “You want come back to orc camp after orc eat you, orc not say no.”

“Heh heh, we let you come back after we eat you again and again,” the other orc said. “Until you get tired of coming back. But crystal not care. It bring you back anyway.”

Spike turned back to the party. “Yeaaah… I think we should skip it.”

“It took us almost a week to walk here from River Town,” Bon Bon said.

Spike gestured at the orcs. “But if we have to use it, they’re going to jump us as soon as we appear!”

“And has that ever worked out well for them?” Bon Bon asked. “Just tag the stupid crystal.”

The orcs chuckled as Spike turned back to the crystal, but he shut them out of his mind and touched it. The world went blue.

When it came back, there was already an orcish blade swinging for his head. He desperately raised his shield to deflect it. Behind him, there was a meaty ‘thwack’ as Bon Bon sank her cleaver into the other orc’s back as he tried to backstab Spike, which didn’t entirely stop his blow, but kept it from being strong enough to do more than clang off the dragon’s armor. Spike turned and stabbed him in the gut, just as lightning crackled down from the sky and struck him – it stung a little, but the orc had the worst of it, collapsing to his knees, then keeling over in a pool of his own blood.

“Are you guys getting weaker?” Spike asked, as the other orc screamed in rage and rained blow after blow down on his shield, ignoring the lightning periodically crackling over him, as Derpy and Bon Bon hacked at his sides. “I guess it makes sense to leave the loser orcs to guard the castle.”

The orc groaned, and sat back on his butt, dropping his axe. “Hate fighting right after crystal. Stupid ponies.” As Moondancer brought her scythe blade under his neck, he swatted at it weakly but couldn’t budge it against her magic. “Stupid curse!” Moondancer slashed his throat, and his body slumped to the ground.

“Come on,” Moondancer said, grabbing Bon Bon by the tail and dragging her away from the fallen orcs as she went to loot them. “We don’t have much time before they come back!”

“Let them,” Bon Bon said, trying to get her hooves her herself so that she could at least walk. “Did you see how weak they were? I bet they’ll be even weaker next time.”

Moondancer dropped her in the grass, a few dozen paces through the gate. “And so will we if we have to use the crystal. All they have to do is win once --”

“How? How would that happen?” Bon Bon asked, picking herself up.

“They might call for friends?” Spike suggested, looking around at the tents and campfires scattered around the part of the clearing past the wall, clustered around the bridge they’d been trying to find. “It looks like there’s a whole camp here.”

The four of them stopped to look around. Bon Bon pointed. “Can we at least go open that treasure chest? And pick up the loose piles of golz sitting out in the open?”

Moondancer considered them, then trotted towards the bridge. “Too risky. Who knows how many orcs are lurking around here?”

“Do you see any orcs on guard? Because I don’t. They’re all asleep.”

“In the middle of the day?” Spike asked.

Bon Bon gave him a look. “It’s always the middle of the day.”

But Moondancer wasn’t listening, and they had to run to catch up with her. She didn’t let them stop until they got to the far end of the bridge. The island was even smaller than it had looked from the shore – the only feature was a tower about as big as a garden shed, with a heavy set of double doors taking up most of one wall. A signpost nearby read, “No go in. That mean you!”

“It doesn’t mean us, though,” Derpy said. “Right?”

“It means us, but we’re not listening,” Moondancer said.

Spike pushed open the door. “It probably means the orcs won’t follow us, at least.”

Derpy tilted her head at the sign. “If this is Lord Orcus’ castle, why wouldn’t he let his own orcs inside?”

“Maybe he can’t stand their grammar either,” Moondancer suggested.

Driven Batty

A short trip down a spiraling staircase led them to a larger underground chamber, lit by the green and blue flames of eldritch torches that burned without heat. Darker passageways led off to the left and right, flanked by sinister statues of ponies in full plate, while a larger statue of a demonic orc stood in the middle of the room. In the far wall, behind the statue, was a massive set of double doors, carved with ornate geometric designs.

“I don’t see any enemies,” Bon Bon noted.

“Do we ever?” Moondancer asked. “They’ve been jumping out of nowhere to attack us since we started.”

Bon Bon grumbled, “I was hoping the dungeons in this game would be like the cows on the farm.”

“Only not as strong,” Derpy added. “Those cows were nasty.”

“How are they even going to jump out at us, though?” Spike asked. “This place is too well lit, and it’s not like the last dungeon with the piles of bones everywhere that could stand up and jump us. The floor’s a bit slimy, but –” He paused and scratched at the floor with his sword. “Do you think there’ll be slime monsters?”

“Probably,” Bon Bon said. “Come on, let’s check the double doors. Either they’re guarding a closet with treasure chests, or they’re the path to the boss that won’t open until we find some special key.”

They hadn’t even gotten halfway across the room when the bats attacked, swooping down from shadows near the ceiling, that nopony had thought to check.

“Dark Eidous!” Moondancer said, and lightning crackled between the floor and ceiling, incinerating one of the bats. Derpy charged at another bat, slicing it with her cutlass and taking of a wing.

Spike was just about to breathe fire at the rest, when one of the remaining bats let out an ear-piercing screech. He coughed and choked, belching out a cloud of smoke which he tried to wave away with his shield. He heard Derpy squeal as two of the other bats latched onto her, sinking their fangs into her armor.

“Dark Ei—” started Moondancer, before another screech cut her off, drowning out the rest of the spell. The spell still went off – frying another random bat – but even under her concealing hood the others could tell that she was in pain, gritting her teeth.

Bon Bon jumped up onto Derpy’s back, hacking at the bats with her cleaver, and Spike managed to skewer the last one when it swooped down to try to bite Moondancer.

“Everypony okay?” Derpy asked, summoning a muffin for herself, since the bats had managed to get through her armor a bit. Or at least, that was her excuse.

“I think so,” Spike said. “They were really weak, even if that screeching thing was annoying.”

“I’m not okay,” Moondancer said. “Kind of dizzy, and my head aches. The screeching resonated with my horn – I think it might have been a mana drain.”

“That, or you’ve got low blood sugar,” Spike said.

“Right,” she snapped. “Because clearly bats screeching in my ears would cause low blood sugar.”

“Irritability!” Spike said, smiling. “Another sign!”

“I’ve got plenty of candy,” Bon Bon said, nosing into her saddlebags to get some.

“No, hard candy won’t work,” Spike said. “You want pure sugar, or maybe –”

“A muffin?” Derpy suggested.

Spike shook his head. “Too much fat, it buffers the sucrose. Fruit juice, though – do we still have those juice boxes we picked up in Castle Town?”

“Since when are you a blood-sugar expert?” Moondancer asked.

“Twilight made me look it up,” Spike said. “She was worried about Pinkie Pie.”

“Pinkie Pie’s diabetic?” Bon Bon asked, trying to find the juice.

“No…” Spike said. “I mean, not yet. But Twilight wanted to have a checklist ready in case she was ever diagnosed.”

Derpy snorted, and then everypony got a case of the giggles. Even Moondancer. As the laughter was dying down, Bon Bon dug out a slightly-crushed juice box, and tossed it to the mana-drained wizard.

Moondancer caught it in her magic, and carefully inserted the straw. She missed on her first attempt, bending it sharply, and hissed in frustration.

“Do you need some help?” Spike offered.

“This would be a lot easier without you all staring at me,” she said, but managed to get it on the second try. She stuck the end of the straw into her mouth, and quickly sucked down the sugary liquid. The juice box’s walls caved inwards as she drank, and in seconds she was sucking down the last of the juice with a loud ‘sluurrrrp’.

She tossed the box onto the floor, and glanced around at her friends, who were all watching her expectantly.

“Did it work?” Spike asked.

Moondancer nodded. “I feel better. I just hope we don’t run into any more of those bats.”

===

They made it safely across the room, but the doors wouldn’t open. The device locking them had a large circular slot – to open it they’d need some sort of head-sized disk.

“That must be where we put the Biforce!” Derpy said.

“What’s a Biforce?” Spike asked.

“I don’t know, but there was a sign on the big statue that talked about it.”

“And you didn’t think to mention it before we came all this way?” Bon Bon asked.

“Um… I mentioned it just now,” Derpy said. “We haven’t even left the room yet.”

“We’re in a dungeon,” Bon Bon said. “Walking across a room could mean the difference between life and death!”

“I thought we wanted to fight extra monsters?” Spike asked. “Aren’t we supposed to be wandering all over the place to level up?”

“Yes, but –” Bon Bon paused. “Mana drain is really bad. These bats – if they run Derpy out of mana she won’t be able to heal us.”

“I use mana?” Derpy asked.

“What else would you use?” Bon Bon asked.

“But I don’t even have a horn.”

“You’re casting spells,” Moondancer said. “You’re probably using mana.”

Derpy scrunched up her nose. “Then why didn’t the bats make me go all dizzy?”

“You probably have a larger mana pool, and you don’t use it as much,” Moondancer said. “If I’d been conserving my mana and relying on the scythe more, I might not have been drained dry by the first bat attack either. There’s no point conserving it now, though. Anything I don’t use is just going to be drained again.”

===

They’d almost made it back across the room before the next group of monsters attacked them out of nowhere. This time, it was the slime on the floor rippling and congealing into a pair of glistening, translucent lumps – one light blue, the other bright orange. They wobbled slightly, like jello.

“I knew it,” Spike said, drawing his sword. “Slime monsters!”

“Can we just eat them?” Derpy asked. “They look delicious.”

“Only if we can beat them in less than thirty seconds,” Spike said. “They’re touching the floor.”

The blue slime made a noise that sounded something like ‘blooorp!’, and spat a glob of slime at Spike.

Spike caught it on his shield. “Yeah, you’re going to have to do better than that.”

The orange slime spat out a brightly glowing glob, which exploded in a massive fireball, hitting everypony. Spike was unharmed, of course, and Moondancer was also unaffected, somewhat to her surprise. Bon Bon looked slightly singed, but managed to curl up and avoid the worst of it.

Derpy was on fire. She flapped flaming wings and screamed as she fluttered around in a circle. “Ahhh! Put it out put it out!”

“I can help!” Bon Bon said, trying to catch her. “Just come down where I can reach!”

Spike charged at the orange slime, swinging his sword with all his might, and while it sliced through the substance like a magically sharp sword through a slime monster, that didn’t really accomplish much. The gash healed immediately, and the entire slime lit up with electricity as it shocked its attacker.

“Dark Eidous!” Moondancer said, invoking her own lightning. The blue slime was struck by the random bolt, but also appeared unharmed.

Spike took a few steps back, shaking off the painful shock. “What do we do! Nothing’s working!”

“Stop panicking!” Bon Bon said, as she chased Derpy around in circle. “You just need to eat one of these candies!”

There was a ‘spang!’ as the blue slime’s next projectile bounced off Spike’s helmet, ringing it like a bell. He growled, and charged right at it, swinging his sword in an overhand chop – and it was like chopping into a block of meat. The sword met enough resistance to stop it before it had made it halfway through, and when Spike drew it back, the wound remained, leaking a sickly green fluid.

“Of course!” Moondancer said, and took out a firebomb, chucking it at the orange slime. “We use magic on the magic ones, and physical force on the physical ones.”

The orange slime sizzled and crackled as it burned, but summoned a massive blizzard to put itself out – which swept over the heroes as well, chilling and slowing them. On the plus side, it did put out Derpy’s wings.

“I though the bombs weren’t magic?” Spike said, chopping at the blue slime again as it flung its entire body at him, battering him but not nearly as badly as some of the other things he’d fought.

“Elemental damage, then,” Moondancer said, tossing another bomb at the orange slime. “Close enough.”

Before long, both slimes were reduced to thin pools of ooze, sinking back into the slimy layer coating the floor. Derpy and Bon Bon rejoined the others.

“I’m so sorry I panicked,” Derpy said. “I didn’t mean to but I hate being set on fire! It’s the worst thing except for getting stabbed I guess but until I came here it was the worst thing and it always makes me panic.”

“Does it happen a lot?” Spike asked.

“The Great Muffin can be a harsh mistress,” Derpy said, her lightly singed wings drooping. “Although it hasn’t happened as much since I started letting Dinky light the stove.”

Bon Bon, meanwhile, was searching the slime’s remains. There was no golz, but she did find a small pile of… “Jelly beans?”

Spike turned to look at what she was holding in her hoof. “Oh, neat! Those are good for low blood sugar, too. In case we run into more bats.”

“They came out of a slime’s body,” Moondancer said, grimacing.

Spike blinked. “And?”

She shuddered. “I’ll stick to the juice boxes.”

Exploring the Maze

After passing through one of the side doors – the one to the left, as they’d come in – the heroes found themselves in a long, brightly lit hallway. The floor wasn’t covered in slime here, and the ceiling was lower without shadows for lurking bats. Instead, every ten feet there stood a pair of suits of full plate armor.

Bon Bon examined the first set carefully. “Huh,” she said, wiggling at one of the greaves. “This looks like real armor. I wonder I we could sell it?”

“They’re going to come to life and attack us, aren’t they?” Spike asked.

“Probably,” Moondancer said.

Bon Bon tugged on the leg, but it wouldn’t come free. She tried hacking at the straps with her cleaver, but the blade was too thick to slip between the armor plates. “It’s really stuck on there.”

“I’d attack us too, if we were trying to pry our legs off,” Derpy said.

Trying a different tack, Bon Bon climbed up onto the armor’s back and tried to remove the helmet. It slipped off the neck easily, but there was a ‘clink’ sound before it moved more than an inch or two, and it wouldn’t move further.

Moondancer lit her horn and opened the faceplate, revealing a carved stone face. “I don’t think it’s going to come off without the statue inside moving,” she said.

Bon Bon wiggled at it anyway for a few seconds. “How did they get it on, then?” When she’d satisfied herself that it wasn’t coming off easily, she hopped down. If the statues were window-dressing, looting and selling them had been a long shot anyway.

“Maybe they were real ponies, turned to stone?” Spike suggested.

“That seems like a really expensive way to decorate,” Derpy said, floating down the hallway ahead of the others, now that they’d determined it was safe.

So of course, it was the second set of statues that came to life and attacked. One leaned down and drew a massive sword with its jaws, then swung it at Derpy with deceptive speed. She gave a sharp cry as it slammed into her side and sent her hurtling into the wall, to collapse in a pile of blood and feathers. The other stepped jerkily off its pedestal, rearing up to crush her with its hooves.

Spike was having none of that. He let out a loud roar, attracting the statues’ attention, then ran forwards and took a swing, which skipped off the breastplate of the armored statue, showering sparks.

The statue’s counterattack drove him to his knees, large dents in his breastplate where the metal-shod stone hooves had bucked him. He raised his shield to block the sword as the other one joined in, but the force still drove him back, rattled and sore.

Lightning flashed as Moondancer took the dark lord’s name in vain, and Bon Bon’s cleaver hacked at the statues’ legs as she circled around behind them, but Spike kept their attention by roaring in their faces and making flashy, distracting attacks with his sword. It was just for show – most of his energy was put into staying on his feet, keeping his shield in place to block as many blows as possible and flicking out his long tongue to pop one of Bon Bon’s candies into his mouth. It helped a little, but the hammer-like blows of the foes were still wearing him down, even if they couldn’t penetrate his armor any more than he could slice through theirs.

But fortunately, they weren’t invincible. The lightning went right through their armor, and Bon Bon, left unmolested, was able to aim her heavy cleaver strikes at their joints. Before long, the sword-wielding statue faltered and trembled, then fell to pieces, the armor crumbling like chalk as the statue inside shattered, leaving behind only a pile of rubble. A few seconds later, the other statue followed suit. Spike groaned, and sat down, resting his forehead on his shield.

“You okay, Spike?” Derpy asked. “Here, have a muffin.”

“Mmph?” Spike asked, as she shoved the healing muffin into his muzzle without waiting for an answer. He swallowed, and asked, “You’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. “They hit me pretty hard but I just healed myself. You seemed to be holding your own so figured I’d help chop them up.” She pulled out her cutlass and waved it around, to demonstrate.

“Don’t fly out front like that, Derpy,” Moondancer said. “If we lose you, none of the rest of us know how to bring you back to life. We’ll have to use our save point, and it’s in the middle of that orcish camp.”

“Sorry,” Derpy said, flattening her ears. “I’ll let Spike go first. Even if he’s being really slow.”

“Thanks,” Spike said. He stood up, and walked out in front of the girls. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.” He glared menacingly at the next set of statues, daring them to come to life.

Derpy giggled. “I’m sure you will! You’re the best dragon, Spike.”

Spike drew his sword, and struck a pose. “I’d face the hooves of a thousand statues if it’d mean keeping you safe!”

“Uh huh,” Moondancer said, impatiently. “Get on with it.”

“Right,” Spike said. “Just, can you use that batter barrier on the next set? They were hitting pretty hard.”

“She should save her mana,” Moondancer said. “We might run into more bats.” She poked him in the back with the blunt end of the scythe. “Now move. Onward. Mush!”

“I’m not a dog,” Spike whined, then started down the hallway.

===

Out of the hundred or so suits of armor lining the hallway, only two more sets came to life – it seemed like they were placed so that just as Spike started to drop his guard, another set would activate. He hoped they weren’t reading his mind.

They finally came to the end of the amor-lined corridor, but a narrow passageway between two of the suits of armor let them continue on. The passage was narrow enough that they had to go single file, and dark, but not quite dark enough for bats to hide. Instead, the bats were clearly visible, flying past a T-junction up ahead every minute or so.

“They’re on patrol, like the cows,” Bon Bon said, from the back of the group. “If we time it right, we can probably avoid them.”

“Okay,” Spike said, walking up to the intersection and pressing his back against the wall. That still didn’t give the others enough room to get past him comfortably, so they were going to have to follow his lead. “I’ll give it a shot.”

“Ten seconds,” Moondancer said. “Five… two, one, zero.” On zero, the pack of bats flew past.

“Follow me!” Spike said, running into the corner and heading the opposite way.

“No, Spike!” said Moondancer, as she ran after him. “Not this way! We need to follow them!”

“What? I thought we were trying to avoid them?” Spike said, stopping and turning around.

Moondancer sighed. “If we followed them we could go around the circle as long as we wanted. But this way, we’re heading right at each other. If we don’t find an exit in the next thirty seconds, we’re going to run into them head on.”

“So get moving!” Bon Bon shouted from the back of the pack.

Spike turned back around, and headed around a corner. He spotted a side passage, still narrow and dark but slightly more brightly lit than the bat cave. “I see a place to turn!”

The party piled into the side passage, Bon Bon having to shove Derpy forwards as Spike came to a sudden halt before she’d made it out of the bat’s path. “The bats are coming! Move!”

Derpy hovered up near the ceiling, to try to get out of her way, but ended up basically sitting on Moondancer’s back since the ceiling was so low. Moondancer lurched forwards, trying to get out from under her, and shoved Spike off the small cliff he’d stopped at.

“Oof!” Spike landed with a thump after a five foot drop.

“Are you okay?” Derpy asked, trying to see over Moondancer’s shoulder.

“He’s fine, for now,” Moondancer said, looking around the room she’d just pushed Spike into. She lowered her scythe towards him. “Come on, Spike, grab on.”

“But…” Spike’s eyes focused in on a glittering treasure chest sitting on a pedestal at the far end of the brightly-lit room. “There’s a treasure!”

Moondancer bonked him on the helmet. “There’s also all those slimes.”

Bon Bon tried to look small, as the bats fluttered past, somehow not seeing her – this time. “There’s no room up here, and I’d rather fight slime than bats.”

“But –” Moondancer started, only for Bon Bon to slip underneath Derpy’s hooves and ram into her rear end, pushing her into the room after Spike. Moondancer softened her fall with magic, and Bon Bon umped down after her, landing next to her at roughly the same time. Derpy followed them in, hovering overhead.

“That’s a lot of slime,” Derpy said, eyeing the dozens and dozens of slimy lumps filling the room, all of them slowly moving in the party’s direction.

“We can do it!” Spike said. “Remember, blue ones get magic, orange ones need swords.”

“Other way around,” Moondancer said.

“What about the yellow ones?” Derpy asked.

Spike breathed fire at the first wave of slimes, and the yellow and orange slimes hissed and spat as the fire scorched them. The blue slime was unaffected, but Bon Bon did a cartwheel ending with a massive chop of her cleaver, cutting it in two.

“Better batter barrier yourself, Derpy” Moondancer said, tossing a firebomb at the orange slime as it started to charge up its own fireball attack. “This is going to get messy.”

===

It was very messy. Derpy ended up putting a batter barrier up on everypony, and the slimes not only attacked with balls of slime, and splattered slime all over the place when wounded, but dissolved into huge puddles of slippery goop when killed.

It was also slow. The slimes didn’t move quickly enough to attack all at once, and their individual attacks weren’t dangerous enough to risk anypony actually dying, even if they’d focused their attacks instead of flailing about at random, but between all the magical area attacks and the sheer number of opponents, Derpy spent all her time summoning muffins, and Bon Bon spent a lot of her time passing out mint candies to keep them from being physically slowed by the blizzard spells the orange ones sometimes cast, and carrot-flavored candy to help everypony see again after the yellow ones squirted juice in their faces. While she was at it, she made sure to keep Derpy’s magic topped off with jellybeans, and tossed Moondancer the occasional juice box.

But at long last, the last enemy was chopped up and dissolving, and they all groaned and collapsed into a pile of slime-covered slightly-baked muffin dough with a crunchy hero center.

“I don’t think these stains are ever going to come out,” Derpy said, trying to scrape the goop off of her leather. “We’ll be the rainbow warriors.”

Spike licked off his muzzle. “Huh,” he said. “It’s not bad.” As the others stared in horror, he extended his tongue to its full length, wrapped it around himself several times, and slurped up all the half-baked batter and splattered slime. A swallow, and a loud ‘burp’, and he was clean.

“Oh!” Derpy said, flapping her wings excitedly and flinging bits of goo in all directions. “Do me next! Do me!”

“Nopony needs to ‘do’ anypony,” Moondancer said. “I’ll clean you off after I do myself.” The filth covering her cloak glowed with her magical aura, and started to peel off in chunks… only for her to grimace as the spell fizzled, and it all plopped back into place. “Ugh… so sticky.”

“Don’t worry,” Spike said. “I’ve gotcha.” He flipped his tongue out and wrapped it around Moondancer’s muzzle, snaking it up her face until he got to the part that had been protected by the cloak, then licked her clean as he pulled it back into his mouth. “See? No problem.”

Moondancer stared at him, eye twitching.

“Why don’t I get your tail next?” Spike suggested.

Moondancer’s cloak glowed, and she dumped it on the floor in a pile, then took out a firebomb and torched the mess. “No! I’m fine. I’m clean. See?” Sure enough, she and her battle saddle had remained pristine. Her hooves and the tip of her tail were a little messy, but her cleaning spell was able to handle it.

Bon Bon stared at the fire as it merrily crackled away. “That cloak cost 500 golz.”

“And I thought you didn’t want anypony to see you in that armor?” Derpy added.

“It’s okay,” Moondancer said. “We’re in the dungeon now, so if anypony stares I can just kill them.”

“Ooooh,” Derpy said, smiling and nodding, and trying to shake off her wings again.

Moondancer glared at her. “Derpy, stop staring.”

Derpy looked away quickly, and locked eyes (well, eye) with Spike, who slurped out his tongue and wrapped it around her face, just like he’d done to Moondancer. Derpy squirmed and giggled as it slurped around in her mane and ears, then down her cheeks and muzzle, leaving her face damp but mostly clean.

“Wings next?” Spike asked.

Derpy flexed her wings, then turned her head to nibble on her own battered feathers. “I can get my own wings. Why don’t you start with my tail, and we’ll meet in the middle?”

While Derpy was licked clean, Bon Bon laid her own armor out of the floor, and started scraping it off with her cleaver. Chef’s clothing was designed to catch food splatters, so she was mostly clean underneath. Moondancer poked at the bonfire she’d made of her cloak, but it fizzled out before actually consuming either the cloth or the batter, instead leaving it a sticky hardened mess of burnt sugar and bread.

She sighed, and headed over towards the treasure chest at the far end of the room. “I hope this treasure was worth it.”

Spike paused from licking Derpy’s thighs clean, his claws on her cutie marks to hold her in place. “I thought we were doing this for the experience?”

Moondancer snorted. “That was an experience I could have done without.” She poked at the chest with her magic, and a couple of basic analysis spells, but it didn’t look locked or trapped, so she popped it open.

“What did we get?” Bon Bon asked.

Moondancer floated out the only contents. “It’s a note,” she said. “I.O.U. one treasure. Signed by the Guardian of Wisdom.”

“Ooooh,” Derpy said, sitting up straight and nearly crushing Spike’s head as her rear came splatting down on the floor. “We’ll have to remember to turn that in when we find her!”

“Aren’t we going to kill her and take all her treasure anyway?” Spike asked, moving on to Derpy’s back, since her legs were awkwardly placed now, and mostly clean by that point anyway.

“Only if she’s in this dungeon,” Derpy said. “Or another dungeon. Or out in a shrine somewhere but still evil. Or –” she scrunched up her face. “We should keep the note, anyway.”

===

Once they were mostly clean – although still stained in rainbow colors from the slime, as Derpy had predicted – they continued on through the maze. There were more bats to dodge, and a cruelly placed living statue that leapt out to attack them as they were running from a bat patrol, meaning they had to fight it and the bats at the same time. They were well-stocked on jelly beans from the slime chamber, at least, and everypony but Moondancer was willing to eat them to refill on mana.

“I got a bunch of it in my mouth already, so it’s not like I'm getting extra cooties,” was Derpy’s take.

The maze was fairly disorienting, so they weren’t sure that they’d explored every nook and cranny by the time they finally came to a staircase descending further into the dungeon. “We can search the rest on the way out,” Bon Bon said. “Or just come back later. This is a normal dungeon dug into bedrock – I doubt it’s going to suddenly explode when we kill the boss.”

“And we don’t really need any more I.O.U.s,” Moondancer grumbled.

So they headed downstairs. At the bottom was a surprisingly small chamber, styled much like the entry hall, only cleaner and with fewer statues. Across from them was another staircase leading back up, while to the left was a raised altar, guarded by a shadowy figure standing perfectly still.

“Are you the guardian?” Spike asked, approaching with his sword drawn.

The figure didn’t answer.

Spike continued to advance until he was right up next to it, then poked it lightly with his sword. The cardboard cutout wobbled, then toppled over, landing on the floor with a thump. Spike leaned down, and poked it with his sword again, but there was no reaction. “Um…” he cautiously stepped around it to approach the altar, which held a golden half-circle talisman, with the flat edge all bumpy and ridged as if it was meant to snap into place with the other half of the circle. “I guess this is part of the Biforce?”

Moondancer lifted up the cardboard cutout, then flipped it around in the air as she looked it over. “There’s a note on the back.” She held it closer, to read. “I.O.U. one boss fight. Signed by the Guardian of Wisdom.”

“Hah,” Bon Bon chuckled. “I guess she was wise enough not to stay and fight the heroes.”

Waterway

The second stairway up from the lack-of-a-boss chamber took them back to the entrance, letting them out through a secret floor panel tucked behind a statue. They did a thorough search of the statue on the opposite side, but couldn’t find any sign of a matching staircase from the right-hand section of the dungeon, even though they knew it had to be there. Trying to dig through the floor only got them attacked by a larger than usual pack of bats, so after some juice and jellybeans to recover, they decided to move on.

The right wing was, if anything, even slimier and messier than the central chamber, with a floor that was slippery enough to be uncomfortable to walk across. It also had shadows near the ceiling for bats to hide in, and dark web-filled alcoves from which armored statues could emerge. Just walking down the hallway, they got ambushed twice by mixed groups – but by this point they had a good sense for just how hard each of the enemies were to kill, and just how hard they could hit, which made fighting them a lot more predictable.

“If it didn’t hurt so much when they stabbed me, this would almost be fun,” Moondancer remarked, slicing her scythe through the last blue slime from the latest group.

“I’m having plenty of fun!” Derpy said, grinning.

“That’s because you’re wearing the hat,” Moondancer said. “Give me your hat, and we’ll see who’s having fun.”

“I’m having fun,” Spike said.

Moondancer growled angrily and dropped the subject.

One thing they could all agree on was that the screeching bats that drained their mana and/or blood sugar were no fun at all. At least in the mixed groups there were usually only a couple of bats in a supporting role, and they had a reasonable chance of killing them before they could screech.

After the obligatory overly-long entrance hallway, and a room full of ancient, dusty boxes that couldn’t be easily opened, they came to what looked like a dead end – a five-foot-wide moat of calm, still water divided the room in half, and the door to continue deeper was on the far side. On their half, a four-foot-wide box sat out in the open, with no other decorations.

Spike walked over to the box and gave it a little shove. It moved easily across the slippery floor. “Oh, I get it. We take the box and push it into the water –”

Derpy landed on the far side to rest her wings, since they’d stopped moving. “And then?”

Bon Bon hopped across the moat to join her. “Derpy, stop running ahead!”

“And then we can cross,” Spike said.

“Wait,” Moondancer said, kneeling at the edge of the moat. She took out the burned lump of fused sugar with a 500 golz cloak trapped inside, and dunked it in the water. “Sugar is water-soluble, right?”

“I think you caramelized it,” Bon Bon said.

Moondancer kneaded the mess with her magic. “It should still dissolve eventually.”

“Eventually,” Bon Bon repeated.

There was a splash, and a sudden wave drenched Moondancer, soaking her fur and breaking her concentration. “Spike!” she shouted, as the cloak immediately sank into the moat. She fished around for it with the scythe, but the water was too deep to even reach the bottom.

Spike hopped onto the floating box he’d pushed into the water, then out onto the opposite shore. “What? I have short legs!”

===

“Beware of electric floor,” Spike read from the sign.

“What?” Derpy asked.

Spike stepped aside and pointed. “The sign says to beware of the electric floor.”

“Well, the floor is kind of eccentric,” Derpy said, hovering over him to get a better look. “It’s got all those bright blue tiles with skeletons on them.”

“Electric,” Moondancer said. “It means ‘full of lightning’.”

Derpy frowned. “How do you fill a floor with lightning?”

“Make it out of clouds?” Spike suggested, poking at the blue floor to see if it was secretly made out of mist.

Before he could touch it, his claw froze, trapped in a magical grip. Moondancer rolled her eyes as she dragged him back. “They probably just used magic.”

“So how do we get past?” asked Bon Bon from the back.

“It’s an easy maze,” Derpy said. “We can just walk around the blue parts.”

Spike took a step onto a non-blue tile, and failed to get struck by lightning. Emboldened, he continued down the obvious path. “Yeah, this would be a more effective trap if they didn’t have a sign warning about it.” He glanced at one of the skeletons. “And cleaned up the skeletons.”

“Maybe they thought it wouldn’t be fair?” Derpy suggested.

“Do you think these are real skeletons?” Spike asked. “I mean, there’s got to be a dozen of them! Could there really be that many ponies who didn’t stop to read a sign?”

“Maybe they put up the sign later,” Bon Bon said.

Spike pointed to one of the last skeletons, as he approached the far end. “And this girl was almost all the way through the maze.”

“Maybe she tripped?” Derpy suggested. “I trip and get struck by lightning all the time. I mean, ALL the time.”

“Don’t trip,” Bon Bon said.

Derpy wobbled in midair, “Argh, now I can’t think of anything but tripping!”

Moondancer lit her horn. “Big Bee’s Bump!”

A giant spectral hoof appeared, and punted Derpy over the rest of the maze and into the corridor on the other side, where she landed in a confused heap. Spike quickly ran through the rest of the maze and helped her up.

“Thanks!” she said, patting the dragon on the head with a wing. “And oh my muffin, Moondancer! You learned a new spell!”

“It’s not new,” Moondancer said. “It’s just kind of useless.”

Derpy trotted in place, “New spell, new spell!” She ran towards Moondancer to hug her, but stepped on a blue tile and was instantly bathed in a blinding arc of lightning.

She staggered back into the corridor, and sat down, fur all frizzy and feathers slightly scorched. “Oopsie!”

“Are you okay?” Spike rushed to her side again, and Bon Bon and Moondancer weren’t far behind, despite having to navigate the remainder of the maze.

Derpy waggled one wing, then the other, then tried to stand, only to wobble and sit back down again. “I’ve had worse.”

===

Splash!

“I think you’re going to need a bigger box,” Bon Bon said, eyeing the watery gap that remained.

“There’s another one I can push into place,” Spike said. “I’ll be right back!”

“Do you just want me to carry you over?” Derpy asked.

“Don’t worry! I’ve got this!”

Moondancer grumbled as she twisted her tail with her magic to wring out the water.

“I could have carried you over too,” Derpy said.

“I thought I could make it,” the sopping wet unicorn replied. “Bon Bon made it.”

“I’m a rogue. Jumping is one of my tricks.”

“You’re a cook.”

“Only officially,” Bon Bon said. “It’s my cover story.”

Moondancer sighed. “I don’t get it. Your class here is ‘cook’, and you’re a cook back home. Where did you learn to jump like that?”

Bon Bon rolled her eyes. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

Splash!

They turned to look at the bridge of boxes Spike was building. It was still quite a bit short.

“Do you think you can make the jump?” Moondancer asked.

“I’m not going to risk it,” Spike said. “With this armor I’d sink like a rock. I saw another box I can use, be right back.” With that, he ran off again.

“Uh oh,” Derpy said.

Moondancer stopped wringing out her mane, and looked up. “What is it?”

“Trouble.” Derpy drew her cutlass as a pair of armored statues emerged from the doorway on their side of the moat, and started to shuffle towards them. The slime coating the floor rippled and congealed into familiar blue and orange slimes, and the omnipresent high-pitched chirping intensified as a pair of bats swooped out of the shadows to join them.

“Spiiiike!” Moondancer shouted.

“Just a second, this one is kind of stuck!” Spike called back.

“What do we do?” Derpy asked, flying up into the air as the monsters approached.

“Maybe I could play tank if you batter me?” Bon Bon suggested, eyeing their giant swords nervously.

“Just get behind me,” Moondancer said, standing up and facing the monsters square on. “Between Derpy’s flight and Bon Bon’s stealth, they’re going to come after me first.”

“So I should batter you?” Derpy asked.

Moondancer shook her head, and bubbled herself. Sure enough, the statues converged on her and starting beating against her force field. It wobbled, but held, even when the blue slime added its spit-attacks.

“Take out the bats!” Bon Bon said, and vanished from sight as she leapt towards one, chopping it in two before it could screech. Derpy dashed towards the other bat, but wasn’t fast enough to get there before its ear-piercing shriek tore through them. She pressed on through the painful noise and took it out so that it wouldn’t screech again, just in time to take a fireball in the face from the orange slime.

“What’s going on?” Spike called from the other room. “Are you fighting monsters? Come on, girls! You don’t want to outlevel me!”

“Not our major concern!” Moondancer shouted, taking a step back as her bubble came dangerously close to popping. Her horn flared brighter as she poured more mana into the shield.

Derpy was panicking and flying in circles. “Put me out put me out!”

Bon Bon leapt into the air and grabbed hold of her leg, then bit down on one of her wings and angled it so that her circling turned into a quick spiral into the moat. She let go at the last second and landed on the shore, while Derpy splashed down with a hiss of steam.

She pulled herself out, shaking off the water. “Sorry! I just really don’t like being on fire!”

“Moondancer, you’ve got to take out the orange slime!” Bon Bon said, as she circled around to ambush the blue one. Slimes went down a lot easier than statues. With her cleaver, it only took one hit.

“I can’t take out anything while the bubble’s up.”

Lightning crackled across the party as the orange slime cast another spell… but Derpy was used to being struck by lightning, and didn’t panic. She and Bon Bon teamed up on one of the statues, Derpy beating it about the head while Bon Bon’s cleaver hacked at its legs.

Its counterattack almost took off Derpy’s head, but despite the blood spraying from her throat, she kept her wits about her and summoned a muffin. A few bites stopped the bleeding, but left her throat sore – she whimpered in pain as she swallowed. She managed to block its next attack with her cutlass, and it didn’t get a third – Bon Bon’s precise chopping finally did enough damage to shatter the whole thing.

Then the orange slime let loose with a blizzard attack, icing up Derpy’s wings and forcing her to ground, and slowing Bon Bon to a crawl.

Moondancer grimaced, but there was only one statue left. She’d probably survive. She dropped her bubble so that she could cast other spells. “Dark Eidous!”

The lightning hit the statue instead of the slime, and didn’t even come close to taking it down. Without her bubble, it could swing directly at her, and though she tried to parry with her scythe she was too slow. The braided straps of her battle saddle were too strong for the sword to cut, but they didn’t do much to protect her flesh beneath, and the sword sank into her shoulder with a crunch as it shattered something important enough that she couldn’t keep standing without it. Her leg collapsed and she found herself on her knees – but she was down, not out.

“Dark Eidous!” This time, the lightning hit the orange slime, but it wasn’t enough to take it out.

Bon Bon’s speed returned as she sucked on a peppermint, and she hacked away at the statue. It was still fixated on Moondancer, though, and reared up and kicked the wizard in the chest, hard enough to knock her head-over-tail onto her back.

Moondancer held up her scythe blindly, hoping it might at least make the monster’s job more difficult. “Dark Eidous Dark Eidous Dark Eidous!”

Three bolts of lightning crackled down from the ceiling in quick succession! One was wasted on the statue, but the other two hit the orange slime, finishing it off. Derpy and Bon Bon managed to hack apart the statue before it could take another swing, showering Moondancer with gravel as it crumbled.

“Muffin time!” Derpy said, setting one on Moondancer’s chest.

“Can I just die instead?” Moondancer croaked as she lay there struggling to breathe.

“No,” Bon Bon replied. “It’d cost too much to resurrect you.”

Splash!

With the last box in place, the gently bobbing bridge was complete, and Spike was finally able to join them. “Aww, you didn’t leave any monsters for me,” he said, before noticing their wounds. “Are you okay?”

“We’re fine,” Bon Bon said. “It was just the same monsters we’ve been fighting this whole time.”

“It’s a lot easier with Spike there to take the hits, though,” Derpy said. “And a lot less whiny.”

“I’m not whining,” Moondancer complained.

“You’re not eating your muffin either,” Derpy said, folding her forelegs.

“My horn is on fire after that last spell, and I can’t move my forelegs,” Moondancer said.

Derpy sighed, and lifted the muffin with a hoof, lowering it gently towards Moondancer’s mouth.

“Fanks,” she mumbled as she chewed on it. “Weally ate eing thtabbed.”

===

Eventually, they made it to the stairwell that led down to the next mini-boss. Like the other wing, it led to a room with a second staircase heading back up and an altar at the far end.

“Ha! New challengers approach!” declared the ancient-looking pony that stood before the altar. “I am the Guardian of Strength. Do you seriously think that you have a chance of standing for even an instant against my immense power?”

“You don’t look that powerful,” Spike said.

“Ha! You see my wasted flesh and wrinkled skin, and think that I’m past my prime! Don’t you know that the secret to getting stronger is experience? And who has more experience than an old man like me?”

“And yet, you’re a mini-boss in the dungeon of the very first quest we received,” Bon Bon pointed out. “How strong could you possibly be?”

“Face me and find out, if you dare!” the Guardian proclaimed, taking a martial stance. “But don’t expect any sympathy if I send your souls screaming into the afterlife!”

Spike set his shield, and charged at the Guardian, roaring his challenge.

“Dark Eidous!” Moondancer intoned, and lightning struck the elderly pony square in the back.

“Ahh! My heart!” the Guardian gasped, falling onto his side and clutching at his chest. Spike’s run gradually slowed to a halt as his opponent twitched and shuddered a few times, then lay still.

Spike bent down and held his claws in front of the old pony’s nose. “Um… he’s not breathing.”

“Huh,” Bon Bon said, trotting over to give him a look. “Well, go get the Biforce. I’ll check his saddlebags for golz.”

===

With the Biforce united, the heroes took the shortcut back to the central chamber, and slotted it into place in the large double doors. There was a rumble, and the entire assembly, doors and Biforce alike, slid into the ground, leaving the hallway before them open.

“So… do you think the final boss is going to be as easy as the Guardians?” Spike asked.

“I hope so,” Derpy said. “It feels like we’ve been on this same mission for weeks.”

“We have been on this same mission for weeks,” Moondancer said.

Derpy scrunched up her nose. “Okay, but I’m still ready to be on a different one. So I hope the boss is easy so that we can rescue the princess and go home.”

“We don’t get to go home after this,” Bon Bon said. “This was just the quest to prove that we were heroes so that we can get the real quest.”

“We can go to her home,” Derpy said. “And it’ll have beds. With fluffy pillows.”

“And curtains that we can drape over Moondancer so that she doesn’t have the murder the entire kingdom for staring at her armor,” Spike added.

“Don’t kill the princess,” Bon Bon said. “I’m not sure what happens to us if she dies, but it’s probably not fun.”

“I won’t kill the princess,” Moondancer promised. “We can just keep her blindfolded on the way back.”

Lord Orcus

“And that’s when dad said, ‘I don’t care how many tiaras you have, you –‘ shh! Someone’s coming!”

The heroes emerged into a combination throne room and prison. One half of the room was dominated by a massive throne, decorated with many skulls, surrounded by flaming braziers and tapestries with a heavy skull-and-knife motif. Most of the other half was a large cage, done up like a fancy bedroom, with a dresser and a mirror and a four-poster bed.

As they entered, the princess – a cute, if slightly chubby, bright yellow unicorn – was climbing up onto the bed, as a very large orc closed and locked the cage door. He was wearing a crown, and flanked by his bodyguards – two giant axe-wielding orcs and a hooded orc shaman.

“Is this a bad time?” Bon Bon asked. “We can come back.”

“I think not,” said the large orc, turning to face them. “Are you the so-called heroes I was warned about?”

“Yeah, that’s us,” Spike said. “Are you Lord Orcus?”

“I am,” he replied.

“What took you so long?” the princess asked. “You were supposed to be here ages ago!”

“We were busy,” Derpy said. “There were these evil cows, and then we had to go to River Town…”

The princess frowned. “Sidequests? You kept me waiting here while you went and did a bunch of sidequests?”

“Well, at least you haven’t been cooped up in a cage the whole time,” Bon Bon said.

“Close enough.” The princess folded her legs and glowered, mostly at the heroes. “He only lets me out to use the bathroom.”

“Normally we have prisoner go in cage,” added the orcish shaman. “But this cage next to throne. Not good planning.”

“Maybe you could use a bedpan?” Spike suggested.

“I’m not going to use a bedpan while everyone is watching,” the princess said.

Spike shook his head. “You wouldn’t want to, but you’re stuck in a cage so eventually you’d have no choice.”

“Princess very stubborn,” the shaman said. “Also not do own laundry.”

“She shouldn’t have been in there long enough for bedpans or laundry!” Lord Orcus growled. “I expected her would-be rescuers to be right on my heels!”

“Ponies get lost?” the shaman suggested.

“We did not get lost!” Moondancer protested. “It was Bon Bon’s fault for—”

“Actually, we kind of did,” Derpy said. “You led us to that church, remember?”

“Oh, right,” Moondancer said. “The church where you killed the high priest.”

Derpy scrunched up her nose. “That was an accident!”

Moondancer rolled her eyes. “No, it wasn’t, Derpy. You stabbed him in the chest.”

“Come on, don’t be so hard on her,” Spike said. “She thought she could bring him back to life afterwards.”

“That’s still not an accident.”

“Are you sure these are heroes?” the Princess asked, as Spike, Derpy, and Moondancer continued to bicker.

“Of course they’re not,” Lord Orcus said. “They’re your father’s pathetic attempt at summoning heroes without Lord Destiny’s centuries of experience. It’s hardly a surprise that he failed so completely.”

“He didn’t fail,” Bon Bon said. “Once we defeat you and rescue the princess, we’ll prove that we’re qualified and gain official recognition.”

“And that’s where your little plan falls apart,” Lord Orcus replied, “since none of you will be leaving this room alive. I only wish you could have been more punctual for your inevitable humiliating defeat.”

“Like the princess said, we had some side-quests to take care of,” Bon Bon said. “It’s a hero thing, you wouldn’t understand.”

Moondancer was sitting down by this point, kneading at her forehead with one of her hooves. “I don’t even know why you’re so defensive. It’s not like killing ponies matters here. He was probably already resurrected by the time you tried to cast the spell.”

Derpy shook her head, tears dripping down her cheek. “But the big floating crystal was magic that worked! He hated magic that worked!”

“Doesn’t that mean he would have hated to be resurrected?” Spike asked.

“Whose side are you on!” Derpy shouted at him.

“Hey!” Bon Bon shouted right back. “There’s a boss fight about to start, here.”

“No, no, this is the most interesting thing I’ve seen since I was kidnapped,” said the princess, lounging on the bed in her cage.

“Orcubus!” shouted Lord Orcus, and the orcish shaman immediately stood at attention. “Orc knights!” The two larger, quiet orcs drew their giant axes. “Execute these intruders!”

“Not so fast!” Spike said, whirling around as the orc knights charged towards them, and interposing himself and his shield. Their initial blows staggered him, but he managed to keep his feet, and retaliate with a gush of fire that made the orcs’ skin blister and char, even if it they didn’t show any sign of pain.

“Spirits of the earth!” said Lord Orcus, slamming his staff into the ground, which rippled towards the party like the surface of a pond. The waves parted around his allies, sparing Spike as well, but Moondancer stumbled and fell, and Derpy cried out as the wave of force slammed into her, even in midair.

Moondancer levered herself up with her scythe. “Dark Eidous!” Lightning crackled down, striking Lord Orcus but having almost no effect.

“How dare you?” he sputtered. “How dare you speak that name?!”

Moondancer smirked. “Dark Eidous Dark Eidous Dark Eidous!” Three more blasts of lightning descended, pounding Lord Orcus relentlessly. Almost as if she’d aimed them.

“Noodle Monster, heal!” said Orcubus in the back, raising her staff. A portal opened in the ceiling, much like the muffin portals Derpy usually summoned, but instead of a muffin, this portal disgorged a sickly white, slippery tentacle, which draped itself over Lord Orcus’ head and shoulders, then slowly retracted, caressing him as it left. A green glow radiated from his skin, as the lightning char vanished, and he stood a little straighter.

Lord Orcus laughed loudly. “You see? Heretic though you may be, you stand no chance against my power!”

There was a wet crunch behind him, and Orcubus froze, then slowly collapsed to the ground, landing with a thump to reveal Bon Bon clinging to her back, her cleaver embedded in the orc’s head.

Lord Orcus frowned, then pointed his staff at the sneaky cook. “A minor setback, now taste –”

His words dissolved into shrieks of pain and surprise as one of Moondancer’s fire bombs splattered against his back, setting him alight. He shot off his spell anyway – shot off three copies of it, in fact – but it was blind fire, and did nothing but leave scorch marks on the walls and floor.

“You want fire? I’ll give you fire!” Lord Orcus shouted, turning back towards Spike and Moondancer. He pointed his staff and let out a huge torrent of flame. He held it for several seconds, until Bon Bon’s cleaver sunk into his arm and loosened his grip, at which point it sputtered out, revealing nothing but two pairs of charred boots where his orc knights had been.

Spike and Moondancer were unhurt, of course, both immune to fire. Derpy was hovering near the ceiling, curled up in a ball and holding her hat down over her face. Apparently, that had worked, because Lord Orcus still didn’t seem to notice her.

“Thanks,” Spike said, stretching out a bit and loosening his joints. “That was pretty refreshing, actually. Can you do it again?”

As a reply, Lord Orcus aimed the staff with his remaining arm, and shot a brilliant blue ray. Spike blocked it with his shield, but the blue aura flowed over and around it, running up his arm and quickly covering his entire body. There was a crackling noise, and then the dragon vanished, encased in a huge block of ice.

Then Orcus stumbled and fell, as Bon Bon’s cleaver nearly took off one of his feet. “Bubble!” he said, desperately, and Bon Bon was knocked back as he surrounding himself in a familiar wobbly barrier.

“Bubble!” Moondancer echoed, surrounding his bubble in a bubble of her own. “Derpy, can you fix Spike?”

Derpy called on the Great Muffin, but that just ended up with a muffin sitting on top of the block of ice. “I can’t get to his mouth!”

Bon Bon reached into her saddlebag, and tossed a candy at Spike’s ice cube… and while the peppermint exploded dramatically as it shattered against the side, it apparently also had to be eaten to have any effect.

“Oh, for Celestia’s sake,” Moondancer said. “I could try a firebomb, but I don’t want to lower the bubble, and I can’t activate the cornucopia with it up.”

Derpy drew her cutlass, and swooped down at Spike, giving a loud battlecry as she slammed the blade into the ice. It took out a tiny chip, so she kept chipping away at it, swinging wildly. Bon Bon and Moondancer joined in with their own blades once they realized what she was doing, and eventually they weakened it enough that Spike could break free, shattering the ice from inside. As soon as he was out, he flopped to the ground and groaned.

Derpy pushed the muffin she’d summoned towards Spike with a hoof, and he slurped out his tongue and devoured it, which gave him enough energy to get to his feet.

“Did we win?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Moondancer said. “I’ve got him in a bubble…”

All three of them turned to look at the bubble, and at the still-burning form lying unmoving on the floor inside it.

“Yeah, he died a while ago,” the Princess said. “Do you think you can let me out of this cage now?”

===

The princess knew a back way out of the castle, which let them avoid the orc camp and get back into the forest, which was of course still swarming with orcs. The orcs weren't very difficult -- they were very predictable, and the heroes pretty much had orc-fighting down to a science by this point -- but they did seem to want to target the princess in particular.

"Can't you just use a repel?" the princess asked.

Bon Bon stared at her. "Why would we pay money for an item which lets us make less money and get less experience?"

"Wait, there's an item that we could use to avoid these random battles?" Moondancer asked.

"It's expensive," Bon Bon said.

Moondancer scowled. "So was fighting those wolves. That would have been the perfect time to use it."

"Well, excuse me. I didn't know we were going to need it when we were back in Castle Town with hardly any money and no clothing."

"Well, we need it now," Spike said. "As soon as the orcs see her they ignore me and make a beeline, and those axe-orcs are pretty tough."

"Derpy," Bon Bon asid. "Give her your hat."

"What? No!" Derpy clutched at her hat protectively.

"I'm not wearing that!" the princess said. "It wouldn't fit over my horn."

"We could punch a hole?" Spike suggested.

Derpy glowered as much as she could with one eye, which was actually quite a bit, and Spike felt a chill run through him as her gaze pinned him to the forest floor. "You're not putting holes in my hat!"

Bon Bon rolled her eyes. "We need her out of harm's way. If she was a pegasus she could fly..."

"I don't suppose you can use the bubble spell?" Moondancer asked.

The princess shook her head. "If I cast any spells to help you, you automatically fail the test."

Spike looked to Moondancer. "You could use the bubble spell."

Moondancer frowned, then shook her head. "You need me to use the firebombs. Do you really want to try to fight without me? We saw how well it worked fighting without you."

"Um... for these orcs, you could probably fight without me," Derpy said. "I barely have to do anything."

"So, what?" the princess asked. "Do you want me to ride you?"

Derpy swooped down and grabbed her under her shoulders. "Nah, I've got this."

===

After a few miles, Moondancer suggested that Derpy could wait until the fight started to start carrying the princess around, and that she could walk on her own hooves in the meantime. This came as more of a relief to the princess than to the pegasus, since Derpy wasn't tired and also wasn't very good at avoiding low-hanging branches with enough clearance not to scrape up her passenger.

They only had to fight one more group of orcs before leaving the forest, and the plan worked just fine -- the orcs still wanted to chase after the princess, but seeing she was out of reach, were willing to settle for Spike.

"I really hoped I'd get to just stab them in the back while they ran around chasing her," Spike said, sucking on a candy to heal up after the battle. "But this works too, I guess."

"There's nothing on the road except chickens and bandits, so from here on in it should be easy," Bon Bon said.

Moondancer winced. "I can't believe you just said that. Now we're guaranteed to fight some surprise extra boss.”

===

But they didn’t. And the princess didn’t let them stop to rest, so they eventually reached Castle Town the same day that they’d left, absolutely exhausted from dozens of hours of walking.

“Do you think you can make it the rest of the way?” Bon Bon asked, as they dragged themselves through the city gate. “That inn over there is calling my name.”

“Ugh, fine,” the princess said. “Guards! Escort me to my father.” The gate guards saluted, and fell in next to her. “These ‘heroes’ need a few hours to freshen up before their audience.”

Derpy, half-asleep, started to drift after the princess as she trotted on towards the castle, but Moondancer magically dragged her back to the rest of the group by her tail. The four of them didn’t speak as they trudged into the inn, and Bon Bon, with her bit bag already in her teeth, took a few seconds to give a curt nod as the innkeeper graciously offered them a free stay, as official heroes of Castle Town.

There was a giant floating crystal in the upstairs hallway, on the way to their beds. Moondancer tagged it in passing, and everything went blue. By the time the world returned, the four of them were already asleep on the floor.

Mission Report

They woke up in their beds. Somepony had tucked them in and laundered their armor, which was folded and stacked on the dresser near the door. In another corner of the shared room they'd set out a large wooden tub of warm water, with soap, sponges and towels nearby.

"Dibs!" Spike shouted, leaping out of his bed and running for the tub. Moondancer grabbed him in the middle of his terminal leap before he could splash down, and slowly lowered him into the bath. "Heh heh, sorry," he said, grinning over the edge as he soaped up a sponge and started scrubbing.

"Not big on privacy, are they?" Moondancer remarked. There was certainly no privacy to be had in the room -- not even a dressing screen or a closet.

Bon Bon rolled out of bed and started doing stretches. "It seems a bit late for that. We've all seen you disemboweled."

"And wearing that --" Derpy paused to give a huge yawn, fluttering her wings a bit and then collapsing back onto her pillow. "Marshmallow..." she muttered, drifting back to sleep.

Moondancer's coat crackled as a wave of magic swept over her from nose to tail, quickly cleaning off all the sweat and grime she'd accumulated since she'd last cast the spell. She walked over to the armor, and stared at the Battle Saddle. "I don't need to put that on right now, do I?" she muttered. "It's safe here in town. Nopony's going to attack us here."

"You never know!" Spike said. "Cut scenes could strike at any time! But don't worry, I'll help you put it on."

"I'll wear my old robe."

"Sold it back in River Town," Bon Bon said.

Moondancer sighed. "Then I'll go buy another one. We have money now, right?"

"And walk around the town naked?" Spike asked. "They all wear clothes here, remember?"

Moondancer grit her teeth, and lifted the blanket off her bed.. "I'll make a robe."

Spike and Bon Bon stopped what they were doing to watch, as Moondancer's magic enveloped the blanket and got brighter and brighter as she focused all her concentration on the spell. Just when it looked like she wasn't going to be able to summon up the power, there was a flash of light, and where the blanket had once been was... an orange.

"Huh," Spike said. "Not where I would have gone with improvised clothing, but maybe if you stuck it in just the right place --"

The orange rebounded off his forehead and splattered on the far wall, and he sank into the tub with a cascade of bubbles.

===

Spike was rescued before he drowned, and helped Moondancer braid the Battle Saddle's straps into her tail and mane and around her legs again, while Derpy and Bon Bon helped each other bathe to save time. They weren't in any hurry, as far as they knew -- not even the theoretical hurry they'd been in to rescue the princess, which hadn't ended up hurrying them along much at all. They were all hungry for something to eat, though, and actual food from an actual restaurant was sounding a lot better than more trail rations.

Muffins and candy hardly even counted as food at this point. Well, except to Derpy.

A guard was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs. "King McGuffin requests your presence at your earliest convenience," he said.

"Okay!" Derpy replied cheerfully, as the four of them headed over to the tavern adjoining the inn for some breakfast. They picked out a table, and Spike headed up to the counter to get some food.

"Can we get some pancakes and eggs?" he asked the bartender. "Four plates, please."

The bartender didn't respond. In fact, the whole room had suddenly gone silent.

"Um... why is everypony staring at us?" Derpy asked.

The guard cleared his throat. "King McGuffin requests your presence at your earliest convenience."

Spike nodded. "We were going to go with you after breakfast, but something's wrong with the ponies here." He waved a claw in front of the bartender's face, which made him shy away, but he still wasn't taking their order. "What's up with that?"

"King McGuffin," the guard repeated, "requests your presence at your earliest convenience."

Bon Bon sighed, and got out of her chair. "Which means now?" The guard didn't reply. "Come on, girls. Looks like food will have to wait."

===

Derpy summoned some muffins for them while they walked towards the castle, which at least staved off the hunger pangs, if not the cravings.

"They're all staring at me," Moondancer hissed, as she tried to somehow curl up in a ball and disappear while walking briskly towards the castle. It ended up mostly as an uncomfortable cringe.

"I think they're staring at all of us," Bon Bon said.

"We're their heroes after all!" Spike said enthusiastically. "Right?" he asked a nearby mare.

"Yes! The heroes have returned, with our princess! Just like King McGuffin said they would!" she replied. "There's sure to be a celebration in honor of your victory!"

Spike grinned. "Huh. Really? Will they have food?"

"The best food!" she confirmed. "And music, and games... it's been ages since we had a royal celebration! Everyone's looking forward to it!"

"Neat!"

"And all the shops will be closed, so that I have to parade myself in front of everypony in this ridiculous armor for as long as possible," Moondancer said through gritted teeth.

"Yes. Clearly the celebration is planned purely to annoy you," Bon Bon said. "It must be Destiny at work."

"You should always embrace your Destiny!" Derpy said. "Except that Destiny here is some immortal emperor so he's probably like a jillion years old. He might not be a lot of fun to embrace."

"You can embrace me anytime," said a Pegasus stallion, leering. Moondancer manifested a spectral hoof and smacked him into the side of a building. "Thank you... mistress..." he mumbled as he sat in a confused heap.

"Hey!" Spike said. "Why'd you do that? He might have been a new party member!"

"We don't need any more party members," Bon Bon said. "If we found one, we'd probably have to swap one of us out."

"Are you sure?" Spike asked. "The legends said there were supposed to be five heroes."

Moondancer growled. "Not. Him."

"Fair enough," Spike said. "He must have been pretty weak anyway, if you could take him down with one spell." He paused to think for a while. "Maybe the princess?"

===

The princess did not look like she was going to join them on their quest. When they entered the throne room, she was sitting imperiously on a large throne next to her father's, wearing a fancy gown covered in lace. She looked quite irate. "Do you know how long you've kept us waiting?" she asked.

"Not really," Bon Bon said. "We usually tell time by the sun, but it hasn't moved since we came here."

"Ah, you come from a world where the sun still moves?" King McGuffin asked, leaning forwards eagerly. "There are ancient legends of the sun moving in the sky, and sometimes dimming to the point where even an open field was as dark as a dungeon! Nowadays, this mythical 'night time' can only be found --"

"Father," the princess said. "Can we get on with it?"

"Oh, if we must," the king said, his face falling.

"I'm afraid we have no choice, if we wish to eventually see this through to the end," the jester-pony said, patting the king on his shoulder.

"But they're going to be so angry," the king said, quietly. "I just don't know if I can break the news..."

"Then allow me," the jester said, stepping back and giving a bow. He turned towards the heroes. "In recognition of your heroic deed, the Immortal Emperor Destiny has completely failed to respond in any way, shape, or fashion, except to barricade the Empire proper behind his imperial checkpoints, leaving this kingdom, and many of the other outlying lands, at the mercy of the nameless one. Clearly, he is not impressed."

"They spent two weeks doing sidequests, while I was stuck in that horrible dungeon with those horrible orcs," the princess said, scowling at them.

"But honey, I thought you liked Lord Orcus?" the king asked, in a loud stage-whisper, as he leaned over towards his daughter.

"We can hear you," Bon Bon said.

The king paused, and slowly sat back up in his throne, and cleared his throat. "Yes. Well."

"I hope you wanted us to kill him," Bon Bon said. "Because when we left he was pretty dead."

"He knew the risk when he kidnapped my daughter," the king replied, waving off the concern with a hoof. "At any rate, as my Court Jester said, there has been a bit of a setback in our plan to have you recognized as the Heroes of Destiny."

"Does that mean we can go home now?" Moondancer asked. "Because it sounds like your plan isn't going to work at all."

The king shook his head. "No, no, we can't give up that easily. It is a setback, but we're not done yet!"

"We also can't send you home," the jester added. "We could have our wizard make the attempt, but without another source of magic crystals he's unlikely to even be able to strand you permanently in a random hell dimension." He paused. "With a source of magic crystals, he'd probably just end up stranding you permanently in a random hell dimension."

"So it's Destiny or nothing, huh?" Spike asked.

"Indeed, few are those who possess his knowledge of dimensional summoning," the king replied. "The Immortal Emperor's wisdom is unmatched -- there's a reason his reign has lasted for a thousand years!"

"So what do we do?" Bon Bon asked. "Another quest?"

"Yes!" the king proclaimed. "A grand quest!"

"Not exactly a quest," the princess said.

"A fetch quest is still a quest," the king replied.

The princess rolled her eyes. "But the flutterponies are our allies! They shouldn't even have to fight anyone."

"Unless the flutterponies are here in town, I suspect we'll be doing plenty of fighting," Bon Bon said. "You walked with us all the way back from the forest -- you saw how the roads are."

"If you'd just buy some Repel," the princess said, with a sigh. "Or you can fight. You seem to like fighting. Just go to the flutterponies and ask for the four magic rings."

"Only the Heroes of Destiny can wield the four magic rings," King Mcguffin explained. "If you have the rings, then surely the Emperor will have no choice but to acknowledge you as the Heroes! Go to the west, past the desert, to the Forest of Night, where the flutterponies live in their ancient village, hidden in the leaves. Speak to Queen Rosedust, and explain your plight! Surely she will agree to grant you the rings, and with them we can demand the recognition you so clearly deserve!"

"That sounds doable," Bon Bon said. "What's the catch?"

"Hopefully, nothing," the king said, shrugging his shoulders. "But who can say what Destiny will have in store for you? A hero's life is rarely simple."

"And if it is, they tend to complicate it all on their own," the jester added. "Through thorough preparation and unmatched caution, the simplest trip to a neighboring kingdom can become an epic journey spanning the width and breadth of the land."

"Sidequests," the princess said, scowling. "It's always sidequests."

Preparations

Moondancer, her embarrassing armor once more concealed beneath a cloak, tapped her scythe impatiently against the cobblestones of the small plaza. They’d completely missed this section of Castle Town on their first visit, since it didn’t have any buildings and looked like a blackberry thicket from a distance. But Derpy’s keen eye for embarrassing situations to get herself stuck in had led to them getting an intimate knowledge of the blackberry bushes, and by the time they’d gotten her untangled, Spike (on Deep Bush duty thanks to his armor and scales) had stumbled into the training pavilion hidden away between the bushes and the town wall.

There was also a wide, well-maintained pathway that led to the tavern. Nopony was sure how they’d missed that the first time.

At any rate, they were here now, and had plenty of golz to spend on whatever ‘training’ looked useful. And now the doddering old wizard searching through his pile of ratty scrolls seemed to be doing his best to convince Moondancer that they might have been better off missing the plaza on this visit, too.

“Can you describe this spell you’re trying to sell to me?” she asked.

“What?” the wizard said, lifting his head and letting the pile rustle back into a disorganized mess.

“This spell you insist I ‘have to have’. What does it do?”

“It’s the most basic spell that every wizard must know!”

“Can you demonstrate it?” she asked.

The wizard paused. “Well, I suppose that wouldn’t hurt. Here – watch that rock.” He pointed at a scorched, crumbling rock that might have been a pillar at one point, before several of the trainers started using it as a training dummy. His horn lit, and large rock glowed as it rose into the air, spinning slowly next to his head. “Magic… missile!” he exclaimed, as the rock shot towards the pillar and shattered.

Moondancer sighed. “I already know telekinesis.”

The wizard scoffed. “No! Not telekinesis! I’m not talking about floating things around in the air, I’m talking about magic missile! How can you not already know this spell?”

Moondancer lifted a rock in her magic and flung it at the pillar. It bounced off with a clack, and thumped to the ground.

“No! No no no! That’s all wrong!”

“I don’t have a lot of magical strength,” Moondancer said. “Throwing rocks isn’t going to do much.”

“Not when you throw like a schoolfilly,” the wizard said, turning back to his scrolls. “Throwing rocks indeed. Now where did I put it…”

Moondancer picked up one of the other scrolls, and looked it over. “Interesting,” she said. “Can I take this one, instead?”

“Not until you learn magic missile!”

===

“You can’t just learn one of my songs, my dear,” said the instructor. He wasn’t a pirate, precisely, but he insisted that his techniques would work for anypony with a talent for healing magic. “You need to sing about something that you love.”

Derpy cleared her throat, and started to sing in her scratchy, cracking voice, “Why are there so many songs about muffins? And why are they baked, not fried? Muffins are honest, not like jelly donuts, who keep all their secrets inside….”

“Good, good,” said the fancily dressed pony, playing a small lyre to accompany her singing. “I can feel it!”

Derpy grinned, and fluttered up into the air, dancing a bit as she continued. “I’ve baked them too many times to forget them, they’re something that I need to eat. Someday we’ll find her, the Muffin Inventor, the mothers, the bakers, and me!”

There was a rush of power welling up from inside her, and a wave of green light spread from Derpy, washing over her teacher and all the ponies nearby, filling them with healing and energy. Some of them closed their eyes and let the breeze rustle their manes, others found themselves suddenly hungering for a second breakfast.

“You did it!” said the lyre player. “I’m so proud of you!”

Derpy grinned and landed and hugged him. “Thank you so much for teaching me!”

“Oh, my lovely little pirate, it was my pleasure to hear you sing. And that’ll be 1000 golz.” His demeanor switching instantly as he held out a hoof for payment.

As Derpy reached for her saddlebag to get the coins, her eye couldn’t help but focus on her cutlass, and she paused as she considered an alternate means of payment. No. Not here, in front of everypony. “I’m the pirate,” she grumbled instead as she fetched the money. “Shouldn’t I be the one robbing ponies blind?”

===

“I basically spent the whole day doing strength exercises,” Spike said, gobbling down his third hamburger. “Turnth out I wath holding the thord all wong.”

“I bought some anatomy charts for common monsters,” Bon Bon said, staring at Spike as he ate. “Some of the pieces you can cut off are… useful.”

“Edible?” Spike asked, after swallowing.

Moondancer grit her teeth. “I think I’m going to be sick. Please don’t talk about eating monsters.”

“Don’t worry,” Bon Bon said, with a tiny smile. “All the recipes are safe for equine consumption.”

“I learned how to sing!” Derpy said happily. “It turns out, you don’t need to stay in tune or keep a steady rhythm or anything! You just need to feel the music.” She put a hoof to her chest. “In here.”

“Please don’t demonstrate,” Moondancer said, ears flattening against her skull pre-emptively.

“So what did you spend your training money on?” Spike asked.

“I learned a simple force-field spell that maintains an invisible barrier just above my skin, that takes no concentration to maintain once it’s in place, and only draws mana when something hits it,” Moondancer said.

“Sweet,” Spike said. “Like, magic armor!”

“It’s not as strong as I’d like,” she said. “Oh, I also learned how to throw rocks. The wizard said I threw like a filly and insisted I learn how to do it properly.”

“Ugh, stallions,” Bon Bon said.

“I know, right?” Derpy said. “That bard was totally flirting with me the whole time he was teaching me. I was going to stab him and get my money back, but I remembered how angry you all got last time I did that.”

Moondancer nodded. “We’re already on thin ice with the Princess. Probably best not to murder anypony in broad daylight.”

“Yeah,” Derpy said. “And it’s always broad daylight here, so I can’t just wait until he sleeps.”

“Do you wait until ponies sleep a lot?” Spike asked.

“Not really,” Derpy said. “But it seems like what a pirate would do, doesn’t it? I was thinking about how we keep not getting to be heroes for real and maybe it’s because we’re not acting enough like our characters.”

“We’re not?” Spike asked. “I’ve been trying to protect you girls.”

“Not you, Spike! You’ve been doing fine,” Derpy said, before turning to look at the party chef.

Bon Bon grimaced. “I don’t want to get into character as a chef. I’m not even sure how I’d do that.”

“Isn’t it your day job?” Moondancer asked.

Bon Bon shrugged. “I spend half my time in the kitchen making candies, and half the time working the register and trying to keep the foals to fewer than a dozen free samples. None of that seems especially heroic.”

“Well, I know ‘magic missile’ now,” Moondancer said, rolling her eyes. “So I’m a ‘real wizard’. That’s half the team.”

“I’ll try stabbing somepony and robbing them the next time we get a good chance,” Derpy said. “Or maybe we could steal a boat!”

“Maybe you could make food puns?” Spike suggested. “You know, when you’re chopping people up with your cleaver, say you’ll slice them up like a carrot or something.”

“Uh… huh.” Bon Bon said.

Spike wilted a little. “Only, you know. Funny.”

“Or we could just get the magic rings,” Moondancer said. “That might be easier than coming up with a funny pun.”

===

They were met at the gate by the princess, flanked by half a dozen guards and accompanied by an elderly balding donkey.

“Ah, you’re finally deciding to set out on your journey,” she said. “Didn’t decide to explore the town’s sewers while you were here?”

“The town has sewers?” Spike asked. “Like, actual sewers that you can walk around in?”

The princess froze, her mouth open.

“Don’t worry, princess. We’ll go on your quest first,” Bon Bon said. “Although I didn’t expect you to accompany us.”

“I’m not,” she snapped. “My friend here is. He’s a travelling merchant who’s made this trip many times, so hopefully he can keep you from getting lost.”

The donkey gave a wide, snaggle-toothed grin, and held up a hoof. “Obvious Trader at your service, oh great heroes. Although you can call me Obvious, since we’re such good friends. We are friends, right?”

“I guess?” Spike said, taking the hoof in his claw and shaking it.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just give us a map?” Moondancer asked, eyeing the donkey uncomfortably.

“Oh, a map won’t help you where we’re going,” the donkey said, chuckling. “To get to the Forest of Night, we must pass through Death Mountain, and none is more qualified than I to lead you to death.”

“Mountain,” Derpy prompted.

“Hmm?” the donkey replied.

“To lead us to Death Mountain.”

“Yes yes, I will lead you there, and make sure you arrive at your final destination on schedule.” The donkey chuckled. His expression hardened, momentarily, as he added, “I will not assist you in combat, however. I’m afraid you’ll have to fight your own battles.”

“Eh, we’re used to it,” Spike said, with a shrug.

“So… Obvious…” Bon Bon asked. “What is it that you trade, again? I don’t see a cart or anything.”

“Oh, I trade many things, yes,” Obvious said, giggling to himself a little. “This time, I am trading my services as your guide. A cart would only slow us down, and I understand that your mission is one of… grave importance. Is it not?”

“Yeah,” Spike said. “The fate of the world could depend on our success! We’re going to be the Heroes of Destiny, and stop the Nameless One.”

“Oh, are you?” Obvious said, smiling. “How fascinating. Now come, come, let us be off.”

“Obvious,” the princess said, as the heroes followed him through the town gate. “Do not fail me.”

“You can count on me to carry out your instructions exactly as you have requested,” Obvious Trader replied, bowing low.

Fun and Games

The journey west was long and tiring, mostly because Obvious Trader wouldn’t let them stop to rest nearly as often as they’d like, but it wasn’t particularly dangerous. There was the occasional encounter, but it was mostly with ill-equipped bandits or evil chickens.

“Are we there yet?” Spike asked.

Obvious Trader looked around, confused. “Do you see a mountain? Or did you perhaps think that our goal was an invisible mountain? I assure you that it is in fact quite visible.”

“There’s some mountains on the horizon,” Derpy said. “Way to the south.”

“Those are not the mountains we want,” Obvious Trader replied. “Death waits to the west. Which is why we’ve been going west.”

Derpy flew up a little higher, to see if that would let her see farther. “Hey!” she said, “There’s a desert to the north!”

“Is it full of pyramids?” Spike shouted back.

“No, but I think there’s a town!” she flew back down so that she could talk at a normal volume. “Can we go check it out?”

“Might be worthwhile,” Bon Bon said. “We’ve got some golz to spend from the bandits we’ve been fighting.”

“Good luck convincing our taskmaster,” Moondancer grumbled. She’d been suffering the worst from the lack of rest stops.

Obvious Trader paused. “Actually,” he said, rubbing his hooves together. “A stopover in Arena Town would be an excellent idea.”

“Yay!” Derpy cheered.

“Arena Town is a marvelous place for you to all rest in peace,” Obvious Trader said, grinning. “But we’ll have to push on twice as hard afterwards, of course.”

“Yay,” Moondancer deadpanned.

===

Arena Town was a tiny place, but crowded. It was built on the shore of an oasis, with a few scattered palm trees for shade. The buildings were made of hardened mud, but seemed sturdy enough – but only a few shops had permanent buildings, along with the arena itself of course. Most of the population seemed to be living out of tents.

There was a giant floating crystal for public use in the main square, right next to the arena entrance.

“Ah, you look like warriors. Are you here to sign up for the fights?” asked a large burly earth pony, sitting at a desk near the door. “The entry fee is 500 golz for the team, but if you stick it out you can win some pretty nice prizes. You get more Arena Tickets for each battle you survive!”

“What sort of prizes?” Bon Bon asked.

“If you’d like, you can visit the Arena Shop and check them out yourselves.” He motioned to one of the larger buildings, with multiple floors.

There was no reason not to check it out. Unless, of course, they’d been planning not to fight.

===

Derpy dashed ahead of the group, hooves on the counter, leaning towards the display on the back wall.

Spike and Moondancer shared a look as they walked up and stood to either side of the enraptured pegasus.

“I think she found something she wants,” Spike said.

“A Dwarven Gonne?” Moondancer read from the plaque.

“It’s a little miniature cannon!” Derpy squeaked. “Oh, I have to have it!”

Moondancer looked down at the price tag. “It says 24 arena tickets. That sounds like a lot.”

“It seems to be about middle of the road,” Bon Bon said. “I like the look of that belt, too. It’s supposed to increase strength and protect from status effects. Only 10 tickets.”

“So I guess we’re fighting, then?” Spike asked.

“Might as well,” Bon Bon said. “I’m guessing they have progressively harder fights, so we should be able to stop before we’re in serious danger. Or we could just press our luck since the Crystal is right there outside the door.”

Moondancer frowned. “I don’t know. I’ve gotten used to not being stabbed.”

“Don’t worry,” Spike said. “I’ll protect you!”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Derpy seems to really want that Gonne.”

===

So they paid the entrance fee, and made sure to tap the crystal before heading into the arena. Bon Bon stopped before stepping through the gates. “What happened to the guide?”

“Obvious snuck off right after we got into town,” Spike said. “I figured he had some of his own business to take care of.”

“Maybe he’s sweet on somepony that lives here?” Derpy asked.

“Hmm,” Bon Bon said, narrowing her eyes.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll catch us and force us to head out long before we’re ready to leave,” Moondancer said. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

The arena looked a lot larger from the inside, although it might have just been the looming ranks of seats, most of them occupied, that created that illusion. An announcer stood on a high podium, and his magically amplified voice cut through the cheers of the crowd, “Wow, that sure was a bloody finish, wasn’t it folks?” The crowd cheered louder. “Now let’s greet our next victims – I mean, contestants,” he paused to read the name off a card, “The Heroes of Destiny!”

“BOOOO!”
“GO HOME!”
“FREAKING POSERS!”
“BOOO!”

“Uh…” Spike said.

“Huh,” Bon Bon said. “Not really the reaction I was expecting.”

“And now we’re going to die,” Moondancer said.

The Announcer blew a shrill whistle, to quiet the crowd. “Let the battles begin. Unleash the monsters!”

A gate at the far end of the arena slowly creaked open, and out flew a flock of evil chickens. There were a lot of them – maybe a dozen? – but they were still just chickens.

“I’m not sure whether to be relieved or insulted,” Moondancer said, pulling out a fire-pot and tossing it at the flock. The burning flames splashed across the poultry, setting them on fire, and the rest of the fight was just Spike pushing the burning chickens away with his shield if their panicked running happened to take them towards the heroes.

“Well,” the announcer said, “I guess that was good for a warm up!” He paused awkwardly, but nopony laughed. “Right! Time for round two. Release the hounds!”

The ‘hounds’ turned out to be pack of wolves, so it was more of a fight, in that it was an actual fight. It wasn’t a hard fight. Spike got their attention with a loud roar, then held them off with his shield while his friends picked them off one by one. None of the smaller wolves lived long enough, when focused, to get pulled away from the well-armored dragon’s menacing stance, which let Spike mostly concentrate on wearing down the biggest one, bleeding it with a dozen small cuts.

There was one moment when the crowd cheered, as the Alpha Wolf, seeing that all the rest of its pack were dead, flew into a rage and picked Spike up in its mouth, shaking him around like a chew toy… but Moondancer hit it in the head with a rock – sorry, a ‘magic missile’ – and its eyes rolled up into its head as it collapsed.

“I’m okay,” Spike said, prying himself out of the jaws, and waving. “A little slimy, though.”

The unconscious Alpha Wolf was large enough that there was a slight pause while some janitors cleared the arena, sweeping all the dead bodies into a trench along the sides and dragging the still-breathing Alpha back underground. While that was happening, a pegasus dressed as an arena official flew up to them, a nervous look on his face.

“Um… don’t take this the wrong way,” he said, “but there’s a slight problem with the Giant Floating Crystal.”

“What sort of problem?” Bon Bon asked.

“It… broke,” he said. “Shattered into a million pieces. We don’t think it’s going to actually bring anyone back in that state.”

“So the fight’s cancelled?” Moondancer asked.

“Oh, no, we couldn’t do that!” the pegasus said, with a shaky grin. “Do you know how much golz we’d lose if we had to refund all these tickets? No, we’ll have a priest standing by to raise the losers. We just needed to tell you not to kill them again after that happens, because resurrection is expensive and we don’t want to have to do it twice. Also, try to avoid beheading anybody? The crowd loves it, but it’ll probably mean that whoever you beheaded will stay dead. And absolutely no disintegrations.”

“Got it,” Spike said. “We’ll stick to stab wounds and fire.”

“If we stopped now, how many tickets would we get?” Bon Bon asked.

“If you lose the next fight you’ll get two,” said the pegasus. “You can’t just quit, though. The crowd really wants to see you die!”

“What do you mean we can’t –” Moondancer started, but the pegasus wasn’t listening, and she trailed off as her question was drowned out by the announcer introducing the next round.

“Up next to face our… ‘Heroes’… the masters of mangling, the princes of pain, the dukes of decapitation themselves, let’s hear it for – the Executioners!”

The crowd cheered as a trio of large orcs wearing black hoods and carrying halberds emerged from the dark gate.

“Heh, the joke’s on them,” Spike said. “If they’re not allowed to behead us, those weapons are just going to be really awkward spears.”

Unfortunately, it seemed that the arena staff had neglected to inform the orcish executioners of the new rules, because while one of them charged forwards to duel with Spike, the other two held their pole-axes out at arm’s length and started spinning around wildly, like giant whirling sawblades meandering in the general direction of the party.

They had enough reach that there was really nowhere safe to run. Bon Bon managed to duck underneath the whirling blades, but Moondancer wasn’t as quick and took a solid blow to the side of her neck, sending her head flying across the arena to crack against the side wall. Fortunately, due to the skin-tight force field spell she’d learned and the uncuttable strands of her battle harness, the rest of her body was still attached, and she staggered back to her hooves, gobbling down a healing muffin that Derpy summoned for her.

Bon Bon’s lasso lashed out and entangled one of the whirling orcs, tying his ankles together. He had time for a brief look of surprise before losing control and toppling over – then the butt of his halberd dug into the dirt and he lost his grip on the weapon, which started spinning on its own and sunk its axe-head into the small of his back with a loud ‘thwack’ as he faceplanted into the bloody dirt.

Moondancer held her scythe out vertically, trying to parry the whirling orc, only for the halberd to chop right through the haft as if it wasn’t even there. Panicked, she dropped the two halves of her weapon and put up a bubble. The orc’s blade rebounded off the resilient force field, flew out of the orc’s hands, and spun around in the opposite direction, neatly beheading the orc and leaving his headless corpse to collapse in front of her as the head went sailing into the crowd.

She held the bubble until the spinning halberd had come to a complete and final stop.

Spike, for his part, had no trouble blocking the orc’s clumsy blows with his shield, and just stabbed him again and again until he died. He wiped off his sword on the executioner’s hood. “Sorry, girls, I couldn’t keep their attention this time… are you okay?”

Moondancer rubbed the side of her neck, which still ached despite multiple healing muffins. “No. I think I’m ready to quit.”

There was another long pause, and then the clean-up crew eventually arrived to drag the orcs’ bodies into the trench. The pegasus from before returned. “Wow! That was some fight. Are you ready for round four?”

“We quit,” Moondancer said. “Get us out of here.

“You can’t quit now! It’s just getting good!”

Moondancer grabbed the pegasus by the throat and dragged him closer. “Who’s going to stop us?”

“The… ballistae…” he croaked, motioning with his wings. Moondancer and the others looked up where he’d pointed, and saw a dozen ballistae pointing right at them, crewed by steely-eyed pegasi with their hooves on the trigger.

She let him go.

He rubbed his throat. “Don’t worry, you can quit after he next match,” he said. “And, heh heh, don’t worry about beheading that orc. It turned out it didn’t matter anyway.”

“The crystal is working after all?” Spike asked.

“Not exactly,” the pegasus said. “It’s just that our priest is having, um, technical difficulties.”

“What kind of difficulties,” Bon Bon asked.

“Technically, a priest has to be alive to bring someone back from the dead,” the pegasus said. “And somebody stabbed him.”

“So you want us to fight without a safety net,” Bon Bon said. “And you’re not letting us say no.”

“I’m sure you can win!” the pegasus said, patting her on the head. “We’re not going to risk any of our normal round-four opponents without a crystal or a priest, so you’ll just be up against another group of adventurers. It’s a completely fair fight!” Bon Bon lunged at him, but he was far enough out of reach to stay out of her grasp. “Good luck!”

===

The other group of adventurers being forced into the arena didn’t look any happier to be there than the heroes were. The two groups approached each other, staring each other down. They had a large armored earth pony in the lead, two pegasi with crossbows as backup, and a unicorn in the back, wearing wizard’s robes.

“So… um…” Spike said. “Any chance we can pull our punches, and you can take a dive? Nopony has to die today.”

“Any chance you could take a dive?” the earth pony retorted.

“Rock paper scissors?” Spike suggested, holding up a fist. The pony nodded, and on the count of three, Spike held out his claw flat. “Paper.”

The pony held up his hoof. “Rock. Damn it, I always lose that game.”

===

“That last fight was certainly… uh… something,” the announcer said, as the ‘unconscious’ ponies in the other adventuring party were poked back to consciousness and trudged through the gate. “But the ‘Heroes of Destiny’ win again! So… ‘Heroes’… do you have what it takes to face the ultimate challenge? For the greatest reward, are you brave enough to face the Master of the Arena himself?”

“NO!” shouted all four of them in unison.

“Let us out of here!” Moondancer added.

“Alright then. You heard it folks, the little babies are going to take their toys and go home.” Everypony in the arena booed. “So much for them being ‘heroes’, right?” The boos got louder.

Spike and the others didn’t even pause. “Just ignore them,” Moondancer said, as Derpy looked like she was about to cry.

“I guess they need to go home to their mommies and suck on a pacifier!” Shouted the announcer after them, as they left through the door.

It slammed shut.

Obvious Trader was waiting for them, standing among the glittering shards of the Giant Floating Crystal. “Still alive, I see,” he said.

“No thanks to the incompetent idiots running the arena,” Moondancer said.

“Then let us be off!” he said. “We still have many miles to go if you are to arrive at your final destination.”

“We need to collect our winnings,” Bon Bon said.

“And rest,” Moondancer added. firmly.

“No time, no time,” Obvious Trader said, looking around nervously.

“No,” Derpy said, pressing her forehead up against his and glaring at him with her unpatched eye. “Time.”

“For surviving four rounds… twenty-four tickets,” said the agent at the desk. Derpy snatched them out of his hooves with a high-pitched squeal, and flew off towards the Arena Shop.

“So…” Bon Bon said, while they waited for her to return. “Trader. Do any good trading while you were in town?”

“Yes… trading. That is what I was doing,” he said. “Since it’s in my name and everything. I was trading.”

“How’d you do?” Spike asked. “Make a good profit?”

“It didn’t go as well as I’d hoped,” he said, flattening his ears. The he gave a wide grin, showing his teeth. “But many more chances remain to accomplish my goals for this journey.”

Mountain Climbing

“Sss. Stay still, fool of a dragon,” Obvious Trader hissed, setting the apple back on his head.

Spike stood up straight, and stiffened his limbs. “Sorry. It was just really loud.”

“Where did the shot go, anyway?” Derpy asked, reloading her gonne. “I didn’t see. Maybe this would work better with a bigger target, so I could tell when I was getting close?”

“Close only counts with fireballs and hand grenades,” Obvious Trader replied, standing back and nodding as the apple remained perched on Spike’s head. “You must learn to hit the target, not just to get close.”

“Aye aye!” Derpy transferred the gonne back to her mouth and squinted her unpatched eye as she tried to aim. “One… two…”

*BANG!*

Spike flinched, again, but this time the apple stayed on his head.

Obvious Trader, on the other hoof, started to wail, and clutched at his bleeding ear.

“Thowwy,” Derpy said around the gonne. “I think da bawwel thifted.” She dropped it back into her forehooves and started reloading it again. “I didn’t want to bite down on it as hard because it hurt my teeth last time.”

“Maybe you should stick with the cutlass?” Bon Bon suggested.

Derpy pouted, and her eye started to tear up.

Bon Bon sighed and rolled her eyes. “Just have a muffin ready for when you get good enough to hit Spike.”

Spike laughed. “I think I’m the safest one here.”

“We’re standing behind her,” Moondancer noted.

Spike smirked. “She’ll find a way.”

“Enough!” Obvious Trader said, snatching the apple. “We have wasted enough time. Death awaits!”

===

Eventually they reached Death Mountain itself. The massive peak rose before them, a sheer series of cliffs and ledges, overgrown with trees and bushes up to the snow line. Obvious Trader had steered them well, and led them to a small winding path at the base of the mountain.

Spike looked up at the slope, trying to follow the trail with his eyes, but it vanished into the trees and he couldn’t trace it. “You’re sure this goes all the way to the top?”

“Yes,” Obvious Trader said, rubbing his hooves together. “This is the fastest way to death.”

“Mountain,” Derpy added. “It sounds really creepy when you leave off the ‘mountain’.”

Their guide giggled. “Do not worry, I will not be the one creeping up on you.”

They started up the path, brushing past some overgrown bushes and trudging up the slope, except for Moondancer, who held back.

“You coming?” Spike asked.

She dug at the dirt with her hoof. “Are you sure there isn’t an elevator? Or a train?”

“The train is on the other side of the mountain,” Obvious Trader said.

“Of course it is.” Moondancer frowned. “I just don’t think I can actually climb a mountain. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I’m not exactly an athlete.”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but you’ve spent the last few weeks exercising,” Bon Bon said. “You’ll be fine.”

Moondancer scowled. “I’ve spent the last few weeks miserable.”

“Take heart,” Obvious Trader said. “Soon, your misery will be at an end.”

“Right, right, there’s a train to ride on the other side.” Moondancer sighed, and started up the path.

===

Unfortunately, being fit enough to climb the trail proved to be only the first of their worries. Like any mountain path, it wound back and forth up the side of the mountain, but it was also very poorly maintained, with many branches that led nowhere and spots where the markers were missing or hidden in the underbrush. They took a lot of wrong turns.

There was a bright side to their circuitous route, however.

“There!” Spike said, pointing into the bushes. “I saw another glint!”

Moondancer lit her horn, and levitated out another pile of golz.

“Search the area,” Bon Bon said. “They tend to come in clusters.”

The party hacked away at the bushes, combing the forest for more scattered bits of the moderately valuable metal, which they brought back to the trail to add to the pile.

“Found it!” Derpy said, from the trees overhead.

“Found what?” Spike asked.

“I found where all the treasure goes!” She floated down, holding a large broken chest. “It looks like it broke open and all the money fell out.”

“What was it doing in a tree?” Bon Bon asked.

“I don’t know,” Derpy said. “Maybe somepony dropped it?”

“Dropped it,” Bon Bon repeated. “Into the top of a tree.”

“Hey, pegasi drop things sometimes,” Derpy said, bobbling the chest in her hooves and dropping it. It shattered as it hit, more golz spraying out. “See? It happens!”

===

The third problem was the orcs. It wasn’t as heavily infested as the previous orcish forest, but they were still running into several groups an hour. They were a little harder than the orcs they’d fought before because they tended to have wolves as pets instead of pigs, but it was still basically old hat, and they usually managed to finish the fights without anypony but Spike even getting hit. Spike’s firebreath attracted their attention, and once they were all gathered around him, Moondancer’s fire-bombs set them alight. From there, it was just a matter of sticking the pointy bits in the right vulnerable spots, which Bon Bon was very good at.

Since she didn’t have to heal anypony, Derpy got a lot of practice firing her Gonne. Somehow, in a real fight her shots always managed to find a mark, although often not the orc she was aiming at. It was always an orc, though – she never even hit Spike, although he once got to hear the bullet whizz past his ear before burying itself in an orc’s gut.

It did sometimes come very close to hitting Obvious Trader, though – whatever luck was keeping her fellow heroes safe didn’t seem to extend to him. Eventually, he took to hiding behind trees and rocks, which almost always worked.

Everything changed when they climbed up beyond the tree line. The air had been getting steadily colder for a while, to the point where leaves and branches were coated with frost, but as they emerged from the cover of the forest they found themselves pushing through several inches of snow.

Also, the orcs that jumped out to attack them were red, instead of green.

Spike opened up with his fire breath, but the oncoming orcs completely ignored it, most of them charging at Moondancer and Bon Bon, although a large axe-wielder did stop to duel. Moondancer yelped and threw her readied firebomb, but while the orc did burst into flames, it didn’t seem to be in any pain.

“Bubble!” The wobbly force field sprang up to protect her at the last second, absorbing the blows from the orcish spears. Moondancer shouted, “I think they’re immune to fire!”

“Really?” Bon Bon asked, leaping back and forth to dodge the blows from the orcs that had come after her. “I hadn’t noticed.”

*BANG*

Derpy’s shot took down one of the spear-wielders harassing Moondancer. “Cannonballs still work!”

“Right,” Moondancer said. “We have non-fire attacks. Dark Eidous! Dark Eidous Dark Eidous Dark Eidous!”

“Aieee!” screamed Obvious Trader from behind a boulder, as lightning struck him. The other bolts lanced into the orcs.

“Now the lightning’s hitting him too?” Spike said, breathing heavily as he dueled with the huge axe-wielding orc. Since there was only the one, he went on the offensive, bashing aside the axe and burying his sword in the orc’s crotch. It caught on a bit of bone, but the magical sharpness let him drag it out quickly, severing the orc’s leg in the process.

“I am allergic to lightning!” Obvious Trader screamed. “Keep it far from me!”

At any rate, while the fight was chaotic, the party was much stronger than the orcs and nopony was ever in real danger. Bon Bon had the worst of it, but Derpy switched to her healing muffins and kept her in the fight.

Afterwards, while looting the dead, they discussed a change in tactics.

“I can roar to taunt them,” Spike said.

“So why didn’t you?” Bon Bon asked.

“Heh heh, funny thing,” Spike said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m so used to breathing fire that I didn’t even think about it. Roaring just seemed like a weak version of fire breath.”

“And I guess I can use,” Moondancer grimaced, “Magic Missile. Since I can’t even use Dark—” She paused, as Obvious Trader curled up in fear. “The lightning spell.”

“No, it is fine,” Obvious Trader said. “I will go on ahead. Out of range of my friends’ attacks!”

“By yourself?” Spike asked. “What about all the orcs?”

“Bah! Orcs are no problem. I have free passage.” He flashed a card, too quickly for anypony to read it. “And no, it would not work on you. It is free passage for me. You must make your own way, or perish!”

“So… the rest of the way is easy enough that we don’t need a guide?” Derpy asked.

“No, you will need a guide to help you take your final steps,” Obvious Trader said. “But this part of the path is simple enough. Path. Orcs. If you survive, we can meet in Moriaz.” He gestured towards the mountain peak.

With that, he took his leave. The heroes waited a few minutes, until he was out of sight.

“So,” Bon Bon said. “Break time?”

“Please!” Moondancer said, falling to her belly in the snow. “Oh, my poor legs.”

“Yeah, I’m really feeling this armor,” Spike said, plopping himself down next to her. “Want a massage? I’ve heard it’s good for muscle cramps. I mean, I’m not trained, but Applejack always seems to like it.”

There was an awkward pause. “No,” Moondancer said, eventually. “I’m not cramped, just exhausted.”

Spike smiled and nodded. “Let me know if you change your mind!”

“Can you do my neck?” Derpy asked, swooping down to splash into the snow in front of the dragon. “The cannon’s got some buck to it.”

“Sure!” Spike said, patting his lap.

But as Derpy lowered her head towards him, she was suddenly pushed aside by Moondancer, who’d pivoted to lay her forelegs across Spike’s lap. “No!” she snapped. “Do me.”

Spike frowned, and looked back and forth between Moondancer and Derpy.

“I can get your neck,” Bon Bon offered the disappointed pegasus.

Moondancer seemed to relax as the two of them went off, then stiffened back up as Spike’s claws closed around her foreleg.

“Wow, you’re really tense,” Spike said, as he went to work on fixing that.

Snowball Fight

“Just a few more steps, Moondancer,” Spike said, walking backwards and guiding the unicorn with his voice, since she was too tired to lift her head enough to see where she was going.

“I’m going to actually die,” she croaked. “I can feel the blackness creeping in at the corners of my vision… spots flashing before my eyes…”

“Don’t die,” Bon Bon said. “We haven’t seen a Giant Floating Crystal on this entire mountain, so you’d have to climb all the way back up.”

Moondancer wobbled, then slumped to the ground on the snow-covered slope, head resting in the thick powder.

Derpy descended and took hold of her, and lifted her limp form into the air, flying her the remaining twenty feet to the top of the pass, where Spike cleared off a patch of rock with his fire breath, leaving it toasty warm for the ponies to rest on.

“So… where’s the train?” Derpy asked.

“Obvious Trader mentioned someplace called ‘Moriaz’,” Bon Bon said. “It’s probably farther down the path.”

Moondancer groaned.

“The path looks pretty flat,” Spike said, patting her on the head. “It just goes along the ridge for a while.”

Moondancer grumbled something incomprehensible.

Spike chattered on, “And we’re probably past the orcish territory. There’s nowhere to hide up here, and I don’t see anything but snow.”

“The orcs could be hiding in the snow,” Bon Bon suggested.

Spike raised an eyebrow. “They’re bright red.”

Bon Bon shrugged. “There’s a lot of snow.”

“Well, I’m in no hurry,” Derpy said, bouncing around in the snowbanks at the edge of the melted area. “Trader is kind of a jerk, so I don’t care how long we keep him waiting.”

“He might have had a reason for us to hurry,” Spike said, then added as Derpy opened her mouth, “A reason other than being a jerk.”

“So you think we should head out immediately?” Bon Bon asked. “Who’s going to carry Moondancer not it.”

“Not it!” Derpy said.

“Huh?” Spike said, confused.

“You have to carry Moondancer!” Derpy said, giggling and rolling over onto her back, flapping her wings to make a snow alicorn.

Spike considered the motionless pony. He was probably strong enough to lift her, but she was so much larger than him. “I guess we’re waiting, then,” Spike said, rolling his eyes.

===

Fort Spike sat atop the mountain pass, its many cannon and catapults on the ready, keeping a careful eye out for the pirate invasion force rumored to be in the area.

It was quiet. Too quiet. An innocent cloud drifted overhead.

“Time for a little target practice,” said the artillery commander. “All cannon, focus on that cloud!” One after the other, the massive guns shook and hurled their deadly balls into the sky, heading right for the innocent bit of fluff – only for it to dodge out of the way at the last second.

“Return fire!” shouted the captain of the pirate airship hiding in the cloud. But forced to move and dodge, the ship’s fire was inaccurate and mostly splatted harmlessly against the sturdy walls of the fort.

“Are you two having fun?” Bon Bon asked, reclining on the still-warm patch of rock, next to the still-unconscious Moondancer. Her friends were too busy laughing and throwing snowballs at each other to answer, but that was an answer in itself.

She sighed, and pried open Moondancer’s lips to slip a jelly bean inside. Moondancer’s jaw moved, chewing it, and she eventually swallowed.

“It didn’t work,” she croaked, not so unconscious after all. “The problem with extreme exhaustion is a build-up of lactic acid, not a lack of energy per se.”

Bon Bon searched through her saddlebag. “I’ve got some poison-curing lemon –” she cut off as a snowball splatted against her face, and stood up, glowering. “Hey, what’s the big idea?”

Derpy and Spike stopped their fight to look at her. “Huh?” Spike asked.

“Which one of you threw that?” Bon Bon asked, wiping off her face. A huge wet snowball smacked into the back of her head, soaking her mane.

“Uh…” Spike said.

“Right,” Bon Bon said, shaking out her mane. “It wasn’t you. That one wasn’t even from the right direction.”

Spike shakily lifted a claw to point behind her, and Bon Bon whirled around. There, standing in the snow as if they’d always been there, was a line of crude snowponies – each was just a lump of snow rising from the ground, with a stick poking out of the rear end as a tail, a rolled sphere for a head, and little lumps of coal for eyes. Some of them had carrots sticking out where a unicorn’s horn would be, others had bare forked branches to either side of their bodies, like wings.

“Those weren’t there before,” Bon Bon said. “Did you see them appear?”

“No,” Spike said, “but I saw the one in front use her horn to throw that snowball.”

“You mean her carrot,” Derpy said.

With a groan, Moondancer got to her hooves, and lit her horn to start shaping a wall out of the snow at the edge of the melted area.

“What are you doing?” Bon Bon asked.

“If there’s going to be a snowball fight, we’ll need a fort,” she said, blearily.

“No,” Bon Bon said, slipping up beneath her and popping the unicorn onto her back, ignoring her startled cry. “What we need is to get out of here. Derpy, Spike!”

“We’re with you!” Spike said, clambering over the wall of his fort, struggling a bit until Derpy snagged him in her hooves and air-lifted him over to the others.

Looking around, they found themselves almost encircled by the sinister snowponies. The thinnest area was back the way they’d come – sparse enough that could have easily slipped between them.

Bon Bon charged instead towards the thickest concentration, which somehow seemed to get thicker as she got closer, despite none of the snowponies seeming to move. She slammed into the unicorn in front, splattering her like the snow-statue that she was, but couldn’t help but lose some momentum, as her hooves slipped on the icy ground beneath.

Then the snowballs started coming, forcing her to squint her eyes mostly shut and lift a hoof to cover her face, slogging forwards on three legs with Moondancer weighing her down.

There was a flash of Spike’s green flame, and the roar of Derpy’s cannon, but their progress got slower and slower as the snowponies hedged them in on all sides, and the barrage of snowballs continued unabated.

Until, suddenly, it abated. Bon Bon looked up to see the snowballs splattering off a familiar bubble shield, which bulged inwards as snowponies leaned on it from all directions.

“Set me down,” Moondancer said. “We’re going to have to fight them.”

As Bon Bon was doing that, Spike’s flames poured over the bubble, melting the snow of the ponies pressing up against it and setting their sticks and coals alight. Moondancer took the opportunity to drop the barrier, and Derpy and Spike dropped in beside them.

“What’s the plan?” Spike asked.

“Fire seems to work,” Moondancer said. “Otherwise I’d try to aim at their eyes?”

“I’ll eat the carrots!” Derpy said, snatching a roasted carrot off the ground and gobbling it down. “Mmm!”

“Give us a batter barrier,” Bon Bon said. “It might help against the –” she rolled to the side to avoid an incoming projectile “—snowballs.”

One heartfelt plea to the Great Muffin later, all of them were covered in goopy muffin batter, which quickly stiffened in the cold. It did help ignore the snowballs, but Derpy had gooped herself up as well this time and couldn’t fly, and Bon Bon was too sluggish to use her speed to hide.

At least hitting them in the eyes worked. It didn’t make them instantly collapse, but the ones who’d lost eyes or other parts didn’t seem to be there anymore as soon as everypony looked away.

“There’s no end to them!” Spike said, breathing a blindingly bright cone of fire at the snowponies to the left. The fire was effective on the ones it hit, but only a few were set on fire – the rest had somehow dodged.

“Then clear a path!” Moondancer said, standing proud, her exhaustion forgotten for the moment. Snowballs flew at her, but between the batter barrier, the skin-tight forcefield she’d learned to maintain, and the elemental resistance of her armor, she could ignore them completely, leaving her free to pluck loose coal eye after coal eye with simple levitation.

Spike moved to the front and drove the snowponies back with his fire breath, and they advanced.

After what seemed like forever, but couldn’t have been half a mile, they stumbled into a steam-filled grotto where the snowponies wouldn’t follow. The rocks were slick and bare around a possibly-natural hot spring, with the other directions save the one they’d come from blocked off by natural cliffs and a clearly pony-built wall. The wall had a small door set into it, with a bright yellow sign.

Employees Only
Guests Must Use Front Entrance
use passcode ‘Marsh’ for emergency

Derpy went over to the door and poked at it, but there was no handle and it didn’t open.

“Don’t touch anything,” Bon Bon said, grabbing her by her hips and dragging her back. After spotting the sign, she added, “and don’t say anything.”

“That hot spring looks really nice,” Spike said.

“Can’t we just say ‘marsh’ and get in?” Derpy replied. Everypony (and dragon) cringed, but nothing happened.

“I guess that’s just the passcode hint,” Moondancer said. “I can guess what the passcode is but I’m NOT GOING TO,” she added as Derpy and Bon Bon both opened their mouths. “Not until I try out this hot spring.”

Spike stripped off his armor, the batter barrier peeling off in strips and chunks, and slid bare-naked into the water. “Oooh, this is nice,” he said, staying at the edge but lowering himself until it was up to his neck. “I thought I’d never be warm again.”

Moondancer cleaned the batter off herself with a spell, then poked at the water with a hoof. It was hot, but not unbearably so. She eyed the intricate windings of her Battle Saddle, and decided that the leather was probably waterproof enough, and followed him in. “Oooh, I needed this,” she said, closing her eyes and letting herself sink into the wonderful heat.

“Cannonball!” Derpy said, taking a running jump and leaping into the center of the pool. There was a loud sizzling noise, like a pan of hay frying, and she shrieked and splashed around, flailing wildly until Bon Bon looped her with her lasso and dragged her up onto the shore. The batter covering her was cooked, now, and she whimpered in pain until Bon Bon fed her some candy to heal her burns.

“What the hay, you guys?” Bon Bon asked Spike and Moondancer. “That water is boiling hot!”

Moondancer stared back at her in confusion, then down at the water, which was indeed bubbling, but still felt pleasantly warm. She backed towards the middle a little way, but the temperature didn’t change. “It must be my armor,” she guessed, “and Spike’s a dragon.”

Derpy was busily eating the flash-boiled muffin batter off her wings. “’sokay,” she said. “No harm no foul.”

“You were boiled alive,” Bon Bon said.

Derpy giggled. “Better than being boiled dead!”

===

It was still pleasant enough for the non-fireproof ponies to rest near the edge of the pool, so they spent quite a while at the hot spring. They were almost ready to get out (Spike kept asking for ‘five more minutes’) when the orcs arrived.

“No fight,” one of the orcs said. “We off shift.”

The orcs stripped out of their armor and other clothing, and climbed into the hot spring, staying at the far edge.

“So you’re the employees this entrance is for,” Bon Bon guessed. “I don’t suppose you can let us in? We don’t want to walk all the way to the other side of Moriaz.”

“We get in trouble,” one of the female orcs said. “No one gets in without passcard.”

“Don’t you mean ‘passcode’?” Moondancer asked.

“If you use passcode, wait until we go in,” the orc said. “If we here for emergency, they make us work overtime.”

===

The orcs didn’t spend long in the hot spring before putting their clothes back on and heading for the door. Each of them held up a little ID card, and the door swung open to let that orc in before slamming shut in the next orc’s face.

“You didn’t steal their passcards?” Moondancer asked Bon Bon. “I thought you were a thief.”

“They’re personalized,” Bon Bon said. “I wasn’t sure they’d work for us, so I put them back. Figured it was safer to use the password. You do know what it is, right?”

“Let’s get Spike back into his armor, and then I’ll take my best guess,” she said. “We should be ready for a fight, just in case.”

“Five more minutes,” Spike said, eyes closed blissfully as he continued to doze in the heat.

===

Ten minutes later, Spike was out of the water and back in his armor, and they approached the door.

“So,” Moondancer said. “’Marsh’ is a hint, and not the passcode itself. What words does ‘marsh’ make you think of?”

“Um… hydra?” Spike guessed.

“Mosquito. Cragadile,” Bon Bon scrunched up her face. “Cat-tail?”

“Marshmallow!” Derpy said gleefully.

There was a rumbling behind them, and they turned to watch the hot spring swirl and vanish into a drain at the bottom of the basin. With a bubbling, gloopy sound, the basin filled back up with a thick white fluid… and when it was full, it continued to build up into a giant mound of viscous white goop, until a giant snowpony shape loomed over them, with jet black gems for eyes. It opened a sticky, goopy mouth, and roared at them, legs emerging from its base and pulling it out of the basin.

“And this must be the emergency,” Moondancer said, closing her eyes and giving a sigh. “Good work, Derpy.”

“I don’t know what went wrong,” Derpy said, flapping into the air. “Wasn’t that the password?”

“Yes, but it was also a trap,” Bon Bon said. “It’s not your fault.”

“Oh good!” Derpy said. “I’d hate to be the reason we were all going to get boiled alive inside a melty marshmallow golem.”

The marshmallow golem roared again.

“It’s just a boss monster,” Bon Bon said. “We can take it.”

“Are you sure?” Spike said. “It’s really big.”

Bon Bon laughed. “It’s made out of marshmallow, and you’re a dragon. Toast that puppy.”

It wasn’t quite that simple. Toasting the marshmallow didn’t stop it, but it did get its attention, and made the surface firm enough for Bon Bon to climb. By the time she’d reached its head, Spike had been stomped into the ground and trapped inside one of the golem’s legs – and after she pried out one of its eyes, it shook its head to fling her loose, and its wild thrashing broke its crust and turned it all gooey again.

Moondancer, seeing Bon Bon’s plan, was able to set up a line of solid hoofholds using her fire bombs, walking them up one leg, across the shoulder, and then up the giant’s neck. Bon Bon scrambled up along the path, ignoring the lingering flames that licked at her, and pried out the golem’s other eye just as it slammed itself down on Moondancer, engulfing her as well.

With both eyes gone, the beast roared one last time and dissolved back into goop – the bulk of it flowed back into the hot spring and drained away, but it left a giant sticky mess all over the floor near the door. It also freed Spike and Moondancer -- completely slimed, but still breathing, and both were immune to the goop’s heat so they hadn’t cooked while inside it.

“That would have been a lot easier if you’d just flown over and attacked its eyes right off,” Bon Bon said to Derpy, who was huddling terrified in a corner.

“Do you know how long it takes to get melted marshmallow out of feathers?” she said.

Bon Bon dug through her bag to get a candy to heal her burns. “Half an hour?”

Derpy looked down. “Sorry.” She held out a hoof. “Muffin?”

There was a creak, and a shuffling noise, as the employee entrance opened and a janitor donkey, dressed up in yellow with a mop and bucket, paused in the doorway to take in the scene.

“Hold that door!” Bon Bon snapped.

Derpy was quick to obey, holding it open as Bon Bon gathered up Spike and Moondancer and dragged them through, pushing the janitor aside.

“Um… hey,” he said, weakly. “You’re not supposed to go in there…”

The door shut behind them, leaving him with the massive marshmallow mess. “Damn tourists,” he grumbled.

Peak of Luxury

For all the trouble it had taken to get there, Moriaz looked like nothing more than a small mountain village. A very clean, very fancy mountain village, like you might find on the other side of the mountain from Canterlot, where the wealthiest unicorns liked to pretend that they were roughing it while still getting meals flown in from their favorite three-hoof restaurant.

The restaurants didn’t have three hooves displayed (they had stars instead, for some reason), but they seemed to be of a similar ilk, and the shops they passed looked very expensive. Derpy kept flitting from window to window to press her face up against the glass and admire the displays, but she made sure to keep up with Bon Bon, who was carrying the sticky pile of marshmallowed Moondancer and Spike on her back.

“Do you see an inn?” Bon Bon asked, not able to see much herself since a sheet of Moondancer’s sticky mane was plastered over her face.

“Excuse me!” Derpy said to the first person she came across on the street. “Do you know where I can find an inn?”

“Oh, but of course!” said the tuxedoed unicorn. “I was just on my way there now to gawk at the common folk as well. Bob the Beer Guzzler is supposed to be there tonight, and he always gives me such a chortle!”

“Um… okay,” Derpy said. “So I’ll just follow you then?”

“Just so,” the unicorn replied. “I must say, that’s an excellent outfit you’ve assembled there. It truly looks battle-worn, perhaps almost functional? I don’t go for the costuming myself, but never let it be said that a Peerless doesn’t appreciate someone who’s willing to go the extra mile.” He coughed, and looked embarrassed. “Oh, dear me. I didn’t introduce myself, did I? Peerless Diamond, at your service.” He tipped his top-hat, and gave a little bow.

“I’m Derpy!” Derpy said. “Pirate Derpy, of the Great Muffin.”

Peerless chortled. “Of course you are, my dear.” He looked around, before slowly waddling along the street in the direction they’d already been going. Derpy hovered just behind him, following patiently. It wasn’t like Bon Bon was much faster, loaded down as she was.

They attracted a lot of attention as they walked through the town, most of it… curious.

“That’s a marvelous outfit. I can’t recognize her at all?”

“Do you think it could be someone new?”

“Don’t be silly, the only way here is by airship, and I can’t imagine I’d miss that.”

“Well, she does have wings…”

“Hmm, she doesn’t look very rich to me. You don’t think she’s secretly a commoner?”

“A common adventurer, playing at being a common adventurer? What would be the point?”

“Just ignore them, my dear,” Peerless said to her, in a stage whisper. “Gossip makes the world go round, don’t you know?”

They turned a corner onto what looked like the main street of the village, with the cheerful lights of the inn clearly visible to the left, and a towering cathedral at the end. The buildings were all decorated with blinking lights and floral wreaths, and giant candy canes were set up here and there along the way as if it was Hearth’s Warming, but nopony seemed to be paying them any attention except for the overall-clad workers switching out the wreaths for fresh ones.

What caught Derpy’s eye was the stallion struggling through the snow, dragging a small chest that seemed to be giving him a lot of trouble. In a few flaps of her wings, she was at his side. “Do you need help?” she asked.

“Ha! No, no, this is my daily routine,” the stallion said, grunting as he scraped the chest along the cobblestones. “’Sides, I doubt a frail thing like you could even lift this.”

Derpy blinked. “I don’t think anypony’s ever called me frail before,” she said, latching onto the chest and flapping her wings experimentally. It didn’t move. She flapped a little harder, and managed to get the thing off the ground with far more effort than something its size should have taken. “Wow, this is heavy!” she said, dropping it with a heavy THUNK. “Sorry, I just wanted to check.”

The pony laughed. “No harm done, miss.” He unlatched the chest, and opened it to show her the contents – it was filled to the brim with golz coins. “Ever since the gold mine ran dry, so to speak, this is all I’ve been able to pull out of the ground.” He spat on the street. “Worthless golz. Can’t believe the Emperor got the peasants to use it for money.” He closed the chest, and started dragging it again. “So I haul a huge chest of it every day, and just toss it over the side of the cliff over yonder. I don’t care what anyone says, I’m never going to see this filth as real wealth. Not like the gold we used to mine.”

“Every day?” Derpy asked. “Wouldn’t the mountain be covered in golz by now?”

“Well, every time I think of it,” the stallion said. “Hard to tell what a day is, honestly. Besides, I think the janitorial staff disposes of most of it.” He snorted. “Probably think it’s a tip. But what can you expect of orcs?”

“Those aren’t just any orcs, Gold Rush,” said Peerless, catching up at last. “Those are premium Red Orcs, imported at great expense from the Red Desert.”

“Bah!” Gold Rush said. “An orc’s an orc, no matter how much they charge.”

===

Derpy was relieved to see Bon Bon taking charge again when they finally got to the inn. Most of the tables were full of wealthy ponies, some in suits and dresses, like Peerless, and others in extremely gaudy and impractical adventurer gear. The seats at the bar were for the real adventurers – or at least, for the more serious cosplayers.

Bon Bon watched Derpy take a seat with Peerless, excitedly chatting about their adventures with him and his friends, and dragged herself over to the bar, Moondancer and Spike still on her back, to ask about getting a room.

“Ah, of course we have a room for good adventurers like you,” said the barkeep. “2000 golz.”

“What?” Bon Bon asked, nostrils flaring.

He smirked back at her. “Or complementary if you spend a few hours at the bar here. We pride ourselves on our authenticity.”

“Fine,” Bon Bon said. “But we need to wash up first, and get a new checkpoint. Where’s your Giant Floating Crystal?”

“Our what?” he asked. “Here in Moriaz we don’t deal in such things. If you die, pay a priest to resurrect you. It’s more expensive, but you don’t have to deal with the curse.”

“And here I thought you prided yourself on your authenticity,” Bon Bon replied. “Everypony knows an inn’s not an inn without a Giant Floating Crystal.”

“Is that so,” the barkeep said. “Well, we’re more of an ‘inn experience’. Do you still want that bath? Since you’re so into authenticity, I can run it up ice cold, with a piece of pumice to scrape your hide clean.”

“Warm and with soap, please,” croaked Moondancer.

===

It was less of a bath and more of a hot tub, with running water and seven different kinds of bubble bath. The marshmallow dissolved easily in the water, at least, and after refreshing the tub to drain the stickiness, Bon Bon joined Moondancer and Spike in the warmth.

“I’m never going to feel clean again,” Moondancer grumbled, as Spike combed out her tail to get rid of any lingering goop – he had the best claws for it.

“I can’t believe they don’t have a Giant Floating Crystal,” Spike said.

Moondancer groaned. “I really don’t want to climb the mountain again.”

“Actually, I’ve been thinking about that.” Bon Bon said. “The last crystal we touched was back at Arena Town, wasn’t it? The one that was mysteriously smashed.”

“Oh, yeah,” Spike said. “So what does that mean? What do we do if we all get killed?”

“I don’t know,” Bon Bon said. “Die?”

“We’ve got to find the crystal then!” Spike said. “Moondancer, can you search for gems with your magic?”

“I don’t know,” Moondancer said. “Do you have a book of geomancy spells on you?”

“Huh?” Spike said.

“I don’t know that spell.”

Spike frowned. “But Rarity casts it all the time.”

“It’s her cutie mark talent, Spike,” Bon Bon said.

“Come on,” Spike said, “can’t you at least try?”

Moondancer rolled her eyes, then shrugged. “I can try to detect magic. I assume the Giant Floating Crystals are magic?” She lit her horn and let her gaze go a bit unfocused. “Hmm,” she said.

“Did you find it?” Spike asked.

“No, but the floor is shielded,” she said, letting her horn dim. “Suspicious.”

Bon Bon’s ears perked up, and she hauled herself out of the bath, sitting near the edge and wringing out her mane and tail. “I’ll go take a look in the basement.”

===

“Who you?” asked the orc standing at the griddle, frying a pan of heavily spiced potatoes and onions.

“I’m the new cook,” Bon Bon said, dressed in her chef’s hat and coat. “I guess the boss thought –”

“You no take my job!” the orc snarled, lifting a cleaver menacingly.

“I’m here to help you,” she said, lifting a hoof towards the orc.

“No need help,” the orc grumbled, turning back to her pan and shaking it a bit. “Food supposed to be slow. Authentic.”

“Well, maybe I can clean up a bit?” Bon Bon suggested. “Customers don’t come back here, so there’s no point giving them authentic food poisoning.”

“Whatever,” the orc said, pointedly ignoring her.

Bon Bon smiled, and started ‘cleaning’. Mopping the floor gave her a chance to scope out the place, and an excuse to stay low and in the back, out of view of the doorway when the boss poked his head in to shout a new order. Clearing off the countertops made it less suspicious for her to check all the doors.

“Those go in cabinet!” the orc said, after she opened the door to the pantry. So, still a little suspicious.

But that only left one door she hadn’t checked, and a quick wiggle of the doorknob confirmed it was locked. That had to be the door she was looking for. Unfortunately, it was right next to the griddle. This called for subtlety.

She set a stack of golz on the countertop next to the orc. “You don’t see me,” she said. “I was never here.”

The orc blinked, a bit confused.

“And I’m definitely not going to be taking your job,” she added.

The orc snorted, and pocketed the money, then turned her attention back to the food.

It took Bon Bon about ten seconds to pick the lock, and another five to slip through the door into the dark stairwell. Fifteen more seconds, and she was at the bottom of the stairs, faced by a large circular vault door, made of heavy metal with a complicated combination lock.

“Heh,” she said, stretching out her joints and looking it over. “Now this should be fun.”

===

Derpy hovered over the table, telling a story, “So then, after we’d taken out all the cows –”

“Hundreds of cows!” Spike said.

“Dozens! And the fire was closing in all around us! But Bon Bon finally said it was time to go fight the boss, now that we’d spent so much time practicing. So we opened the door – and foosh!”

“More fire?” asked a mare dressed in glittering jewelry, clinging fearfully to Peerless’ shoulder.

“More fire! It was a Demon Cow! Baalzebull himself!”

“Oh dear!” Peerless said, blinking and polishing his monacle. “However did you survive?”

“Painfully,” Moondancer volunteered. “He kept summoning back the cows we’d killed.”

“It was actually pretty fun,” Spike said. “I mean, in retrospect. At the time it was pretty tough.”

“But no cow can stand up to the heroes of destiny!” Derpy said, proudly. “Not with the Great Muffin on our side!”

Peerless furrowed his brow. “The – what?”

Derpy lifted a hoof to the heavens, and a muffin descended in a beam of light. “Here! Have a muffin!”

The door slammed open, and Bon Bon stalked through it, covered in snow. “Good. You’re all together,” she said. “Come with me.”

“In a minute, I’m almost done,” Derpy said.

“Now!” Bon Bon snapped. The whole room turned to look at her. “Come on,” she said, turning and leaving.

Derpy smiled apologetically at Peerless, and she and her friends followed. “We’ll be right back!”

===

“Did you find the crystal?” Spike asked, once they were out of the inn and down the street a ways.

“What took you so long?” Moondancer asked.

“Guy’s got some good locks,” Bon Bon said. “Really well made. He picked a crappy combination, though.”

“But did you find the crystal?” Spike asked again.

“Where do you think we’re going right now?” Bon Bon asked. “There’s a secret exit near the cathedral. I wedged it open, but we’ve got to hurry before someone notices. It’s not all that well hidden when it’s open.”

Fortunately, luck was on their side, and no one had noticed the propped open exit in the time it had taken her to walk down the street to get them and back. The exit wasn’t visible from the street, but several of the church’s windows had a view of it, and Bon Bon had left an obvious trail of hoofprints leading right to it across the snow-covered lawn. Bon Bon held the trap door open while the others filed in and made their way down the stairwell it covered, then let it close behind her with a ‘click’.

“Don’t touch anything except the crystal,” she said, as they emerged into a dark room, the blue light from the Giant Floating Crystal illuminating piles of golz and gems surrounding them, along with cabinets full of expensive looking china and pedestals with fancy vases and statuettes on display. “Everything here is trapped.”

The four heroes positioned themselves around the crystal, and as one leaned forwards to place hooves or claws against it. Like every time before, the world went blue…

When it returned, the barkeep was standing in the room with them, scowling. “Don’t tell anyone,” he hissed at them, “or I’ll lock the exit and you’ll be trapped in here until you starve to death, again and again.”

“Don’t tell anypony what?” Derpy asked.

“Don’t tell them I let you touch the crystal,” he said. “They paid me a lot of money to keep it hidden. I don’t want to think about what they’ll do to me if they find out you touched it.”

“Who are ‘they’?” Bon Bon asked.

“I don’t know,” the barkeep said. “I don’t want to know. Now get out of here.”

“Consider us got!” Derpy said, saluting.

“So… about that room,” Moondancer asked.

“Out!” the barkeep snapped.

Mazes and Minecarts

The heroes stood outside the mine, staring at the strange red sticks that Obvious Trader had tied to one of the supports. Whatever he’d been planning hadn’t been finished – there was still almost half a box of the sticks sitting unused a few feet away, and half a dozen he’d dropped while fleeing – but that didn’t mean it was safe to just walk past.

“Are they fireworks?” Derpy suggested. “They look kind of like fireworks. Maybe he thought he could blind us?”

“Enough gunpowder in a confined space could be deadly,” Bon Bon pointed out. “At least, for a pony back in the real world, where we didn’t have magical armor and supernatural durability.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ve got this,” Spike said, advancing on the half-set trap with his shield held out in front. When he was close enough, he reached around and poked at one of the sticks with his sword. The cover tore open like paper, spilling an off-white powder on the ground. “Euugh!” he said, backing away. “It smells like one of Twilight’s alchemy experiments.”

“The sticks aren’t magically active,” Moondancer said, walking up alongside him with her horn and eyes glowing from a Detect Magic spell. “Alchemy minus magic equals chemistry. Although I don’t know how much I can tell without equipment.” She leaned down and sniffed the powder, then poked her hoof at it and took a taste. “Huh. Nitroglycerine?”

“So not fireworks?” Derpy asked from just behind Moondancer, making her jump. She’d picked up the scattered sticks from the ground, and was about to dump them back in the box.

“Derpy, stop,” Moondancer said, calmly.

Derpy froze.

“Put the nitroglycerine down, carefully.”

Derpy dropped them into the box, careful to get all of them inside.

Time seemed to slow down for Moondancer. Derpy. Derpy could resurrect them without that awful curse, so Derpy had to live. That meant she needed to get out of the blast radius before the sticks landed and exploded. But the only spell she had to move things that quickly was…

Her horn flashed brightly. An aura surrounded Derpy, and then the hapless pegasus was hurtling towards the trees at high speed, crunching into the branches less than a second later.

Moondancer landed half on top of the box, barking her shins and stumbling around awkwardly in the snow until she managed to get her hooves under her and realized that time was moving normally again and the explosives had completely failed to detonate.

“Hey!” Derpy shouted, her voice faint from the distance. “What was that for?”

“Woah…” Spike said, looking from her to Moondancer. “Did you just Magic Missile her? With her as the missile?”

“Stable nitroglycerine,” Moondancer said, ignoring them to peer into the box. “This has potential.”

“The potential to accidentally kill us all,” Bon Bon said, keeping her distance.

Moondancer shrugged. “That depends on how stable it is. I should run some tests. Stand back.”

Spike backed away a few feet.

“Farther back,” Moondancer said. “No, farther,” she said again, when he stood next to Bon Bon.

“How far?” Bon Bon asked.

Moondancer looked at the box, and mentally did some math. “Over by Derpy?”

That turned out to largely be overkill. Enough shock could still set off the nitroglycerine, but for Moondancer to manage it she had to fling it into the cliffside with Magic Missile. The resulting explosion was extremely loud, and left a small hole in the cliff, but was nowhere near the widespread destruction she’d expected. Worse, even Magic Missile wasn’t enough to set the sticks off when she aimed them at the snow, so it wouldn’t be reliable to use it that way in a fight.

“Light the fuse?” Spike suggested.

“They aren’t fuses, they’re metal wires,” Moondancer said. “I’d need lightning to set them off, and I don’t even have a spell that shoots lightning at inanimate objects.”

“Good,” Bon Bon said. “I’d rather not have somepony tossing nitroglycerine sticks into a fight where I’m fighting with knives.”

Moondancer dug through her saddlebacks and set a small sack on the ground next to the box of explosives. “I’ll make a cornucopia – it’s the safest way to take some of them with us. Maybe we’ll figure out how to set them off later, or maybe I’ll just have to settle for re-inventing them when we get home and making a million bits.”

“Or maybe we’ll run into a giant rock monster,” Spike said. “Then – whizz-BANG! It’ll be awesome!”

“You never know,” Moondancer said, as she cast the spell on the sack. A dozen of the bright red sticks dissolved into the magic, and the bag plumped up slightly.

“So you can do that with anything?” Bon Bon asked.

Moondancer looked up. “The cornucopia? Sure, anything nonmagical.”

“Could you do that with a bag of golz?” Bon Bon asked. “We’re not broke, but it’s like the priest said – you can never have enough money.”

“Technically yes?” Moondancer said. “But they vanish after a few minutes, so you wouldn’t be able to spend them.”

“How about gems?” Spike asked.

“It doesn’t matter what you use it on, they still vanish.”

Spike lolled his tongue out a bit. “No, I meant to eat. None of the restaurants here have gems on the menu, and I could really go for some rubies to snack on.”

===

With the mystery of the red sticks solved, they moved into the mine. It wasn’t long before they found the train Obvious Trader had been talking about, or what they figured had to be the train – several mine carts resting on a track that led deeper into the mountain.

Derpy perched on the front edge of the lead cart immediately. “Get in! This’ll be fun!”

“Yeah,” Moondancer said, walking slowly towards the carts. “Fun.”

“I don’t see a brake,” Bon Bon remarked. “Derpy, do you see anything that looks like a brake?”

Derpy bent over and peeked at the front of the cart, then between her own legs to look inside the cart. “Nope! Looks good to me!”

“I’m not riding in that thing,” Moondancer said.

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Spike said. “The carts wouldn’t be here if we weren’t supposed to ride them.”

Moondancer took a step back. “Here’s the choice – we can walk.”

“Nah, that won’t work,” Spike said. “The track’s probably broken and we’ll need to jump over a river of lava or something.”

Moondancer took three more steps back. “This is not making me want to ride them!”

“Would you rather jump over a river of lava without a cart?” Bon Bon asked. She didn’t get in either, though.

Spike scrambled at the edge of the cart Derpy was perched on, trying to pull himself over the edge, even though it came to slightly above his head, and his armor was awfully heavy.

“How about a compromise,” Moondancer said. “We’ll walk, and if we come to a river of lava that can only be crossed by getting in a mine cart, rolling down the track, and hoping that it jumps to the other side, then instead we’ll give up on our quest and go get jobs in Castle Town or something!”

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Spike said. “I mean, sure, there might be some tricky bits where we have to decide which way to go and if we pick wrong we plummet to our doom, but if that happens we’ll just respawn in town and have to try again. There’s five carts here – that’s a lot of tries.”

“We don’t have enough golz for five tries,” Bon Bon said.

“Am I the only one who’s not okay with plummeting to our doom?” Moondancer asked.

“Um…” Spike said, looking at the others.

“I think so,” Bon Bon said. “I’m mostly worried about burning through our golz. A train crash probably wouldn’t hurt that much. It’d be over quick.”

“And I can fly!” Derpy said. “So I mean, I could just resurrect you right there instead of going back to the crystal.”

“Even if we burned up in lava?” Bon Bon asked.

“Wait a minute,” Spike said. “Derpy can fly! Why don’t we hook her up to the cart? Then if we’re going to fall to our doom we can just cheat and have her pull it back to the track.”

Bon Bon looked up at Derpy. “She’s licensed and everything.”

“And you’re not paying me, so it’s all legal!” Derpy added, with a grin.

===

The mine carts weren’t set up to be pulled by ponies, strangely enough – it wasn’t clear how they were supposed to move, although there was a panel with buttons that didn’t do anything that might have been involved. Moondancer didn’t detect any sort of magical propulsion, but that might have been because the mechanism was depleted after long disuse.

It wasn’t too hard to put a basic harness together from some rope they found in a side room, though. It wouldn’t be comfortable for a long haul, but Derpy was only planning to pull the cart in an emergency, and (hopefully) an emergency wouldn’t last long enough for it to chafe. Spike and Moondancer followed her instructions, wrapping the rope around her neck and body and tying it securely in place. When they were done, Derpy tugged against the ropes a little, and they seemed secure.

Bon Bon jumped into the cart, and turned to help Moondancer climb in after her. Moondancer could at least get her hooves over the side, but her attempts to jump her hindquarters over were sadly insufficient until Spike gave her a push.

Moondancer squealed. “Spike! What are you doing!”

Spike’s metal-clad feet dug into the ground as he pushed as hard as he felt he could risk, his claws digging into her thighs. “I’m trying… to get… ugh...” He twisted his face aside as her tail whacked him in the muzzle. “Stop doing that!”

Moondancer squirmed. “Don’t touch me there!”

Spike instantly let go, leaving her stuck on the edge with her forelegs in Bon Bon’s and her hind legs off the ground, with the edge of the mine cart digging into her stomach. She choked, and kicked her legs desperately, until the dragon’s pointy claws were replaced by an ice-cold sheet of metal.

Spike shoved his shield against her. “Yeah, this is working better,” he said. “I can use a lot more force…” With one last shove, Moondancer tipped into the cart, landing in a heap on top of Bon Bon.

Spike waited a few seconds, without any sign of movement from inside the cart. “Um… are you okay?”

“Owwww…” Moondancer groaned.

“Now how am I going to get in?” Spike looked up at the edge of the cart. “Why did they make these things so big?”

“Come over here and I’ll give you a lift?” Derpy suggested. “I’m really good at lifting ponies. Dragons too!”

“Oh, right,” Spike said, laughing a bit as Derpy effortlessly boosted him up over the side and set him down next to the two groaning mares. “Yeah, that was a lot easier.”

Suddenly, he floated into the air, only to slam firmly against the wall of the mine cart with a loud ‘clang’. Moondancer, eyes ablaze, stumbled off of Bon Bon and pointed her glowing horn right at Spike’s face. “Don’t. Put your face. Under my tail!”

“Er…” Spike said. “It was an accident! I didn’t mean anything by it. You were just–”

Moondancer growled. “Don’t. Put your face. Under my tail. Unless you mean something by it!”

Everyone froze, including Moondancer.

“Um…” Derpy said, trying to stifle a giggle without much success.

“I think that came out wrong,” Bon Bon said. “Or should we leave the two of you alone?”

“Or can we watch?” Derpy asked. “Come on, kiss and make out!”

“That’s ‘kiss and make up’, Derpy,” Spike said, managing to twist his head a bit in Moondancer’s grip.

Derpy covered her mouth and giggled. “You could do that too, but it’s not as much fun.”

===

Once Moondancer had died of embarrassment – her corpse curling up in a corner with her face hidden underneath her forelegs – and Spike and Bon Bon had found a reasonably comfortable position to ride in (although Spike couldn’t really see over the side very well, even with the extra height granted by being inside the cart), it was finally time to see how good of a job they’d done on Derpy’s harness.

“Give it a try,” Bon Bon said to Derpy, who saluted with a hoof, then turned and pulled against the ropes in earnest.

Nothing happened. The cart didn’t even budge.

“Ugh,” Derpy said, fluttering her wings for more thrust and lifting slightly off the ground, but still failing to move the mine cart. “You girls are heavy!”

“The brake must be on,” Bon Bon said. “Does anypony see a brake lever?”

They looked around, but couldn’t find anything. Spike even tried pushing all the buttons on the little panel, but none of them seemed to do anything.

“So what do we do now?” Derpy asked, turning around and putting her hooves on the edge of the cart, the harness tangling around her legs.

“Um… I guess we walk?” Spike said. “Sometimes the mine carts are just for decoration, I guess. You get your way after all, Moondancer!”

“Ugh,” Moondancer said, lifting her head to look at him. “Seriously?”

“What’s wrong now?” Bon Bon asked, straining not to grind her teeth.

“I spent all that time psyching myself up for this,” she grumbled.

===

By hoof, the mine was very large, and unsurprisingly very full of monsters. It was a slight surprise that most of the monsters were orcs, to the extent that anything orc-related could be a surprise at that point.

Most of them were ordinary green orcs, at least, so the old fire-based tactics worked well, but the orcish wizards had been replaced by weird ghost-like wraiths that, in addition to casting the area-effect spells that everypony hated since they ignored Spike’s taunting, also drained blood-sugar with a touch that went right through armor and shields. They would have been the perfect thing for Bon Bon to attack first, if they hadn’t been highly resistant to physical attacks.

There were also rock monsters – animated boulders with huge mouths nearly the size of their entire body – that might have been a serious threat if they weren’t a perfect target for Moondancer’s new nitroglycerine-based ‘Explosive Missile’ spell.

When you combined that with a dungeon that was very easy to navigate – the ‘correct’ path was marked by the mine cart tracks, so they knew to search every side corridor first for treasure – the entire experience was...

“Just how big is this mine?” Moondancer grumbled as Bon Bon led them down a side passage off a side passage off a large room with half a dozen exits that had been a short trot from the main path.

“I’m kind of having fun,” Spike said. “I mean, yeah, it’s a lot of fighting, but that’s better than spending days walking across an empty desert or whatever. Do you think there’ll be a boss?”

“There’s always a boss,” Bon Bon said. “Hopefully not another marshmallow.”

Derpy shuddered. “So sticky…”

“Aaand it’s another dead end,” Moondancer announced, as they turned a corner and found the passage clogged with rubble.

“There’s something in the rocks,” Bon Bon said, clamping her teeth on something and tugging. “Spike, can you give me a hoof?”

“Will a claw work?” Spike asked, as he grabbed on to the red-and-white striped metal thing and helped her tug it loose. The rocks rumbled and shifted, but didn’t collapse.

“Is that a candy cane?” Derpy asked, hovering over their shoulders.

“It’s made out of metal,” Spike said. “Maybe it’s what the rock monsters eat?”

Moondancer’s aura glimmered over the curved metal rod, and she brought it close to examine it. “It’s a lever. There’s a hole in the bottom here where a pin holds it in place.”

“Holds it in place where?” Spike asked.

Moondancer tossed it back to him. “Probably underneath all those rocks.”

“Let’s hold on to it just in case,” Bon Bon said.

===

They found the rest of the lever pretty quickly, all things considered – it was on the far side of the mine, but the side-passage that eventually led to it was only a little further down the tracks. Moondancer had no trouble setting the lever back in place, and then stood a few dozen steps back while Spike pulled it.

There was a rumble, and a section of wall slid aside revealing a rough-hewn passage, much smaller than the ones in the mine, that twisted to the side after ten feet or so. Nopony had to say anything – of course they were going to explore it.

‘It’ turned out to be a twisty maze of little passages, all alike. There were dozens of branches and loops and few dead ends, but little piles of golz were scattered everywhere, so they could quickly find the turns they hadn’t taken yet by the piles they hadn’t picked up. The only monsters they encountered were the rock monsters, mindlessly circling through the maze and gobbling up anything they came across… but they were almost as big as the tunnels they were travelling through, so they could only come one at a time, which meant that Moondancer’s Explosive Missile spell put an end to every fight before it even started.

“Okay, now I’m bored,” Spike said.

“We’re almost done,” Moondancer said, looking up from a sheet of paper she’d been doodling on. “I’ve been charting the maze, and we’ve filled in almost all the territory. There’s just one section left in the center.”

“There’s a center?” Bon Bon asked. “We haven’t even found an edge.”

“That’s because it loops around,” Moondancer explained. “Follow me, it’s this way.”

The center section didn’t have little piles of golz, which was probably why they’d missed it. “Clever,” Bon Bon said.

They cautiously rounded the last few twists to see what the prize in the center was.

“Oh,” Bon Bon said to the monsters guarding a small room. “You guys.”

The pair of reindeer – Red and Blue – stared at them, then turned and ran up some stairs they’d been standing near.

“Hey!” Spike shouted, running after them, the rest of the heroes close on his heels.

A few seconds later, they emerged into the blinding sunlight, reflecting off the snowy mountain peak and the clouds below that encircled it. When their vision adjusted, they found themselves surrounded – a dozen reindeer, dressed in half a dozen colors, stood in a semicircle around them, antlers already glowing.

“Stop!” came the voice of a familiar diamond dog from a small log cabin behind the deer, at the very top of the peak. “Let them come.”

“Or we could turn around and leave,” Moondancer suggested.

“The master wants to see you,” said one of the green reindeer. “You should not disappoint him.”

“If this was a boss fight, we’d probably be fighting,” Spike said. “Maybe he has a quest for us?”

“Or maybe some muffins?” Derpy suggested.

“At any rate, I don’t think we have a choice unless we want to fight all these reindeer,” Bon Bon said. “We could probably take them, but it would be messy.”

“I don’t know,” Spike said. “They’ve got two healers. I’m not sure we could stab them fast enough.”

One of the green reindeer raised a hoof to her belly and shivered a bit. Derpy frowned, and swooped down to hug her. “Oh, you poor thing! Are you okay?”

“Um…” the reindeer said, trying to squirm out of Derpy’s feathery grip. “Just go inside, please?”

===

The inside of the house was easier on their eyes, at least. It was also surprisingly bare – a single, wide-open room without any furniture, except for a low table in the center of the room, on which sat a fancy round three-layer cake, with a single candle set in the center, burning merrily.

Derpy squealed and made a bee-line for it, only to be sent tumbling back to the entrance by the Red Ninja, who’d appeared out of nowhere and smacked her with the flat of his blade. “Cake is for winners,” he growled.

“So I guess you want us to fight you again?” Spike asked. “With all those reindeer?”

“I need no reindeer to fight you here,” the hulking diamond dog said. “I will face you with only myself.”

“But… we beat you with three of them backing you up,” Spike said. “We’ll win easily.”

“Then you will have cake,” the Ninja replied.

Spike glanced back at the others. Bon Bon shrugged. He raised his shield. “Okay, then. Let’s go!”

The Red Ninja smiled wide, showing all his teeth, and set his sword point-down in the ground in front of himself. His form blurred, and vanished momentarily, only to reappear a moment later… along with four more copies of himself, spread around the room.

“O…kay…” Spike said, “Maybe they’re not as strong?”

“Dark Eidous Dark Eidous Dark Eidous!” Moondancer shouted, as Derpy’s gun roared… but with five targets, the damage was spread. Spike bellowed at the Ninjas to get their attention, but only two of them squared off with him, which was still one more than he could ward off effectively with his shield. Bon Bon leapt at the back of the one Derpy had shot, but while that staggered him, it didn’t take him down this time either, and while her backstab didn’t trigger their auto-kill counterattack, it did manage to get that ninja’s attention, and the ordinary sword slashes were more than she could handle.

“Explosive missile!” The red stick shot through the air, only to bounce harmlessly off the Ninja’s soft robes. Moondancer desperately tried to cast another spell as the Ninja kept coming. “Bub—” WHACK! Her spell was interrupted, and her head snapped to the side as the Ninja she’d tried to explode slammed her in the temple with the hilt of his sword, dropping her like a sack of bricks.

“I give! I give!” Spike said, dropping his sword and shield as a Ninja knelt on top of his chest, katana poised at the eye-slits of his helmet.

Bon Bon lay still, still breathing but bleeding heavily.

Derpy looked down at the ninjas, who suddenly seemed to notice her presence, with all her friends out of the fight. “No surrender!” she shouted, taking careful aim and completely missing the Ninja she’d aimed at, only for the shot to bounce off the back wall and hit another Ninja in the back of the head. He stumbled, but didn’t fall, and the other three (the fifth keeping Spike pinned) leapt impossibly high to face her in the air, one knocking her cannon from her mouth, another slamming her in the small of the back to drive her to the ground, and the third landing heavily atop her, sword first, pinning her to the ground like a butterfly.

“Owww…. ow ow ow…” Derpy whimpered, and writhed on the ground trying to somehow drag herself off the sword, even though that was topologically impossible.

The Ninjas shimmered and vanished, except for the one pinning Spike, who withdrew his sword and extended a paw to help the dragon to his feet. “You are weak. No cake for you.”

===

“So. That was a complete waste of time,” Moondancer said, once they were all conscious again, and feasting on muffins on the Ninja’s front porch to heal up before heading back into the dungeon. The reindeer were scattered around snowy lawn, ignoring them now that they’d failed to prove themselves against the Red Ninja’s full power.

“We picked up a lot of golz in the maze, at least,” Bon Bon said.

“Maybe we can come back once we’re stronger?” Spike suggested.

“Could we not? I don’t want cake that much,” Moondancer said.

“I do!” Derpy said, “But we’ll have to be a lot lot stronger, because he totally kicked our tails.”

Mines of Moriaz

After returning to the mine and proceeding down the tracks a ways, with no really significant side passages, the heroes came to a quaint little train station. There was a raised platform for passengers to wait for the train, a ticket window, and what looked like a gabled roof carved out of stone sheltering some stone benches from any rain that might fall from the stalactites above.

They climbed onto the platform and continued through the silent turnstiles, Moondancer lighting her horn so that they could see where they were going, since the sconces set into the walls didn’t look like they’d been lit in decades. Beyond was a deserted town that looked suspiciously like Moriaz, except that everything was just a little bit bigger, and a little bit off. The doors had handles about six inches too high for a pony to grip comfortably in their mouth or hoof, and the signs weren’t written in any language they recognized. Moondancer thought it looked a bit like Old Runic, except that it didn’t actually use any of the same letters or words.

Despite the slight inconvenience of opening the doors, they took the time to explore every building that wasn’t locked. Most of them looked like they used to be shops of various sorts, but none of them had any surviving inventory.

Eventually, they came to the inn, and found that the Giant Floating Crystal in the front room had been shattered.

“Not sure we’d want to checkpoint here anyway,” Bon Bon said. “It’s a bit far from the church.”

“Do you think the beds still work?” Derpy asked, drifting towards the stairs in the back.

“Do you really think it’s safe to sleep here?” Bon Bon asked.

“We haven’t seen any monsters since we got here,” Spike said. “It must still count as a town, even without any ponies.”

“What exactly does that mean?” Moondancer asked. “We’ve been leaning heavily on Spike’s knowledge of the appropriate narrative tropes, but do we actually know that the world works that way?”

Spike shrugged. “Why else would it be so quiet?”

“I don’t know, and that bothers me,” Moondancer said. “Many of the things that seemed game-dependent at first glance turned out to have a physical explanation. For example, the piles of golz are there because ponies used to use gold and golz was worthless fake gold that they just threw away. Or the endless waves of bandits – they happen because everypony respawns at the Giant Floating Crystals, so the same bandits just keep coming back again and again.”

“And how do you explain the crystals?” Bon Bon asked.

Moondancer was silent for a second or two. “I can’t. Yet.”

“So… what are you saying?” Spike asked. “We shouldn’t search the town?”

Moondancer shook her head. “No, just… don’t let your guard down.”

“Oh right,” Spike said. “Maybe it’s quiet to lure us into a false sense of security, before a really dangerous boss monster appears!”

“That’s not what I mean at all,” Moondancer said, rolling her eyes. “But fine, keep an eye out for a sudden boss monster, if that’s what it takes.”

“I am not a monster,” came a quiet voice from the back stairs.

“Ahh!” Derpy shrieked, pointing a hoof. “Ninja!”

“I am also not a ninja,” said the diamond dog girl, stepping out of the shadows and into the light cast by Moondancer’s horn. “But I see you have met my brother.”

“Oh, I get it,” Spike said. “This place isn’t deserted at all, you’re all just hiding!”

“No.”

“Then what?” Bon Bon asked.

The diamond dog yawned, showing off her glistening fangs. “I was sleeping. You ponies awoke me with your talking.”

“No,” Bon Bon said. “What about everypony else?”

She looked confused. “The ponies all moved to the mountain above. Ponies love the sun.”

“So there weren’t any other ninjas?” Derpy asked. “This was just a weird underground pony town until they all moved out?”

The dog looked even more confused. She reached into a pocket on her vest, and pulled out a large lump of quartz, which she started chewing on thoughtfully. “Maybe I am not thinking clearly, yet. You are ponies, but you act like you do not know what happened here.”

“We’re not from around here,” Spike said. “We’re on a quest!”

“Why don’t you tell us what happened,” Moondancer suggested. “We’ve been walking around this mine for ages. I could stand to rest my hooves for a while.”

The diamond dog looked around at each of them in turn. When she got to Derpy, who was hovering closer and closer with a wide grin on her face, she gave another yawn, and said, “Okay. But hooves will rest better if you sit.”

===

Long long ago, before the dark and the sky were one, the good dogs ruled beneath the mountain, building a home for themselves there -- clearing away the rock, saving the gems to eat or to wear, and forging the tasteless metals into tools.

The mountain was cursed, however, twice cursed. First, most of the metal to be found was of the worthless yellow variety, either soft and formless or brittle and prone to crumble. Second, the depths were haunted by bad things, and the good dogs had to dig upwards instead, always up, despite the legends that spoke of the doom that awaited if they breached the surface. A warning from dogs long dead held less weight than the terrifying screams and the hideous warmth that crept up the lower tunnels.

And so, the good dogs chose the doom above, and broke through the surface, and met the ponies. The ponies greeted them, and told them that the mountain was not cursed – that the soft yellow metal was blessed, and that they could have all manner of nice things in return for the metal. The dogs were tricked, and welcomed the ponies into their home, and let the ponies remake it in their image. Moriaz became a great city beneath the mountain, of ponies and dogs working together to gather the soft yellow metal, trading it to others for every nice thing. The dogs stopped being good dogs, and became nice dogs, used to niceness.

But the ponies always wanted things to be even nicer, and rushed to mine more and more of the metal, and the nice dogs were pulled along in the cart behind them. They heard of the haunted depths, and laughed at the superstitions. The ponies had turned out to be nice, had they not? Surely whatever lived below would be nice as well. And if it was not, they could trade their soft yellow metal for an army of orcs to fight and conquer the depths in their stead, or so said the ponies.

But as they dug deeper, and the screams got louder, and the warmth cloying and painful, the nice dogs began to wake from the pony daze. The curse was real – could the ponies not hear? Could they not feel? Could they not sense the wrongness of the stone in their very bones? No, they would stop digging, and they would move to another mountain instead, and look for more of the yellow metal there.

So the ponies took the yellow metal, and hired an army of orcs, and slaughtered the bad, bad dogs. Only a few escaped – the orcs had no mercy, but the ponies had some, and a few were spirited away by ponies they trusted.

Then the ponies had the orcs dig for them, instead of the dead dogs, and broke through into the fiery, cursed depths. They fled to the surface, and rebuilt their city there, but only the uppermost part of the mine was still safe from the curse, now that they had unleashed it. So they received even less of their soft yellow metal, and cursed the bad dogs for their misfortune.

Over time, with the miners gone, the curse retreated into the depths, leaving the mine silent and dead.

===

“Except for the rock monsters and wandering orcs,” Derpy pointed out. “And the ghosts!”

“A few still wander, lost. But wandering is quieter than mining with the tools the orcs use,” the diamond dog replied.

“So those jerks murdered your whole village?” Spike said.

“Over a labor dispute,” Moondancer added, with a scowl.

Bon Bon frowned. “I should have expected something like this. Rich ponies can go a little… evil sometimes.”

“Just like dragons?” Spike asked.

Bon Bon laughed. “Not as bad as dragons.”

“And they’re still up there, living happily, while you’re down here…” Spike said.

“Living happily?” the dog finished.

“All alone?” Derpy asked.

“I can visit my brother, and his deer servants,” the dog said. “But it would be nice if there were other dogs here.”

“So you’re not going to give us a quest to get revenge?” Spike asked.

“Revenge is my brother’s trade,” the diamond dog said, finishing off her quartz and licking the dust from her claws. “If you want a quest, find the survivors and tell them that it is safe to return.”

“We’ve already got a quest,” Moondancer said.

“Sort of,” Derpy said. “It’s more of a pre-quest quest-qualification quest?”

“Then take it as a side quest,” the diamond dog said. “That is what questing ponies do?”

“Sure,” Bon Bon said. “If we run across any, we’ll send them back here.”

“I’m just glad we don’t have to fight you,” Spike said. “Is it safe to rest here?”

“10 gold per pony, to stay at the inn,” the diamond dog said.

“Do you take golz?” Bon Bon asked. “It’s all we have.”

“If I must,” she sighed.

===

After a good long sleep in soft (if slightly musty) beds, the heroes woke up to the smell of Bon Bon cooking up some pancakes and fried hay in the kitchen. They shared breakfast with their diamond dog hostess, and got some directions.

“The tracks lead to the depths, where the curse still lingers. Go no further than the giant fiery chasm. It is not fiery now, but you will know it.”

“So we don’t have to leap across the chasm in an out of control mine cart?” Spike asked.

The dog looked confused. “The bridge is intact, but you should not cross.”

“What happens if we cross?” Bon Bon asked.

“Bad things.”

“Specifically?” Moondancer pressed.

“You will face the curse. The curse is bad. It chased away dogs and ponies both, and the orcs do not go near.”

“Hypothetically speaking,” Bon Bon said, “If we did cross, would we find any treasure?”

“No,” the diamond dog said, “because you would be dead.”

“I don’t think she knows,” Derpy said. “So you can stop torturing her now.”

“We probably shouldn’t risk it anyway,” Spike said. “I mean, the last optional boss kicked our tails. If there’s anything there, we’re meant to come back once we’re stronger.”

“We’ve got a crystal to go back to, so we’re not risking anything but time,” Bon Bon said.

“Time and pain,” Moondancer said. “Lots of pain.”

Bon Bon rolled her eyes. “And if we’re not meant to be there yet, that means that the treasure we’ll find is something we’re not supposed to have yet. It’ll make everything else easier.”

“And what if we wake it up and it decides to come here and destroy the town?” Derpy asked. “It might block the path and then we’ll never finish our quest!”

“Why don’t we take a vote?” Spike suggested. “All in favor of waking up the nameless evil that destroyed an entire town of ponies, raise a hoof.”

Nopony raised their hoof. Everypony looked at Bon Bon.

She shrugged. “The last time we tried to break the sequence we spent two weeks walking to River Town and back, and the advantage lasted through maybe one dungeon. So I’m okay with playing by the rules this time.”

===

It turned out not to matter what they’d decided, because the railway bridge over the deep, dark chasm was guarded by an ancient robed pony, wielding a staff.

“You shall not pass!” he cried, as they approached.

“Okay,” Spike said.

“You shall not pass,” he repeated, pointing the staff at Spike and keeping it trained on him as the young dragon cautiously edged past him to the narrow ledge that continued on their side of the chasm.

Derpy floated higher up in the air, and started drifting over the old pony’s head, only to get yanked back by Moondancer’s aura on her tail. “No. Don’t taunt the crazy wizard while we’re creeping along a narrow ledge.”

“You shall not pass,” said the old pony, nodding at her.

“He wouldn’t even see me,” Bon Bon said, stopping right in front of him.

The pony bonked her on the head. “You. Shall. Not. Pass,” he said, swinging his staff and forcing her to take a step back with each word.

Spike, glancing back over his shoulder to watch, covered his mouth to stifle a giggle… then turned back around and saw a giant rock monster hovering a few feet in front of him, its jagged-toothed mouth ready to crunch down on his face. “AAH!”

Moondancer whirled, and cast. “Explosive Missile!” Spike threw himself to the ground and held up his shield as the rock monster exploded, the larger pieces scattering off the wall and the ledge, clattering their way down into the chasm, as the roar of the explosion echoed.

The ponies held perfectly still, waiting for the echo to die down… but it didn’t. Soon, they realized that the rumbling, pulsing noise from below was not an echo, and in fact a faint orange light was pulsing brighter and brighter as the noise slowly built.

“It wasn’t me,” Spike said.

“Just go!” Moondancer said, yanking him up in her magic and setting him on his feet. “Run!”

“Fly!” said the old pony, staring in horror at the light below. “Fly, you fools!”

Derpy swooped down and picked up Bon Bon, and after a few steps of Spike’s lumbering jog Moondancer lifted him again, and plopped him onto her battle saddle as she broke into a gallop. Spike leaned forwards and grabbed onto her neck as they raced forwards into the darkness, trying to outrun the light.

Is There Any Escape From Noise?

The first few seconds were terrifying – the pounding noise from below, the fiery orange light from behind, not to mention the narrow, gravel-strewn ledge that Moondancer would never have dreamed of galloping along under any other circumstances. But they quickly came to the end of the ledge, where it turned back into a nice, safe tunnel. After a few turns, it was a dark and reasonably quiet tunnel, and Moondancer noticed that Spike was tugging on her mane and screaming, “Slow down!”

She dropped to a canter, then a trot, breathing heavily while spots swam in the corners of her vision. “Did we get away?” She managed to focus enough for a simple light spell, since it really was getting hard to see, and breaking her leg in an unseen pit would be just as embarrassing at a trot as at a gallop.

“I think so,” Spike said.

There was a brief rustle, as Derpy set Bon Bon down next to her. “Even so, let’s not dawdle,” Bon Bon said, trotting alongside. “We’ll skip the side passages and head right for the exit.”

This turned out to be extremely easy, since there weren’t any side passages. The cave was certainly not natural, and had a few mine carts and picks scattered around, but apparently it hadn’t been worked much at all – perhaps the valuable metals had been elsewhere, leaving it as merely a tunnel to the lower exit? Or had it been cut off by the terror from the depths before the mining could begin in earnest? The easiest way to find out would probably be to ask one of the orcs, if they could get them to talk instead of fighting. And to talk sensibly, instead of in broken speech. Also, if they could find one, since at the moment the tunnel seemed quite deserted. Maybe it would be easier to go all the way back up to Moriaz and ask the ponies there, which meant the easiest way would be for them all to die.

Maybe the question wasn’t that important.

“Uh oh,” Derpy said, floating to a stop in midair. “Did we get turned around?”

Looking up, Moondancer saw a faint orange glow coming from around the corner ahead. The omnipresent, rhythmic rumble was still omnipresent and not particularly directional, but it was a fair bet that some of the noise was coming from around the corner as well.

“No,” Bon Bon said. “They got ahead of us somehow. Wait here, I’ll take a look.”

It only took a few seconds before she was back to report. “Alright, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that you can see the exit once you round the corner.”

“Aren’t you supposed to ask us if we want the good news or the bad news first?” Moondancer asked. “What if I wanted to hear the bad news first so that we could end this conversation on a high note?”

“Obviously she thought it’d be better to ironically dash our hopes,” Derpy said. “You always give the good news first.”

Moondancer scowled. “Can we at least try it the other way next time?”

“What’s the bad news?” Spike asked, clutching at Moondancer’s mane more tightly.

“There’s another bridge between us and the exit,” Bon Bon said.

Derpy smiled. “That doesn’t seem so –"

“With a giant fire demon standing on it,” Bon Bon continued.

“Well… fire is good,” Moondancer said.

Derpy wailed, “No! Fire is bad!”

“Half of us are immune to it!”

“The other half of us really hate being on fire!”

“How giant are we talking?” Spike asked.

“The other half of us just need to stay back and throw healing muffins, then.”

“That never works! Fire goes everywhere!”

Bon Bon tilted a hoof back and forth. “Twenty, twenty-five feet? But it was hunched over, it’s probably a lot taller if it stands up straight.”

“Ah,” Spike said. “Well, if it’s blocking the exit, then I’m sure we can beat it!”

“But the fire!” Derpy said.

“We really don’t have any choice,” Bon Bon said. “We can do this, Derpy. It might hurt a bit… or a lot… but we’ll make it through, and then we’ll be back out in the sunlight where we can go back to fighting every few days instead of every few minutes. We’ve just got this one last thing to do, and then we’re home free.”

“If by ‘home free’ you mean almost to the location where we can start the quest to get the items which will qualify us to start on the actual quest that might let us go home at the end of it,” Spike added.

“I’d really really like to be home right now,” Derpy said, plopping onto the floor and pouting.

Moondancer rested a hoof on Derpy’s shoulder. “I think we all would. I know this sucks, but we can’t stop here. We’re being chased, remember?”

“Any thoughts on strategy?” Spike asked. “Or should we just do the standard thing where I get his attention and try not to die?”

Moondancer took a stick of nitroglycerine out of her pouch. “Was he wearing metal armor? Enough concussive force from the right angle could knock him off the bridge.” Although she wasn’t sure how she’d get the sticks to detonate at an angle – if they glanced off there wouldn’t be the sharp kick needed to set them off without using lightning on the fuses. Unfortunately, she’d never studied weather spells, and her only source of lightning was the randomly targeted invocation of the emperor’s curse on Dark Eidous’ name.

Bon Bon shook her head. “Just a sort of leather harness. Kind of like your Battle Saddle.”

Moondander’s ears perked up. “I think we can make that work.”

===

The heroes gathered at the end of the bridge, going over the final preparations while the fire demon roared and waved his arms around, challenging them to a fight.

“You’ve all got the cinnamon candies in case you’re lit on fire?” Bon Bon asked.

“Yep!” Derpy said. “And the Batter Barrier is up on everypony except you.”

“Yeah,” Spike said, wiping some of the dripping muffin batter away from his eyes. “I noticed.”

The fire demon roared again, and launched a wall of fire at them. Like the last few times, it attenuated as it travelled further and further from his aura, and lacked the power to break through Moondancer’s bubble by the time it arrived.

“And I’ve got the ‘special surprise’ all ready for our friend there,” Bon Bon said. “So I’m going to go dark. Try not to die, Spike.”

Spike nodded, and hefted his shield. “He’s mostly using fire. I think I’ll be okay.”

“Then we’re ready?” Derpy asked, fluttering up into the air momentarily before her sodden wings dragged her back down.

“Set,” Bon Bon said, crouching near the edge of the chasm, to the side of the bridge.

“Go!” Moondancer said, dropping the bubble and swatting Spike on the rear with her staff. “Go go go!”

She charged after him to get into spell range, as he ran flat out towards the hulking demon. When she got close enough, she pulled a firebomb from a pouch and flung it at the demon’s face. She doubted the flames had any effect, but the sticky fuel obscured his vision long enough for Spike to arrive at his feet, where the brave little dragon gave a fearsome roar, and swung at the giant’s ankles with all his might.

The magically sharpened blade bit into the scales, and the demon roared in anger, reaching down with a massive claw to swipe at Spike from the side. Moondancer’s breath caught for a second as she imagined Spike being swept off the bridge by the massive blow, but she shouldn’t have worried – he caught the blow on his shield, the point on the bottom braced against the stone floor of the bridge, and used the blow’s own force to help brace against the knockback.

There was a loud bang! as Derpy fired her hand cannon, which glanced off the creature’s pectoral muscles without leaving a mark, although it twisted to the side a bit from the impact. With one claw kept on top of Spike, pinning him in place while he huddled beneath his shield, the demon raised its arm and cast a wall of fire that raced down the bridge. Despite knowing that it was harmless to her, Moondancer couldn’t help but avert her eyes and raise a hoof to cover her face from the onrushing fire.

Burning agony washed over her, and she screamed in pain as the fire blew through her armor’s resistances as if they weren’t even there. She fumbled for the cinnamon candy, and popped it into her mouth, letting the burn on her tongue cool the actual fires elsewhere. A muffin appeared in front of her face, and she snapped it up, too.

“I hate fire! Hate it so much!” Derpy complained, behind her.

Meanwhile, the demon was trying to pry up Spike’s shield, until the dragon’s wickedly sharp sword lashed out to slash at its wrist, prompting it to yank its arm back and let the dragon get back into a fighting posture. “Is that all you got?” Spike shouted.

Moondancer was about to toss another firebomb, when Bon Bon tapped on her shoulder.

“It’s ready,” she said.

“Spike, get back!” Moondancer shouted. The little dragon turned and ran, and the demon seemed content with that, lifting his arms for another wall of fire. Before he could cast, she quickly called out, “Dark Eidous!”

Lightning slammed down out of nowhere, crackling over the demon’s body… and over the fuses of the nitroglycerine sticks Bon Bon had spent the last thirty seconds or so tucking into the left side of its harness. There was a flash, and a massive roar, and the demon screamed in anger as it went flying off the side of the bridge, plummeting into the abyss. Spike was blown off his feet by the blast, faceplanting into the stone with a grunt.

“Nice,” Bon Bon said, looking over the edge to watch the demon plummet towards the glowing depths.

“Um…” Spike said, scrambling to his feet. “I think the bridge is –” Then he screamed, as it crumbled beneath him.

“Spike!” Moondancer shouted, lunging towards him as she desperately reached out with her magic – but he was well out of range of her telekinesis, and Bon Bon’s teeth on her tail kept her from getting any closer to the crumbling edge.

“I’ll catch you!” Derpy said, flinging herself off the bridge, where she proceeded to plummet like a brick as the flash-baked batter barrier covering her wings meant that they utterly failed to catch the air.

Bon Bon and Moondancer stood helplessly as their friends quickly fell out of sight.

“Okay then…” Bon Bon said. “The good news is, there’s nothing between us and the exit, now.”

“Including no bridge,” Moondancer snapped. “Not that it matters, since we can’t leave Spike and Derpy behind.”

Bon Bon frowned. “Yeah, we’d better go back up to Moriaz and retrieve those two, and maybe find another way down. Assuming we can sneak past the other chasm on the way up.”

“They’re not dead,” Moondancer said. “Pegasi don’t die from falling, and Spike was a tough little dragon even before we started ‘levelling up’ here.” She looked down into the chasm. “We have to go down after them.”

“How?” Bon Bon asked. “I could probably make the climb, but I can’t carry you, and we don’t have anywhere near enough rope.”

Moondancer summoned a Bubble Barrier around them and started walking towards the shattered end of the bridge, rolling it like a flexible hamster ball. Bon Bon pushed up next to her, hurried along by the rear wall of the barrier.

“This should absorb one blow before breaking,” Moondancer said. “So all we have to do is make sure we only land once.”

“So I guess that answers the age-old question,” Bon Bon said. “If all our friends jumped off a cliff… yes, we would too.”

Moondancer paused at the edge, ready to roll them off to what hopefully wouldn’t be their doom. “If it’s take a risk, or lose your friends, then it should be an easy choice.” She tried to do the math in her head, comparing the force of impact at terminal velocity to the absorption power of the Bubble, but the numbers kept coming up ‘certain doom’, and that couldn’t be right. “Okay, that was way too corny. Forget I ever said that, please.”

“Eh. All we’re risking is a little pain, and some money to pay off the priest,” Bon Bon added. “And possibly being stuck on the wrong side of an impassible dungeon, so that we can’t actually finish the quest.” She looked over at Moondancer, then set her hooves against the front of the bubble, leaning on it to roll it over the edge. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Wait,” Moondancer said, trying to take a step back, only for her rear hoof to slip out from under her as the bubble one step back was already up off the ground. “This is a terrible idea!” she screamed, as it rolled forwards, and they plummeted into the abyss.

===

Moondancer struggled, and after a few seconds her hoof wrenched free of the glowing river. She set it down one step farther, and ignored the muddy squelch of the lava as it oozed across her hoof, swallowing it again. The next hoof lifted, and found purchase on a cooled crust of rock – with a sudden burst of energy, she scrambled up onto the solid platform, and took a look around.

It was hard to make anything out through the putrid smoke and the waves of heat distorting the air, but she was still heading in the right direction, towards the darkness and hopefully out of the heat. Her magic scraped the magma off her hooves before it set, and she pondered the next move.

“What do you think, Bon Bon? Should I jump for it?” The edge of the glow was closer, but still probably out of her range. “Yeah, I don’t think so either. If I miss I’ll have to dig myself out of the river again, and I might drop you.”

Bon Bon didn’t answer, being completely and thoroughly dead – and also cooked, charred black, and on fire. The stench was… actually not as bad as most of the dead things she’d been around, recently. That didn’t mean she was happy about basting in it, but if Derpy had missed the river of lava and survived the fall, maybe she could bring her back without them having to somehow find their way back to the Giant Floating Crystal in Moriaz.

Moondancer glanced back, and adjusted Bon Bon on her back again, making sure her carbonized limbs were firmly set to hold her in place. “I’d say that I was glad that my protection from fire was working again, but I’m pretty sure this is hurting me more than it’s hurting you.” She sighed, and stepped back into the gooey flow.

An eternity later, she trudged up onto the shore, and would have collapsed right there if a pair of clawed hands hadn’t latched onto the halter of her Battle Saddle and led her further away from the heat.

“You came for us!” Derpy said, flapping happily and helping Spike pry Bon Bon off of her back.

Moondancer stared at her. “Your wings are working again.”

Derpy giggled. “Yeah, that was silly of me, to jump without checking. But I managed to shake free about halfway down! I couldn’t catch up to Spike, though.”

Moondancer groaned, and laid her head on the jagged, stony ground, a hoof over her face. “We could have stayed up on the bridge and waited for you to fly back up.”

“Maaaybe,” Derpy said, looking up at the chasm, uncertainly. “This sort of thing isn’t really safe to fly through. I got kinda toasted swooping through it on the way down, and up would be a lot worse.”

“And hey, you got to do an awesome lava dive,” Spike said, grinning. “Not many ponies get to say that!”

Is There Any Escape, Period?

Bringing back Bon Bon went smoothly, at least. After the required sum of golz was heaped on what was left of her body, and Derpy made a short prayer to the Great Muffin, she popped back to life in a cloud of ash, the charred remains of her skin and gear exploding off her body as the magic brought them back, undamaged.

Well, mostly undamaged. It was still the basic Raise Dead spell, so she needed a bunch of muffins and cinnamon candy until she was all the way back to normal.

“That could have gone better,” she said, trying to wipe the ash off her face, again, but not having much luck without water. “But at least we found everypony.”

Moondancer stood a ways back from the party. The blistering air stunk like the deepest pit of Tartarus, but she was still soaked in roasted pony juice, and nopony wanted to stand near her. Except maybe Spike, but she didn’t feel comfortable with the looks he kept giving her. “I just hope there’s a way back up.”

“There has to be!” Derpy said.

“Does there?” Spike asked, twisting his tail between his claws. “I don’t think we were supposed to come down here. This isn’t part of the plot!”

Derpy tilted her head at him. “But how else would the demons get up? They didn’t have wings.”

“Good point,” Moondancer said. “I hope there’s way back up that doesn’t involve wading through lava.”

Derpy flitted around the sheer cliff that formed the far wall of their lava-rock ‘beach’, staring into the dark, round tunnels that burrowed into it. “We’ll never know unless we look!”

The first tunnel dead-ended after fifty feet, after narrowing to the point where the ponies had to crawl backwards to get out because they couldn’t turn around. The second tunnel seemed better at first, but quickly turned downwards, while the walls became more jagged – they kept it as a possibility, but backed out to look for one that went in the right direction, or at least was easier to walk through without scraping their skin off.

The third tunnel only went a few hundred feet before emerging into a worked corridor, lit by faintly glowing green gems.

“A dungeon!” Spike said, grinning. “There has to be a way out from here!”

“I just hope it’s in our level range,” Bon Bon said, looking either way down the corridor, warily.

In case it wasn’t, they advanced down the corridor in formation, with their weapons drawn and regeneration candies at the ready. Bon Bon hid in the shadows as she scouted ahead, while Spike and Derpy kept Moondancer safe between them.

“These murals,” Moondancer said, lifting a hoof to touch a mosaic of three large horned quadrupeds surrounding a smaller one. “I think I recognize the worksmanship.”

“What?” Derpy asked. “How?”

“Look at these proportions,” she said, drawing her hoof down the legs. “All four legs are identical in length and width, and there’s no sign of perspective. And instead of eyes, there’s a smiley face drawn on a single tile. And in the background… I think those are supposed to be houses? But the door stretches up into the arch of the roof.”

“Huh,” Spike said, stopping to take a closer look at them – he’d registered them as ‘demonic artwork’ almost immediately and stopped paying attention. “What culture does artwork like this?”

“The Canterlot Schoolhouse,” Moondancer said. “This looks like what my classmates and I drew when we were five.”

Bon Bon appeared behind Spike, a grim look on her face. “Girls… I’ve got some good news, and some bad news.”

“What’s the bad news?” Moondancer asked.

Bon Bon rolled her eyes. “The good news is that this isn’t a dungeon. We’re actually in a large underground town, so we should be safe, for the moment.”

“And the bad news?” Spike asked.

Bon Bon shrugged. “You should probably see for yourselves.”

They followed her to the end of the hallway, passing darkened doorways to either side. It opened up into a vast lobby, with a bronze statue of a minotaur holding a flaming sword in the center – flickering with real flames. Bon Bon led them past it to the front door – multiple doors, rather, a whole row of double doors, one of which was open. They emerged into a large open square, set high on a slope in a humongous cavern, the building behind them one of many built into the wall itself. Others covered the slopes and floor and every bit of open space, except for the occasional public square or private courtyard, and the large lake of lava in the center.

The area they stood in was only lightly inhabited, it seemed, but other streets further in were busy – full of creatures walking back and forth on their way to one place or another… but not ponies. Not quite. Yes, there were winged imps, spiky-scaled dragons, and the occasional giant serpent, but by far the vast majority of the inhabitants were nearly ponies, if you ignored the bat-like wings, twisted horns and glowing eyes.

“Are we in Tartarus?” Spike asked. “It looks kind of like Tartarus.”

“I don’t know,” Bon Bon said. “I didn’t really scout around much.”

“Maybe we can ask somepony?” Derpy suggested. “That usually works.”

“Sure,” Moondancer said. “Let’s just walk up and talk to the demon ponies.”

“Then it’s unanimous!” Spike said, sheathing his sword and heading across the square towards the street. “Hey!” he shouted, waving down the pedestrians, “Hey you!”

They got a lot of odd looks from the demon ponies on the street, and the mare they finally approached stared at them in blatant disbelief as they came up to her.

“Hi there!” Derpy said, dashing ahead and holding out a hoof. The demon-mare lifted her own hoof, but instead of clopping against Derpy’s, it split into three clawed toes and latched on, shaking up and down. If she hadn’t been friends with Spike, Derpy might not have recognized the gesture. “My friends and I just got into town and we were wondering, is this Tartarus?”

“No,” the mare said, her voice reverberating strangely as it made its way through her fangs. “Zis is Pandemonium. Vhat… are you? All demons live here, but never haff I zeen ones like you.”

“I’m a pirate!” Derpy said. “Can’t you tell from the eyepatch?”

“I… zee…”

“Do you know where we can find an inn? Maybe a Giant Floating Crystal?” Spike asked. When she just continued to stare at him, he added, “Someplace to rest?”

The demon-pony shrugged, her wings fluttering. “I vas going to ze market later, but ve can go dere now, and find zis place together. All kinds of zings are zold dere, surely rest can be found dere as vell.”

“You really don’t have to,” Moondancer said. “Just pointing us in the right direction would be enough.”

The demon pony tilted her head, and frowned. “You are ze summoner den? To bind me to your vill?” she snapped.

“What?” Moondancer asked.

“She said you don’t have to,” Spike said. “That’s, like, the opposite of binding you, isn’t it?”

The demon scowled. “It implies that she could.”

“I might be able to,” Moondancer said. “I’d need to study the spells first, though.”

“Moondancer, stop talking,” Bon Bon said.

Moondancer stomped a forehoof. “I don’t understand why she’s so touchy! I haven’t done anything.”

The demon’s eyes widened. “Nothing? You deign to permit my actions! Zis is a grave insult.”

“Oh, so it’s weird demon etiquette,” Spike said.

“I think she was just trying to be polite,” Derpy said, moving between the demon and Moondancer before they could start hitting each other. “We’re not from around here so we don’t know how to be polite to demons. But we want to learn!”

“It vould be polite to let us fight,” the demon grumbled.

“Maybe after we find a Giant Floating Crystal?” Spike suggested. “We don’t want her to end up all the way back in Moriaz if she loses.”

Derpy frowned at that, but the demon seemed calmer, so she backed off.

“I vill permit you to live until zen,” the demon said to Moondancer, smiling and showing off her very sharp teeth. “Zat is politeness to you, yes? No?”

“Whatever,” Moondancer said, turning away.

The heroes and their new companion headed down the street towards the city center in uncomfortable silence, for about ten seconds before Spike couldn’t take it anymore.

“So… what’s your name?” he asked the demon-mare.

“Such a forward little dragon!” she said, smiling wide. “Vat vould you pay for such knowledge?”

“What should we call you,” Bon Bon clarified, exasperated.

“Hmmm,” the demon considered, staring off into space for a while. “I cannot resist the pull of your strangeness, even zo it burns my pride. Today, call me Moth.”

===

Moth led them to the marketplace, which was rather bewildering. None of the merchants were selling anything that you might buy in a market on the surface – no food, no clothing, no weapons, not even sundries like rope or nails. Instead, there was a stall advertising nightmares, another supposedly selling memories, and a tiny tent tucked off in a corner whose proprietor claimed to be selling hope. Moth was there for the latter, and in return for exhaling a wisp of emerald light, received a faintly glowing vial, which she jealously tucked away beneath a wing before anypony else could get a good look at it.

“So much for upgrading our equipment,” was Bon Bon’s assessment.

The closest thing to an inn was, as Moth had predicted, a shop selling rest. It had a permanent building, at least, with what could have passed for a skull-and-obsidian-themed tavern in any town on the surface, although there were no other customers, and the shelves behind what would have been the bartender didn’t have anything on them. In the back was the familiar bluish glow of a Giant Floating Crystal, at least.

“Yes! Finally!” Spike said, heading directly for it.

“Wait!” Derpy said, and the others turned to see her still fluttering near the door.

“Come on!” he said, waving her over. “We all have to touch it together.”

“Do we?” Moondancer asked. “The bonds of destiny that link us should be enough to link us all to this crystal. It’s how Derpy’s resurrection spell works.”

“Do you want to test that?” Bon Bon asked.

Moth looked on, confused. “Vat vill touching ze crystal do?”

“It’ll bring us back here when we die, instead of sending us all the way back to Moriaz,” Spike said.

“Ah,” Moth said. “Ve already come back here ven ve die, so ve have no need of it.” She turned towards the shopkeeper. “Vat is zis doing here?”

“It just showed up,” the lizard-like demon behind the counter said, shrugging. “I like it. It’s shiny.”

“Maybe we don’t want to come back here when we die though,” Derpy said. “We don’t even know if there’s a way out.”

“Zere are many ways out,” Moth said. “Take any gate.”

“Cool,” Spike said. “Do any of them lead to the surface?”

“Ze surface of vat?” Moth asked.

“See?” Derpy said. “We don’t need to risk being trapped here anyway. Everypony’s friendly and nopony even wants to fight us –”

“I vant to fight her,” Moth interjected, pointing at Moondancer.

“Most everypony’s friendly,” Spike said. “So what’s the big risk? I mean, we kind of lost the plot by coming down here, but if this is a story-spell we’re trapped in it’ll reroute it to catch us no matter where we are.”

“And if it’s not?” Derpy asked.

“Then there’s probably no way home no matter what we do,” Spike said. “But I’m sure it is!” he added quickly, as Derpy looked like she was about to cry. “Everything’s too convenient for it not to be!”

“It’s like you don’t even care if we ever get home,” Derpy said, pouting.

“I… kind of don’t?” Spike said. “I mean, I have friends I’ll miss but we’ve been having a lot of fun. I’m not in a hurry.”

“I don’t want to stay here forever, but I could do with being ‘trapped’ in an actual city for a while,” Moondancer said. “There’s only one thing I hate more than camping, and that’s climbing mountains. I didn’t know that there was anything I hated more than camping until we had to climb that stupid mountain.” She paused. “I’m lumping ‘wading through lava’ in with the mountain climbing.”

“Staying in one place could help Lyra find us,” Bon Bon said. “She’s got to be here in this world somewhere, and there’s no way she isn’t searching for us. Although… this isn’t really the best place to wait to be found.” She shrugged. “I don’t think we’ll be trapped, though.”

“If you don’t touch it soon, I’m going to fight Moondancer anyvay,” Moth said. “I have been very patient.”

“We have to decide now, then,” Bon Bon said. “Do we checkpoint here, or get sent back to Moriaz? Maybe fail the quest if there’s no other way through, since the mountain is blocked now.”

Moondancer sighed, and closed her eyes for a second. “Derpy, just…” She opened them suddenly. “We won’t be trapped here. I think I know how to get out.”

Derpy hovered over to her. “How?”

“Fire resistance,” she said. “Then we can just fly up the chasm.”

“Oh,” Derpy said. “Okay. I just can’t be trapped here you know? I’ve got Dinky to worry about and Carrot can take care of her for awhile but it’s been a lot longer than awhile and I mean –”

“We won’t be trapped,” Moondancer said. “I promise.”

“Alright,” Derpy said, and landed next to the crystal. Together, they pressed their hooves (and claw) against it, and everything went blue.

When the world came back, Moth looked up from the obsidian table she’d sat down at. “Can ve fight now?”

“Fine,” Moondancer said levitating her staff in front of her. “Everypony stand back.” When the others backed off, she put up a bubble.

Just in time, as Moth wasted no time leaping at her – only to bounce off the bubble and slam awkwardly into some chairs. She shook them off like a dog, and leapt at it again, this time managing to cling to the springy surface. “Raarrr! Even fighting you is frustrating!”

Eventually, she managed to bite and claw at the bubble enough to pop it, at which point Moondancer smacked her in the side of the head with her staff, sending her sprawling again, then took a step back and put up another bubble.

“Woo! Go Moondancer!” Spike said, waving his arms to cheer her on.

“You have my permission to give up at any time,” Moondancer said to the demon, smirking.

Moth’s eyes went flat red, and she started to glow. Faster than the eye could follow, she flung herself towards the bubble headfirst, popping it with her horns – but losing her momentum in the process, leaving herself open for another smack. This time, Moondancer didn’t stop with one blow, whacking the demon over and over each time she tried to get back up.

“Um…” Derpy said, wincing at the sight.

“Stay” *whack* “down!” *whack* Moondancer stood over the twitching demon, pinning her down with a hoof, breathing heavily and brandishing her staff.

Moth coughed, then croaked out, “I yield. Kill me if you vish.”

Moondancer seemed to consider it. Then threw her head in the air with a frustrated growl and backed off. Derpy moved in quickly to offer Moth a muffin.

“Vat is zis?” the demon asked.

“The food of the Goddess!” Derpy said, grinning.

Moth ate it, and soon was able to stand. “You give me mercy. Vat shall I give in return?”

“How about somewhere we can get fire-resistance gear?” Spike suggested. “You’ve been a decent guide so far.”

“Fire what?” asked the shopkeeper, as he set the chairs and tables back in place.

“Fire resistance,” Spike said. “You know, so that you can walk in lava without getting burned?”

“Lava does not burn,” Moth said, looking confused. “Do you mean hellfire?”

“Hellfire?” Moondancer asked.

“It is like fire, except zat it burns,” Moth explained. “Zere is no resistance to it, zo. Zat is vy it is used.”

“We just need to resist normal fire,” Spike said. “I mean, not me, I’m a dragon. But normal fire burns Derpy and Bon Bon there.”

“It would burn me if I didn’t have this armor,” Moondancer said, flicking her tail up to show Moth the leather threaded through it. “It’s made from demon hide.”

“Ah,” Moth said. “I understand. You need to take my hide to make into armor.” She bowed her head, kneeling to Moondancer. “You haff bested me, it is your right.”

“Uh, no,” Spike said. “We need some already made, since we don’t know how to tan hide or make armor.”

“Mmm, a pity,” Moth said, licking her lips as she got back to her hooves. “It has been too long zince I vas flayed.”

That got an awkward silence for a bit, until the shopkeeper chimed in. “Maybe you could check with the cows?” he suggested. “Most of them are into that sort of thing. If anyone knows what to do with flayed demon hide, it’d be them.”

“Ah. I know of zem,” Moth said. “Follow me.”

“Wait –” Moondancer said. “Before we go, I think I’d like to buy some of that rest you sell here. And maybe some ‘cleanliness’ if you’ve got any on tap.”

The shopkeeper tapped his chin thoughtfully. “I think I can scare some up. What are you offering in return?”

“Mercy Muffins?” Derpy suggested, summoning one and hoofing it to him.

He nodded. “You’ve got a deal.”

What Dreams

The ‘Rest’ they’d purchased was a room magically sealed from the outside world, and the ‘Cleanliness’ was a lukewarm bath. “From the Obsidian Forge,” the shopkeeper explained as he poured it out into a large obsidian basin. “It’s recondensed from steam, so it should be pure.”

They made sure to take a drink and fill their canteens before anypony used it as a bath, since apparently running water wasn’t one of the public services of Pandemonium. Then Bon Bon, Derpy, and Spike piled in, since none of them were all that dirty – Bon Bon’s body in particular was almost brand new, and the only filth on it was her own ashes.

Once they were done, Moondancer stripped off her Battle Saddle and sunk into the water. She scrubbed at her hair, mane, and tail until the water was as filthy as she was. “Ugh,” she said, resting her head on the edge with her wet mane hanging limp. “I don’t think it worked.”

“If you vish, I could lick you clean?” Moth offered.

“That might have worked better if you did it first,” Moondancer said. “Also, not in a million years.”

The demon-mare licked her lips. “A pity. You smell delicious.”

“Yeah, I kind of like it,” Spike said. “Maybe I could lick you clean instead? I do myself all the time.”

Moondancer gritted her teeth as Bon Bon and Derpy started to giggle. She clambered out of the bath and slogged her way to the door, leaving a trail of filthy puddles across the rough tiles. “I’m going to get more water,” she said, as she slipped out the door.

The dragonish shopkeeper looked up as Moondancer came down the stairs. “Huh,” he said. “You don’t look rested or clean.”

“The bath wasn’t enough,” she said. “Do you have any soap?”

The shopkeeper thought for a while. “I’m not sure…” he said, stroking his chin. “What’s soap, again?”

Moondancer sighed. “How about another basin of water?”

“I don’t know, if it didn’t work the first time… I don’t have an unlimited supply, you know!” He smiled, at a sudden thought. “I know, how about I lick you clean? You smell delicious.”

===

The resting chamber didn’t have any soft furniture – everything was made out of obsidian or granite – which made it officially the least pleasant place they’d had to set up camp. “I can perch, I guess,” Derpy said, perching on the edge of the basin. The others curled up on the hard floor as best they could.

“If any of you vish to sleep vith me, I am softer zan ze floor,” Moth offered.

“Sleep with you, or sleep on top of you?” Spike asked.

“Ve vould have sex vith you on top,” she clarified.

“No,” Bon Bon snapped, before anypony else could open their mouths. “No sex with demons. That’s rule number one.”

“Actually, it’s rule number three in the Basic Guide to Summoning,” Moondancer said. “Rule number one is ‘don’t summon demons’.”

“I do not like zese rules,” Moth said. “Or ze way you make decisions for Spike. Is he not his own dragon?”

“It’s not about Spike,” Bon Bon said. “It’s about what you’d charge.”

“Sex is my price,” Moth said. “In return for ze softness of my body.”

“He can use my body, free of charge,” Moondancer said, scowling as Derpy started giggling again.

“And if he wants to have sex…” Derpy started, then trailed off. “Wait, can dragons and ponies have foals?”

“No sex!” Bon Bon snapped. “Look, I get it. You’re horny. Spike’s horny. I’m not feeling too hot myself. Moondancer’s obviously repressing something major. But unless we’re going to have some massive orgy –”

Moth perked up at the suggestion.

“—which we’re not, it’d just cause bad feelings all around.”

“My vote’s for the massive orgy,” Spike said.

“You don’t get a vote,” Bon Bon said.

“I’m too tired for an orgy,” Moondancer said, her eyes already closed.

“How about a cuddle-pile?” Derpy suggested, pouncing off her perch to land with her forehooves draped across Moondancer’s shoulders.

Moondancer grunted, but didn’t shake her off. Spike climbed onto Moondancer’s back, straddling her flanks and resting his head on Derpy’s mane. Bon Bon came over and slid up against her side.

Bon Bon looked over at Moth. “Are you going to join us?”

“I do not sleep, zo I haf no need to share softness,” she said quietly. “Sveet dreams.”

===

They awoke, hours later, feeling extremely well-rested. Derpy quickly wriggled into her armor, and started summoning muffins for breakfast while Spike helped braid the Battle Saddle back into Moondancer’s mane and tail. Bon Bon went through all the random things they had in their saddlebags, asking Moth if any of them were valuable to demons.

Spike finished with Moondancer’s tail, and rested his claws on her hips to help himself stand up, only to freeze in place.

Moondancer looked back at him over her shoulder. “Is everything okay?”

“Sorry,” Spike said, pulling his claws back. “I just got a serious case of déjà vu. I think I dreamed about putting your armor back on just like this, except afterwards, um…”

“I think I can guess where this is going,” Moondancer said. “I dreamed about something similar.” Her tail twitched. “Was it a good dream?”

Spike gave a sappy smile, which was answer enough.

Moondancer sighed. “Moth… did you do something to our dreams?”

Moth kept her face impassive. “Vat could I haf possibly done? I vas not even asleep.”

===

Eventually, they were ready to get moving. Moth led them towards the center of the city, since the gate they’d need to take was on the other side of the lake of fire.

“I wouldn’t mind, you know,” Derpy said, out of nowhere. “If you two hooked up.”

Moondancer looked up at her. “What?”

“Bon Bon said it’d be awkward and uncomfortable and cause bad feelings but I just think it would be so cute!” She clutched her hooves together against her chest and grinned.

“And if it went bad, we’d still be trapped with each other for Celestia only knows how long,” Bon Bon said. “It’s a terrible idea.”

“Oh, so what?” Derpy said, waving off the objection. “You guys yell at each other all the time anyway.”

Moondancer and Spike – who was riding on her back, again, so as not to get lost in the crowd of demons – remained extremely silent.

“Come on, come on, one of you ask!” Derpy said.

Spike turned bright red, and buried his face in Moondancer’s mane. Moondancer just scowled.

“Are you done embarrassing them?” Bon Bon asked.

Derpy giggled, and did a little loop-the-loop in midair which turned into a possibly out-of-control swoop that nearly ended with her impaling herself on Moth’s horns. She nodded, giggled some more, and flitted over to whisper very loudly in Bon Bon’s ear, “I bet one of them asks as soon as we’re not watching.”

Moondancer glared at her, then said. “What about the orgy. Is that still on the table?”

“It vould haf to be a large table,” Moth noted, deadpan.

Down on the Farm

“This is exactly what I should have expected, but somehow I didn’t,” Moondancer said, as they approached the gate.

It was visible from a long way off – a massive obsidian arch, filled with swirling red energy. Demons, on hoof or on wing, passed through it in a steady stream, although nopony seemed to be flying or walking back out.

Spike frowned at that. “Is it two-way?”

“It should be,” Moth said. “If it is not, ve can always kill ourselves.”

“Not really a good idea without a way to remove the curse,” Bon Bon said. “But if we find what we’re looking for, we shouldn’t need to fight anything to get back up to the surface, so we can keep that in mind as a last resort.”

As they got closer, and the fiery energy loomed higher and higher over their heads, Derpy asked, “That’s not really fire, is it?”

“I do not know,” Moth said. “I haf never been burned by it.”

“We can check,” Bon Bon said. She drew her cleaver. “I’ll stick it in and see if it gets hot.” She trotted ahead, weaving between the other hoof traffic, and poked the metal end of her weapon into the swirling energy. The others saw her entire body glow red, briefly, and then disappear.

“Or maybe we can’t check,” Moondancer said.

Derpy sighed, and closed her eyes. “It’ll be fine. It has to be.” Eyes still closed, she darted towards the gate, spiraling slowly in midair, until she too vanished through it.

Moth and Moondancer, with Spike still on her back, walked through it with less fanfare. After all, it’s not like the fire could burn them.

===

They woke up in a barn, resting on soft straw as sunlight filtered through small gaps in the wooden paneling of the walls, to the sound of Bon Bon screaming.

Moth tilted her head, but kept her eyes locked on the no-longer-sleeping earth pony, whose scream slowly trailed off as she realized where she was.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Spike asked, scrambling around for his shield and sword, which he found leaning against the wall of the barn, behind them.

Bon Bon blinked at Moth, still standing over her, their muzzles less than an inch apart. “Were you watching me all night?”

Moth blinked. “Vat is a night?”

“I had a horrible dream,” Moondancer groaned. “I was trapped in some sort of illusionary game, and then we completely lost the plot and got trapped in an underground city of demons.”

“If the dream ended with us all jumping into a portal of infinite pain, then that really happened,” Derpy said.

“I was afraid of that,” Moondancer sighed.

“Ugh, we must have all passed out,” Spike said. “That was the worst portal I’ve ever been through. Including the one that turned me into a dog.”

“I found it comforting,” Moth said. “Ve touched the beyond, from vich all demons vere born.”

“Is it supposed to hurt that much?” Spike asked.

“Oh yes,” Moth hissed, eyes drooping as she pictured it again in her mind. “Such pure pain.”

Bon Bon reached up and wiped a bit of drool from the corner of Moth’s lips with her fetlock fluff. The demon pony didn’t seem to notice.

“I guess it wasn’t that bad,” Derpy said. “I mean, it wasn’t any worse than being lit on fire and we don’t have any burns to heal afterwards.”

“That’s your mind erasing the memory of the pain to prevent you from going insane,” Moondancer said. “Repeated trauma can defeat that mechanism.”

“Is there a way back to the city that doesn’t involve going through the gate?” Bon Bon asked.

Moth nodded. “Ve can kill ourselves.”

“If it is death you came for, we may be able to provide,” said a voice from behind her. They looked up to see a demon-cow, mottled red and white with tiny little horns, and bright yellow dragon-like eyes.

“No!” Spike said, scrambling to his feet. “We came for armor. For those two.” He motioned to Bon Bon and Derpy, who were also in the process of standing up. “Moondancer’s demon-hide –”

“You!” the cow said, staring at Moondancer. “Yooooooou. You wear the master’s hide.”

“Oh,” Moondancer said. “Horseapples.”

“You killed us!” the cow said. “You killed me twice!”

“It was really a team effort,” Moondancer said. “I mostly just made bubbles –”

“You!” said another cow, wandering into view.

“Yoooooou!” said yet another demon-cow, coming up behind the first.

More low moans of ‘you’, ‘you’, ‘you’ echoed through the massive barn, as cows gathered around.

“Are we going to have to kill them all again?” Spike asked.

The cows lowered their heads, pointing their tiny horns at the party. Spike raised his shield, while the others readied their own weapons… and then as one, the cows lowered themselves further, kneeling before the party.

“You have brought us to glory,” said the first cow. “Whatever you wish, shall be done, mighty slayers.”

The party stared. Spike started to lower his shield… when a massive ‘BANG’ rang out behind him, and one of the cows in the second row slumped to the ground, as her head exploded.

“Yay!” Derpy said, around her smoking mini-cannon. “Cow fight!”

===

The cows were a lot easier than the party remembered. Bon Bon could take them down in one hit. It usually took Spike two, but he could almost completely ignore their attempts to gore and trample him. Derpy occasionally had to heal him, but was able to spend most of her time firing her Gonne, which dropped a cow with each shot. Before long, they were alone in the barn again, surrounded by a massive pile of dead flesh, but none the worse for wear.

Moondancer dropped the bubble she and Moth had spent the entire fight hiding in. “I guess that’s step one down,” she said. “Do any of you know how to skin the cows and tan the hide? Or sew armor out of them? We came here to ask them how to do that. Not to fight them again!”

“I can skin them,” Bon Bon said, taking out a small utility knife. “I picked up monster-part harvesting back in Castle Town.”

“That’s step two then,” Moondancer said. “Out of four.”

“We can ask the cows to do the rest!” Derpy said. “If they liked us because we killed them once or twice before, they’ll like us even more now.”

Moth nodded. “You fight together vell. It vas a pleasure to vatch. I almost regret not taking part, and falling before your blades… but I vould rather see ze end of your story.”

===

A few of the cows came back before Bon Bon was finished skinning their original bodies. They confirmed that they did, indeed, know how to tan cow hide, and did something incredibly gross with the skinned carcasses to start the process. The rest of the heroes left the barn so as not to have to watch them work, and found themselves in what looked like a small farm on the surface, with the sun merrily shining down overhead. Except that it wasn’t the real sun, since it had an evil face etched into it, and a pair of glowing demon horns, which made the shadows it cast kind of creepy. Moondancer lit her horn and yanked Spike’s gaze away from the evil sun before he blinded himself.

“I wonder what it would be like to be a demon,” Spike said, staring at the blood on his armor instead. He licked one of his gauntlets clean.

“Like… what if we knew we’d just come back after we died?” Derpy asked. “So we didn’t mind fighting and dying over the stupidest little things or just for fun?”

“Nah, we’ve already got that being heroes,” Spike said. “I mean… what if…” He frowned. “I don’t know what I mean.” He started licking the blood off the rest of his armor, a little at a time.

“I think I know what you mean,” Moondancer said. When Spike and Derpy stared at her expectantly, she recoiled a bit. “What? I’m not going to tell you!”

“Why not?” Spike asked, pouting.

“Telling you why I’m not telling would be as bad as telling you,” Moondancer said, with a scowl.

“But telling him that telling him would be as bad as telling him isn’t?” Derpy asked.

Moondancer gave a quick huff. “I think it’s enough indirection for the necessary obfuscation.”

“I know what those words mean,” Spike said, glowering. Then went back to a pout. “Come on, tell me!”

Moondancer sighed. “Derpy, what would it be like if Spike was a demon?”

Derpy frowned. “It would be…. bad?”

Spike froze, wheels turning in his head. Then he frowned, and sat down. “Oh. Oh! But – I’m not –”

Moondancer walked over and yanked him up into a hug, wrapping a foreleg around him and pressing her cheek to the side of his helmet. “I know,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. You’re not a demon, and you’re not going to be. It’s just this world.”

Spike sniffled. “I didn’t…” he rubbed at his eyes, definitely not crying. “I didn’t finish washing, I’m getting blood all over you.”

Moondancer sighed, and squeezed him a little tighter. “I’m not nearly as bothered by that as I should be.”

“Exxxcellent,” Derpy said, rubbing her hooves together as she hovered overhead. “Now kiss!”

===

Bon Bon emerged from the barn a few hours later, wearing Moth’s skin as a ghoulish devil-suit, the demon-pony’s horns and little bat wings taxidermied and still attached. She tossed a folded suit of more conventional mottled demon-cow-hide leather armor towards Derpy.

“Aww, she’s not coming with us?” Derpy said, landing and wiggling out of her armor to try on the new fireproof set. Spike and Moondancer kept their eyes politely averted.

“After seeing us fight, she knew she’d just be a burden,” Bon Bon said. “So she chugged that little bottle of hope she was carrying around, asked me to skin her alive – because apparently she’s into that sort of thing – and then bound her soul into the hide before dying of blood loss. It makes the armor more powerful, but she can’t respawn until it’s destroyed. She hopes that she’ll be able to see the world through my senses as long as I wear it.”

“Oh,” Spike said. “Well, that’s… um…”

“It makes as much sense as anything else she did,” Moondancer said.

“Maybe this is what demons do when they want a vacation?” Derpy suggested. “I mean, that’s what I always do on vacation. I go somewhere where I can just lie around, not doing anything…” she gave a happy sigh, reminiscing. “…maybe find a friend to spend some time inside me.”

Bon Bon and Moondancer groaned. Spike just looked confused. “Do you turn them into a muffin?”

Derpy giggled. “I guess they’re a kind of muffin.”

“No,” Moondancer said. “Let’s just – no. Stop it.”

“Fiiiine,” Derpy said. “But you and Spike really need to kiss. I mean, have you seen his tongue? I bet he’s a great kisser.”

===

From there, it was just a matter of retracing their steps. The hardest part, if you went by the willpower required, was going back through the gate. The hardest part, if you went by ‘most likely to fail’ or ‘required the most brainpower’, was avoiding getting lost in Pandemonium without a guide. The hardest part physically, by far, was actually climbing up out of the chasm – fire immunity from the demon-hide meant that Derpy could carry them without her feathers burning off from the intense heat of the river of lava, but it was still a really long way straight up, without enough room to just soar on the updraft.

The entire tribe of orcs that they had to fight through to get out of the foothills and down to the open plains was a cakewalk, by comparison. They weren’t even the fireproof sort.

Small Village

It was a nice, long, relaxing walk across the open plains, with only the usual packs of bandits and wolves to fight every few hours. They kept heading west, because they didn’t really know where they were going – only that they were searching for the Forest of the Night, where the flutterpony village was ‘hidden in the leaves’. Fortunately, they still had the magic map, and after five long marches and five long rests, they saw a vast forest appear on the northwestern edge of the map, with a small village on the edge.

The village was nestled right up against the forest, surrounded by a high wooden wall, but the wide gateway had no gate to block it, only a small force of guardsponies, led by a bright pink earth pony who waved at them as they approached.

As they got closer, however, his welcoming grin slowly melted. The guards got in position to block the gate and set their spears, while he ran back into the village, screaming “Demons! Demons are attacking!”

“No we’re not,” Bon Bon said, continuing to walk calmly towards the gate and stopping just out of reach of the guards’ spears.

The fleeing pony froze, and turned. “You’re not?” he asked.

“Not attacking, or not demons?” one of the guards asked, a bit muffled by his full-face helmet.

“Not either?” Spike said.

“We’re demon hunters. We fought the demons and made armor out of their hide,” Bon Bon explained.

“A whole herd of them!” Derpy said, grinning.

“We’ve got some extra hide to sell, if you think anypony would be interested,” Bon Bon continued. “It makes fireproof, magic-resistant armor.”

The pink pony’s grin returned, and he pushed the guards out of the way, to either side. “Then come in, come in! Adventurers of all sort are welcome to Small Village! The inn is there –” he gestured to the right, where a massive three-story building took up almost a quarter of the town, “—and the church is there—” he gestured to the left, at a small building that looked more like a one-room schoolhouse than the cathedrals they’d seen elsewhere, “—and the market is straight ahead! We’ve still got an hour or so until resting time, so you should have time to get started at least.”

“Resting time?” Moondancer asked. “Is that like… night?”

The greeter laughed, and shook his head. “Oh, you adventurers and your crazy ideas! No no no, we simply encourage everyone to go to sleep at the same time of day, to better coordinate services. This is only a very small village, after all, and we have so many adventurers always visiting us, searching for the Forest of the Night. But don’t worry, the inn has more than enough room for everyone, and at a very reasonable price!”

“So if it’s not the Forest of the Night, what’s the big forest outside of town then?” Moondancer asked.

“The Forest of the Day, of course,” the pony said, with a thin smile. “You’re welcome to go exploring inside it, if you can clear out enough of the brambles and deadfall to make any progress. I assure you, however, that there’s nothing magical about the forest at all.”

===

Not feeling like they were in any particular hurry, the heroes spent the remaining hours before resting time in the marketplace, selling off their trade goods and some scavenged equipment (the orcs near Death Mountain had dropped several axes in sellable condition, for example) and using the money to refill their provisions and get Spike some new armor. He settled on a suit that looked a lot like his old armor, only made out of better material so it was both stronger and lighter. Bon Bon also traded in her cleaver for a dangerous-looking paring knife.

As the greeter had said, the town was full of other adventurers. Most of them had been stuck there long enough that they’d long since given up competing to find the flutterponies, and instead were sharing any information they’d gathered in the hopes that somepony would be able to put together a complete solution.

“Night time was traditionally the time that ponies spent resting,” Moondancer explained to a large green pegasus with an axe strapped to his back. “Has anypony tried searching the forest during resting time?”

The pegasus scratched at the ground. “Yeah, someone tried that once,” he said, “but the locals caught him trying to sneak out of the inn, and arrested him for disturbing the peace. Cut his head off.” He sliced his feathery wing across his own neck. “You know, as a warning. Then the priest here wouldn’t remove the resurrection curse from him, since he was a criminal, so he had to go home.” The adventurer shrugged. “No one’s tried since.”

When the bell rang that everypony around them recognized as the signal to head in for resting time, they followed the crowd to the inn, tapped the Giant Floating Crystal, and would have rented a room if the inn wasn’t giving them away for free. “Can’t have anyone missing out on resting time,” the innkeeper said, with a friendly smile. “They’d make too much noise and wake everyone else up. Don’t worry about me, I’m making all the golz I need selling food and provisions.”

So they let the concierge show them to their room. There was a suspicious click as the door closed behind them. “We’re locked in, aren’t we,” Moondancer said.

“Don’t try the door,” Bon Bon replied.

“At least we know what we have to do to find the flutterponies,” Spike said. “I don’t think they could have made it any more obvious.”

“Camp outside the town until night falls?” Derpy suggested.

Moondancer shook her head. “We camped outside the town for a week getting here, and never saw the sun set. I’d be willing to bet that this town is built over the entire transitional area. The ponies here know what they’re doing.”

“So we need to hide out somewhere in town,” Spike said. He frowned. “It’d be easy if we could just have Bon Bon do it but I think we all need to go.”

“I can scout for a good spot tomorrow, while the rest of you pretend to search with the other adventurers,” Bon Bon said. “For tonight, we might as well sleep.”

===

They were woken up by an explosion. Which explosion depended on the pony, but all of them were awake by the time the barrage was halfway done. Plaster sifted down from the ceiling, and there was shouting outside the window.

“We surrender! We surrender!” came the desperate, high-pitched voice of the village greeter.

“Kill them all,” was the response, from a voice distorted like one of Vinyl Scratch’s performances.

“What’s going on?” Spike asked.

Derpy was already at the window, trying to tug it open. “Oooh, it’s stuck!” She tugged a little harder, and the whole shutter assembly came off the wall, along with half the window frame. But at least they could see.

It was dark – obviously night time, with a full moon shining down to faintly illuminate the ranks of armored soldiers – some ponies, some dragons, some in weird shapes that didn’t really look like anything familiar – as they hacked and cut their way through the remnants of the city guard as they tried to surrender. Most of them were already dead, scattered around the craters left by the explosions they’d heard. Several buildings were on fire.

The leader was a pony – a unicorn – in black, form-fitting armor with a full helmet and face mask. “Latch the crystal so that we can capture their souls, then burn down the whole village. We know the heroes are here, and we can’t risk them blending in with the population – so leave nopony alive. I’ll be on the ship.”

“Well, this is convenient,” Bon Bon said.

“Assuming we can fight an entire army,” Moondancer replied.

Bon Bon smirked. “The other adventurers can do that. I don’t think this army realizes how many of us are here.”

While the others put on their armor, Bon Bon picked the lock on the door. Moondancer hadn’t actually undressed – the Battle Saddle was comfortable enough to sleep in, and braiding her legs and tail took ages – so she helped Spike fasten the straps on his platemail. It still took long enough that Bon Bon had time to wriggle into the Moth armor before Spike was ready to go.

A few adventurers were already out in the hallway, looking confused but already wielding weapons. “Do you know what’s going on?” one of them asked.

“It’s an invasion!” Spike said, waving his sword. “Wake up everypony! We need to defend the crystal!”

Half the adventurers ran down the stairs to engage the soldiers, while the others started bashing open doors or picking locks. Spike looked down the stairs at the battle there, then back at the hallway where the rest of his party was opening doors and urging the adventurers on. He was just about to run down and help when Derpy yanked him up into the air, dragged him back to their room, and flung him out the window, to join the others who’d already climbed down.

“The counterattack on the crystal drew off most of their reserves,” Bon Bon whispered. “If we’re really quiet, we might make it to the forest before they know we’re gone.”

Those hopes were dashed before they got halfway, as a horn blew behind them, and a glance back showed a patrol pointing and screaming something they couldn’t make out from a distance. There was nothing they could do but keep running, with the soldiers not so close behind, but still too close for comfort. There were a couple of loud ‘bangs’ as soldiers with hand-cannons took pot-shots, but nothing hit anypony.

The brambles that choked the Forest of the Day were nowhere to be seen – the Forest of the Night was coniferous, with a thick layer of pine needles choking out any underbrush.

“We made it!” Derpy said happily, as they ran under the tree cover. Covering them from sky, that is – the forest offered no cover whatsoever from the soldiers on their tail.

“So where are the flutterponies?” Spike asked, clinging to Moondancer’s back. Even with his new armor he was still much slower than even the least athletic pony.

“I don’t know. Somewhere in the forest?” Moondancer said. “We didn’t exactly get precise directions!”

“We’d better find them fast, or we’re going to see if we really can take on an army,” Spike said, then pointed to the side. “Look, there! I saw something glowing!”

It turned out to be a pile of golz, helpfully marked by a glowing mushroom. Bon Bon scooped it up, out of habit. Now that they knew what to look for, there were other glowing piles of treasure, all over the forest. Bon Bon led them towards the nearest one.

“Is this really our highest priority?” Moondancer shouted, as they zig-zagged through the forest, grabbing all the loot.

“Do you have a better idea for a search pattern?” Bon Bon asked.

“Watch out!” Spike said, and they all screeched to a halt as an enemy patrol appeared in front of them.

“Dark Eidous!” shouted Moondancer and a robed soldier, at the same time. Lightning crackled down randomly, hitting both parties. “Dark Eidous Dark Eidous Dark Eidous…”

As the two of them chanted, calling down the curse on their respective enemies, Spike focused on holding off an armored soldier who was trying to get at Moondancer, while Bon Bon and Derpy took care of the soldiers with cannons, in their own way. It was a little hard to tell for sure, in the dark of night, but Spike’s opponent looked awfully like a giant banana…

In the end, the enemies couldn’t stand up to the heroes – partly because the heroes were just stronger, and partly because the lightning storm barely tickled them in their demon armor, while the soldiers took the hits at full force. Spike was a little worse for wear, but nothing that a muffin couldn’t fix.

“That’s completely unfair,” Moondancer said, as Bon Bon quickly checked the corpses for anything valuable. “That’s my spell. I invented that spell! How come those jerks know it?”

“Maybe they work for… him?” Derpy suggested.

“But we haven’t even started the quest to find him!” Spike said. “And he’s already sending out the army after us? That shouldn’t happen until act 3.”

“That general of theirs is dangerous,” Bon Bon said. “If they’re genre savvy, we can’t count on them making the usual mistakes.”

“Those troops were level-appropriate, though,” Spike said. “So someone in the chain of command is following the rules.”

“I hope that’ll be enough to save us,” Bon Bon said. “Come on, we need to get moving before the rest of them find us.”

“Yeah…” said a voice from the darkness, as an armored unicorn lit his horn. “About that.” Looking around, they saw three more groups of enemies, encircling them on all sides. “This is where you surrender,” the soldier said.

“If we surrender, you’ll kill us,” Moondancer said. “Historically, that’s why armies have accepted surrender – so that people will surrender to them in the future. You might want to remind your general of that after you respawn.”

The unicorn chuckled. “You can’t possibly expect to defeat us all.”

“Why not?” Derpy said, grinning. “Come on, which of you wants to fight us first!”

A pegasus with a gun started to raise a hoof, but the unicorn grabbed it in his magic and forced it back down. “We’re not taking turns!”

“You have to,” Derpy said. “You were in three groups chasing us, so you have to fight us one group at a time. It’s just basic logic.”

“Which of you spotted us first?” Bon Bon said. “To be fair, they should get the first shot.”

“We’re not here to be fair!” the soldier complained. “The general wouldn’t want us to ‘take turns’ – we’re here to complete our mission, no matter what.”

“Is it really worth the risk?” Moondancer said. “If you attack us all at once, we can hit you all with one area-effect spell – and then that’s it, your mission fails. If you attack in groups, then you can watch our strategies and adjust for them, instead of risking it all on one roll of the dice.”

“She has a point –” said one of the robed soldiers, who looked a lot like a giant strawberry.

“No she doesn’t!” the unicorn said. “Ignore their lies. Attack, now! No prisoners!”

Moondancer put up a bubble around the party, catching the soldiers’ first round of attacks. “This won’t hold long,” she said, reaching into one of her cornucopia sacks and pulling out a firebomb. “Time for plan B.”

“We have a plan B?” Spike asked.

Moondancer tossed the firebomb at the bed of pine needles she was standing on, setting them alight. “Burn everything.”

As the bubble fell, the soldiers reeled back from the roaring flames – then backed up further as Spike’s fire breath made a nearby tree go up like a torch. A few of them fired their cannons blindly into the flames, but with no way to tell if it was even having any effect, they soon gave up and ran off, trying to stay ahead of the quickly building blaze.

===

“Oh, that was clever,” said the enemy general, from the deck of her airship, as she saw the forest below go up in flames. “Burning down the forest should keep anypony from trying to hide in there while we secure the town. Captain, find out who was responsible and give them a medal. We need to reward initiative!”

Flutter Valley

“Utter Flutter!” came the cry of several ponies in unison as they rapidly fluttered their wings, and a fierce gust of wind cleared away the smoke from a small patch of the burned forest, revealing three ponies and a dragon coughing and squinting in the morning sun.

“Hey, look at that,” Moondancer said. “We’re alive.” She tried to take a deep breath, but fell into a coughing fit instead, puffs of ugly gray smoke emerging from her mouth and nose. “Chalk another one up for implausible magical healing.”

“How did you know the antidote candies would work against smoke?” Spike asked.

Bon Bon shrugged. “How do you think smoke inhalation kills you? Magic?”

“It superheats your lungs and burns you to death from the inside,” Derpy said. “But we were all protected from fire, so yay! No fatalities this time!” She looked up at the trio of butterfly-winged ponies staring down at them. “And we found the flutterponies!”

“Are you the ones who set our forest on fire?” the flutterpony in the middle asked, peering at them suspiciously.

“No,” Moondancer said quickly.

“It was the soldiers,” Bon Bon added.

The flutterpony smiled. “Then thank the goddess you survived! Welcome to Flutter Valley. Come with us, and we’ll take you to the village!”

===

The village wasn’t far, as those things went – maybe an hour’s trot, since they couldn’t all fly. After realizing how slowly they were moving over the uneven ground, two of the flutterponies rushed on ahead. The slowest to react was left to guide them in, a green-furred, white-maned flutterpony apparently named ‘Lilypad’.

“So this is the flutterpony village where we can find the four magic rings, right?” Spike asked.

Lilypad tilted her head. “I wouldn’t know anything about that. I mostly just water the lilies.”

“So they drafted everypony for weatherwork?” Derpy asked. “I hate it when they do that. They never ask me and I have to sit home and watch and it’s just completely embarrassing.”

“We don’t really work the weather like pegasi would, but it takes a team to Utter Flutter, so…” Lilypad giggled. “Yeah, they were scraping the bottom of the barrel. We should be finished soon, though. Many wings makes light work!”

“We really need to find those rings, though,” Spike said. “Who knows how long it’ll take for the soldiers to follow us? We need to be gone or they’ll kill everypony looking for us.”

“They’ll probably kill everypony anyway,” Bon Bon said. “That seems to be their thing.”

Lilypad frowned. “Kill everypony?”

“We should have until tomorrow morning,” Moondancer said. “They have to enter the forest at night, then wait until morning for it to transfer back here. That’s assuming that the damage we did to the forest didn’t break the portal completely.”

Lilypad whirled on them. “You said you didn’t burn down the forest!”

“Um…” Spike said.

“It caught fire during a fight,” Bon Bon explained. “The soldiers were using a lot of lightning spells.”

“Oh,” Lilypad said. “Well… okay then. But I’ve never heard of any magic rings. You probably want to talk to the queen.” She led them on for a few more minutes, heading towards a large, unburned stand of trees, towering over the smoking remains of the forest. “And don’t worry about the soldiers finding you. No one finds our city without our help.”

“It’s hidden in those trees, isn’t it,” Bon Bon said.

Lilypad nodded eagerly. “Yep! Completely invisible. How’d you guess?”

===

From inside, the city wasn’t invisible. The platforms were blocked off from the sky by the canopy, and camouflaged from underneath, but once you flew up to them they were painted in all sorts of bright colors and full of flowers, shiny crystals, and flutterponies going about their daily business. At least, that’s what Derpy told them when she came back down after realizing they had no way to follow.

“I guess you can lift us up one at a time?” Spike suggested.

“No no, there’s a ladder!” Lilypad called down from above, giggling at them. “Just a minute!”

After a few seconds a rope ladder unrolled from the edge of one of the platforms. Bon Bon wasted no time clambering up it like it was a perfectly normal thing for a pony to be able to do, and Spike didn’t have much trouble with it either, although it kept twisting and swinging back and forth and there wasn’t anything stable nearby to brace against. So he was only halfway up when he realized that Moondancer wasn’t following.

She was still at the base of the ladder. Upside down. With the ropes twisted around one of her hind legs, which was supporting all her weight, and her neck, which thankfully had some slack. “Help?”

Derpy and Spike helped untangle her, and then Derpy gave her a quick lift up to the platform, which was indeed quite colorfully decorated. Spike and Moondancer took some time to gawp at the crystals and flowers respectively, and when they looked up Derpy was gone.

“We should go find her,” Spike said. “Bon Bon too.”

“And the queen, apparently,” Moondancer added. She stopped a random passing flutterpony. “Excuse me, do you know where we could find the queen?”

“In the palace of course!” the flutterpony replied, with a grin. “Far end of the city – just go… thataway.”

The next platform ‘thataway’ was twenty feet above the one they were on, connected by another ladder.

“Nope,” Moondancer said, looking it over.

“Um…” Spike said. “I can find Derpy and bring her back?”

Moondancer looked down at him, then up at the ladder. “I have a better idea.”

Which was how Spike found himself letting Moondancer ride him, for a change.

===

Thankfully, the way to the palace wasn’t all ladders. They caught up with Bon Bon and Derpy on a central platform connected to half a dozen others by fragile-looking rope bridges instead. The bridges were rickety, unstable, and obviously seldom-used, but they had planks woven in to make a floor, at least, so Moondancer could navigate them. They spent some time at the market, looking over the flutterponies’ selection of weapons and armor for sale, none of which were especially tempting except for a sturdy-looking crystal scepter that was both enchanted to improve magic, and useable as a bludgeon with some magic enhancing its blows. It clashed horribly with Moondancer’s Battle Saddle – lime green crystal set in pale wood did not go well with red leather straps – but it was a far better fit for her combat style than the frost staff she’d picked up in Moriaz to replace her broken scythe, since the staff only enhanced cold damage spells, of which she knew exactly zero.

“So, we found the inn,” Bon Bon said. “We should all tag the crystal, but do we need to take a rest? It’s morning, so we’d be done before nightfall – we have the time.”

“Let’s just get this over with,” Moondancer said. “The queen’s supposed to be ‘thataway’.”

“In the big crystal palace?” Derpy asked, squinting her un-patched eye in that direction.

“Sounds like a good place to find a queen to me,” Bon Bon said. “I just hope she actually knows about these rings.”

===

“Welcome! Welcome honored heroes!” said Queen Rosedust, as the four of them entered her throne room. “It’s been nearly an age since we last saw a group of young heroes come searching for our rings. Please, avail yourselves of everything our humble city has to offer – your journey here must have been long and harrowing, and I would like nothing more than to hear you tell your tale at the grand feast we’ll prepare in your honor!”

“We’d really rather just get the rings first,” Moondancer said. “We’re being chased, and you’re probably safer if we’re not here.”

The queen laughed. “Nonsense! Our realm is warded all about by the dark of night, and only the Heroes of Destiny have ever found it.”

“My queen!” said a flutterpony, flying in through the door and ignoring the herald who was about to announce him. “We’ve cleared away the last of the smoke, and it revealed a massive airship, hovering over the forest! They must have floated into our realm during the night!”

“Troubling,” the queen said. “But still nothing to worry about. Our city is hidden so cleverly, no enemy has ever found it.”

The messenger bowed, and left… only to be replaced by another, seconds later. “My queen! The airship appears to be heading directly for the city! They must have somehow guessed our location!”

“Somehow,” Bon Bon muttered.

The queen frowned. “We are not without our defenses –”

There was the familiar roar of cannon fire from outside the palace, and the all-too familiar sound of explosions and screams, as the bombardment washed over the city. A one-winged flutterpony staggered into the throne room, cradling her forelimb. The herald started to announce her but was cut off by her urgent message: “My queen! Our defenses have been destroyed by the enemy cannons!”

“The rings?” Moondancer asked. “Please?”

“Our people will not go down without a fight!” the queen insisted fluttering up into the air. “They will never set foot in my palace!”

There was a high-pitched wail from outside the doors, and they shattered into glittering dust. Slowly, contemptuously, the enemy general walked into the room, her hooves clopping loudly on the crystal floors. Behind her were a hundred troops, of all pony tribes and species and (apparently) varieties of giant fruit. None of the queen’s soldiers even attempted to put up a fight, instead forming a wall to protect their leader.

The herald picked himself up, shook off the glittering gravel, and started to announce: “Commander of the sixth army of the north, Envoy of he who must not be named, Conqueror of Flutter Valley, may I present General --”

“Surrender the Heroes!” the general proclaimed, in her low-pitched, distorted voice.

The heroes had already scampered out the back way, at this point, guided by one of Rosedust’s maids. “The rings are in the basement,” she whispered to them. “Down these stairs! Be quick, heroes!”

The staircase spiraled down into darkness, with solid wood replacing the blindingly bright crystal of the palace and leaving them all stumbling in the dark and mostly feeling their way down. Somehow, nopony broke a leg, and they emerged into what looked like an ordinary wine cellar, with walls of stone and sturdy wooden shelves.

“I don’t see any rings,” Spike said. “Does anyone have a light? I’m still half-blind… There was this part of the roof that was reflecting the sun right into my eyes.”

Moondancer lit up her horn, but all it seemed to do was cast more shadows.

Derpy reached up and switched her eyepatch to her other eye. “Aha!” she said, and led them around the edge of one of the shelves, where a gap between it and the wall was hidden in shadow. And there, at last, were the magic rings – color coded red, blue, green, and yellow, on illuminated pedestals with plaques explaining their function.

“One for each of us,” Spike said. “I think I remember this color coding – blue was wizard, red was warrior…”

“I’ll take the red ring,” Bon Bon said. “It increases melee damage, and that’s mostly what I do.”

“Um… green was thief?” Spike continued. “Right?”

“Ooh, the green one is perfect!” Derpy said, reading its plaque. “It makes me faster! So I can summon more muffins for you all!”

Moondancer levitated the yellow ring over to Spike. “Yellow ring increases toughness… and critical hits for some reason, but toughness sounds like what you need.”

“Yeah, okay, nevermind,” Spike said, putting on the yellow ring, which fit snugly onto one of his foreclaws. “I was probably remembering them wrong anyway.”

“Blue is definitely for wizards,” Moondancer said, slipping the blue ring over her horn. “It’s more spell power.”

Derpy tried following suit, but the ring just slipped off her hornless forehead and clattered to the ground.

“Here, let me,” Bon Bon said, picking it up. “Hold still.”

Derpy blinked. “Still for wha – aargh!”

Bon Bon shoved the ring into the cut she’d sliced in Derpy’s ear. “Now eat a muffin to heal it over.”

“My ear! My poor ear!” Derpy whimpered, circling in place to try to see it and forcing Bon Bon to circle around her to keep holding the ring in place. “It hurts!”

“So eat a muffin!” Bon Bon said.

Derpy stopped short, almost making Bon Bon trip over her own feet as she had to stop as well.

“Oh, good idea.”

Sure enough, the muffin healed the cut around the ring, leaving it firmly stuck in place.

“Does it work if you wear it like that?” Spike asked.

“Umm…” Derpy said, swooping around to see if she felt any faster. “I can’t really tell. Is yours working?”

Spike stared at his ring for a while. “Yeah, huh. I bet if we could see our own stats we’d see the bonus.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Bon Bon said, balancing her knife on a hoof and offering it handle-first towards Derpy. “We really just wanted them as a symbol that we’re the heroes.” Derpy reached out her mouth for the knife, only for Bon Bon to snatch it away at the last second, and offer it to Spike instead.

“Your ear?” Spike asked, taking it. At her nod, he carefully sliced into her ear, ignoring her sudden hiss.

“Wow,” Bon Bon said, as she held her own ring in place and waited for Derpy to summon another muffin. “That really does hurt.”

===

The heroes took the escape tunnel located conveniently behind the rings’ chamber. The exit door was stuck, but they managed to smash it open, and emerged into what probably would have been a secluded grove if they hadn’t just burned down the entire forest. Instead, they found themselves among fallen, charred logs, completely exposed to view. The airship hovered just overhead, the roar from its lift rotors deafening.

A large dragon with a very fancy hat looked down at them over the ship’s railing, and said something that they couldn’t make out.

Spike shouted something back up at him that not even the ponies standing right next to him could make out.

The dragon soldier frowned, and drew his sword, pointing it at them, while shouting something else. Spike drew his own sword, and made a ‘come on’ motion with his shield hand.

The other dragon tilted his head, then turned to shout something at the troops standing behind him. Eight of them – mostly dragons and bananas – dropped into place around the party, surrounding them.

The heroes were badly outnumbered, but the soldiers were badly outclassed, and after a short fight the last banana fell to the ground, clutching at the fatal slit in its peel. Immediately, without even a pause to loot, another squad dropped down to replace them.

And another, after them.

And another.

At some point, the heroes lost count of how many waves they’d fought off. A few waves later, Moondancer tried to surrender, and got stabbed in the chest for her trouble. Derpy swooped down to resurrect her, but Bon Bon stopped her with a hoof and shook her head, then turned to the enemies and dropped her weapon, letting them skewer her on their spears.

Derpy cringed, and closed her eyes as they came at her, shuddering and twitching as a soldier’s spear found her throat. She thrashed around for a bit before running out of strength and lying still.

Spike didn’t notice any of this, unable to hear what was going on over the noise from above and with poor peripheral vision from his helmet. Once he was the last, however, the soldiers were able to hold him at bay with their longer weapons while the gunners and wizards pummeled him with cannon and lightning until, eventually, he was too battered and bruised to stand.

The soldiers gathered up the heroes’ bodies, and all of them were hauled up onto the airship.

Airship Antics

Moondancer awoke feeling much better than she expected. There was no full-body ache from the Giant Floating Crystal’s resurrection curse, and the constant low-level itch from the Battle Saddle she usually slept in was gone as well. She was lying on a bare wooden floor, but a soft, warm, scaly dragon was cradled between her hooves. She absently stroked a hoof down his side, and he shifted a bit in response.

She looked up and saw the bars of the jail cell, and everything made a little more sense.

She shook Spike awake, and got to her hooves. While he was blinking and looking around, she kicked Bon Bon in the shoulder. Derpy stirred as well, opening both eyes and blinking – whoever had stripped them had been thorough, and even her eyepatch was missing.

Well, not missing. All their equipment was spread out on a table not ten feet from the bars of their cell.

“That’s convenient,” she said, lighting her horn to try to fetch her saddlebags. The spell didn’t make it past the bars. “Okay, slightly less convenient.”

“They’re following the rules,” Spike said. “They fought us in small groups, and then threw us in prison with no one watching us so that we could escape, and all our stuff has to be right there or else we wouldn’t be able to fight out way out of the castle.”

“Airship,” Bon Bon corrected.

“Well, yeah,” Spike said. The noise from the engines wasn’t as loud inside the ship as it had been outside of it, but it was still unmistakable. “Metaphorical castle.”

“Castle in the sky!” Derpy said, grinning. “So when do we bust out of here?”

“You do not,” said a growly voice from out of view, and then a large dragon walked in from the next room – large enough that he had to duck to move around inside the ship. He was wearing a fancy three-cornered hat and an embroidered uniform coat, and was quite obviously some sort of officer. “Welcome, ex-heroes of destiny,” he said, holding up one of his claws to admire the four colorful rings arranged on his fingers. “I’m afraid the cage you’re in is quite escape-proof.”

“Magic-proof, at least,” Moondancer said cautiously.

“The bars are also fire-proof, unbendable, and the lock is quite impossible to pick, at least for people of your… tech level.” His face twitched. “I may believe in following the rules, but I’m not a fool.”

“Why aren’t we dead?” Derpy asked. “I’m pretty sure we were about to be dead.”

The dragon smiled. “I had you resurrected, of course.”

“But how?” Derpy tilted her head. “Did you join our party while we were all out? The spell only works on party members.”

“You were linked to the rings,” the dragon said. “That was enough for the Flying Spaghetti Monster to bring you back, according to my pirates. You may be linked to them still, I suppose… but I assure you, these rings are mine now, and will remain mine until I deliver them to my master, along with the four of you. A matched set, you might say.”

“So why did you kill us in the first place, if you were just going to take us prisoner?” Moondancer asked, rubbing at her chest, where she could still almost feel the spear stabbing her. AGAIN. She hated being stabbed. “We were trying to surrender.”

“I was under orders,” the dragon replied. “The general was quite explicit – the four of you were to die.” He chuckled. “I’m sure she’d be mortified at what I did afterwards – even if true death isn’t an option, there are ‘safer’ ways to transport your souls.” He scowled. “But I’m tired of her meddling. Her disruptive ideas. Her ‘common sense’.” He almost spat the words. “You are my prisoners, and I will transport you in the traditional fashion. You will not escape. I will present you to my master and he will be forced to admit that the old ways work! Perhaps then he’ll reign in her depravity.”

“You really don’t like her,” Spike said.

“She’s been in this world for but a few months, and already she’s wormed her way into a place at my master’s side, as one of his high commanders! It’s obscene. I don’t know what witchcraft –”

“Is she sleeping with him?” Derpy asked.

The dragon stared at her. “What?”

Derpy nodded sagely, although her eyes unfocused and somewhat ruined the effect. “It really sounds like she’s sleeping with him. Have you tried seducing him yourself?”

Spike covered his muzzle to stifle a laugh.

“I’m – what? No! My master would not lower himself to…” He raised the claw with the rings to his forehead, and pressed the fingers against his scales. “Enough. I’ve told you my plans and my reasons, so now I must retire to manage my minions from my cabin upstairs. If you need anything, scream at the top of your lungs, in vain, because these doors are thick enough to muffle any sounds you make so that they’ll never be heard over the engines.” He smirked, saluted them, and slammed the door behind himself as he left.

“Alright,” Bon Bon said. “Let’s take a look at this lock.”

===

The lock was, in fact, impossible to pick with mechanical picks. “It’s not really a lock so much as a giant magnet,” Bon Bon said after examining it for a while. “I’m not sure how they open it, but the mechanism isn’t here.”

“So that’s all it takes to make a lock unpickable?” Spike asked. “Magnets?”

“Giant magnets,” Bon Bon said. “Normal magnets you can just wedge something between them, or use magnets of your own. The one they’re using here is way too strong and I don’t see a mechanism for prying it off to let us out. It’s easy to make a lock unpickable if it can’t be opened at all.”

“They probably just turn the magnet off,” Moondancer said. “It’s a simple spell, from what I remember of it, but I don’t actually know it by heart.” She shrugged. “The cage is warded anyway.” They had, of course, already verified the dragon’s other claims.

“So we need to wedge it open?” Derpy asked, “I can make a wedge!” She kicked at the floor a few times, until one of the boards splintered and bent. She pried it up with her teeth, only for the forehoof she was bracing against to suddenly crack right through the floor. “Ahh! I’m stuck!”

“Here, let me help,” Spike said, grabbing hold of her sides.

“Nooo, if you pull me up there’ll be so many splinters!” Derpy said, shaking her head and flapping her wings to drive Spike off.

“What… what the ever-fluffing buck…” Bon Bon said, staring.

Derpy, waved her free hoof. “I don’t know what went wrong!”

“No, I think what she means is –” Moondancer started, then grabbed Spike’s tail in her magic and dragged him back. “Spike, stop that. What she means is that the floor is made of wood. Breakable wood. Is it even fireproof?”

Spike froze, and looked down at it. “Stand back, and let me check.”

Derpy quickly and expertly pulled her hoof up out of the hole, and pressed it against Spike’s muzzle. “No. I’ve got this.” She grinned, and started bouncing up and down on all four hooves, singing along as her hooves clopped against the floor with each syllable. “Mer-ry-had-a-lit-tle-lamb-*smack*-lit-tle-lamb-*crunch*-lit—”

There was a thump from the deck below, as Derpy vanished into a pony-sized hole in the floor.

“What are you doing here?”

Derpy’s voice replied, “I don’t know, where am I?”

“Get out of here! There’s no prisoners allowed in the engine room!”

“Oh no,” Spike said.

“Ooooh, is this the engine?” Derpy asked.

“What?” Moondancer asked, looking at Spike. “What’s wrong?”

Derpy answered for him, in a way, “What does this button do?”

“Yeah, this isn’t good,” Bon Bon said.

There was a loud whistling noise, and Derpy squealed in alarm, then with the sound of crunching metal the whistling cut off.

“We’d better get down there,” Spike said, jumping into the hole.

Aside from Derpy, the room was deserted – whatever she’d already done to the engine had convinced the engineers to run for their lives. Bon Bon and Moondancer dropped down behind him as he tried to figure out what she was doing now.

“Are… are you just hitting random buttons?” Spike asked.

“All the lights keep flashing red!” Derpy whined, spinning a large wheel until it came right off its axle and clanged to the ground next to her, making three more red lights start flashing. “I don’t know what happened? It was leaking steam so I kicked the pipe…”

Moondancer’s eyes focused on a crushed pipe, which had a now-silent pressure relief valve just above the crushed section. “No time,” she said, grabbing Derpy in her magic and dragging her bodily across the floor towards the others. She squished them as close to her as she could, before shouting, “Big Bee’s Bubble!”

Then everything exploded in steam. The bubble, with the heroes inside it, bounced to the far corner of the room, where it wedged into the corner behind a flipped table that they hadn’t even seen in the room. But weeks of constant use had strengthened the spell, and it held. When the steam cleared, they found themselves hidden in the corner, underneath a hole where the ceiling had collapsed, dropping the table with all their equipment, which was now laid out in convenient piles around them. The room was lit now by the orange glow of an open fire, which was not really any friendlier than the previous flashing red warning lights.

Moondancer dropped the bubble, and they started scrambling into their armor.

“Good job, Derpy,” Bon Bon said. “But now we need to get off the ship.”

“We need to get the rings back first,” Spike said, while he frantically worked to braid Moondancer’s armor back into her tail and mane. “The captain has them, right?”

“A ship like this probably has more than one engine,” Moondancer said, levitating the pieces of Spike’s armor into place and fastening the straps. “But if it catches fire…”

“We’re fireproof?” Derpy pointed out, wriggling into her armor.

“This is your, uh, helmsman speaking,” came a tinny voice from a box lying on the floor next to the blasted-open door out of the engine room. “We appear to have lost power to the starboard engine, so we’re losing altitude pretty fast. There’s no need to panic – we should be good for a water landing in roughly fifteen minutes.”

“Aaand it’s a timed mission,” Spike said, scowling. “I hate timed missions.”

There was a lurch, and a sudden silence, except for the crackling of the flame and the distant sound of wind.

“Okaaaay… still no need to panic. Engineering is telling me the port engine can’t support the weight of the ship on its own, so we’re going to autorotate and splash down a little harder than expected. Everyone brace for impact in… ten minutes.”

Spike gave a muffled “Oof!” as Moondancer’s magic slammed all the rest of the pieces of his armor onto him at once. The intricate braiding around her legs and tail was replaced with a simple spiral, that she tied off at the end. Bon Bon and Derpy were already in their own armor, of course.

“Time to go,” she said, taking a step with a somewhat stiff gait.

Spike twisted his helmet around so that he could see out the faceplate, and stumbled over to the door to check the hallway. “Coast is clear.”

“Go go go!” Bon Bon said, and they all rushed out of the engine room and started casting about to try to get their bearings.

“I’ve got some good news and some bad news,” said the helmsman’s voice again, this time from a speaker set near the ceiling as they ran down the hall and around a corner, searching for a stairwell. “The good news is, we just broke through the cloud cover and the jagged mountain peaks of the New World are looking awfully pretty right now – if you look off the starboard side, you can see a rainbow!” There was a pause, during which the ship lurched again. “The bad news is, we’re a little off course and instead of a safe splashdown in the Sea of Ice, we’re heading right for New Mech City, and when we hit we’ll be going fast enough to kill a bunch of civilians. Sooo I’ll be arming the self destruct now, to destroy the ship at a safe altitude. Five minutes to detonation.” There was a pause. “Panic is now authorized. Go crazy, folks.”

===

The heroes spent the next few minutes dodging enemies, as they searched for the captain and the stolen rings. Literally dodging them, for the most part, as the enemies were panicking, as instructed, and tended to run screaming in straight lines unless somepony got in their way, which was enough of a distraction for them to recognize the escaped prisoners.

And then they’d have to fight them, and nopony had time for that.

The only real obstacles to their progress were the flagrantly displayed piles of golz and other treasure in the various rooms they passed, tempting them to stop and collect them (“I’ll catch up,” said Bon Bon more than once) and the slow destruction of the ship itself, as the fire and damage spread and was only exacerbated by the self-destruct working its way towards final detonation. At one point they would have had to backtrack to find spare parts to repair a broken console spraying fire across the only passage towards the stern of the ship if they hadn’t all been immune to fire.

There was another way to go – towards the bow – but that led through the open deck which was literally packed with soldiers, and no one was about to second-guess Moondancer’s decision to block the door with every crate in reach of her magic.

But they were immune to fire, and the captain’s quarters were in the stern, so they managed to find him with nearly two minutes left on the clock.

“I should have known it would come to this,” the dragon scowled, standing up from his throne-like reclining chair to face them. “But don’t think you’ve won! Even if you –”

“Dark Eidous!” shouted Moondancer, summoning lightning to strike him. Derpy followed up with a shot from her cannon, which had no other target than the looming captain.

“Sorry,” Spike said, running up and whacking him with his shield to get his attention. “We really don’t have time for a monologue.”

“NO!” thundered the captain, smacking Spike to the side. His massive claw closed around the smaller dragon’s throat, and he lifted him into the air to scream at him face to face. “If I have to face the heroes in combat, I will get my monologue! You will not deny me this!”

Spike opened his muzzle, and blew a jet of fire in his captor’s face. This didn’t hurt him much, since he was a dragon as well, but it distracted him long enough for Moondancer and Derpy to get off a few more shots, although Moondancer was using magic missiles since the lightning might have hit Spike too.

“You are gnats!” roared the dragon. “Insignificant gnats! Fools, charlatans, false heroes!”

“Got the rings,” Bon Bon said, reappearing behind Moondancer. “Are we going to finish this fight?”

“I don’t see how we could retreat with him holding Spike like that,” she said, sending another teacup from the captain’s cupboard smashing into his arm at barely-subsonic speeds.

“Are you okay, Spike?” Derpy asked, carefully sighting her cannon to aim at the captain’s head, only for the kick to ruin her aim, again, and send the cannonball careening off the side wall and the ceiling to smack him in the shoulder. “Do you need a muffin?”

“I’m fine,” Spike said, wiggling helplessly in the dragon’s grasp. His arms were pinned, and his fire breath was useless, but in turn the dragon’s attacks weren’t doing much to him through his armor. “Just holding his attention, like I always do! Heh heh.”

The dragon ignored them all, in favor of continuing to rant at his captive audience. “How can you be heroes when you support the rule of the Immortal Emperor? That fiend in pony shape who crushes the spirit and creativity of all the world’s people? Only my master sees through his lies!”

“That’s great,” Spike said, “But uh, we kind of want to go home? So we need to complete our quest. Which means we need to start our quest. Which means getting the rings. Which we did! Twice now. So if you’ll just put me down, we’ll go find an escape pod or something and be out of your spines.”

“I think not,” the captain said. “In seconds, the ship will be destroyed, and all of us along with it – and my master will control our resurrection. All I need to do is hold on for a few more –” His eyes went wide, and he coughed. His grip on Spike momentarily tightened, then went slack, as he collapsed back into his chair, blood bubbling through his lips as he clutched at his throat. “No…. escape…” he burbled, then his eyes glazed over and he was still.

Bon Bon wiped off her fruit knife on her armor. “Alright. Escape pod, now.”

“Ten seconds to detonation!” came the cheerful voice of the helmsman. “Eight. Seven. Six...”

“There’s no escape pod!” Spike said, looking around the cluttered room. If there was such a pod, it was too well hidden for them to find in five seconds.

“Window, now!” Moondancer shouted, snatching up Spike and using him as a battering ram as she leapt over the captain’s desk and smashed through the glass panes. Derpy was right behind her, carrying Bon Bon.

There was a city below them… but it was a long way down.

And then the ship exploded, and the sound alone knocked Derpy out of the air, and Spike out of Moondancer’s grip. Fire washed over them, followed by a rain of finger-sized debris, but none of them were conscious to notice.

New Mech City

Moondancer awoke to the strange feeling of something cool, wet, and rough sliding its way across her inner thigh. Her thoughts were somewhat hazy – more than just the normal lethargy after sleeping, more like she’d been drugged – but although it was hard to feel alarmed, she was pretty sure that no one was supposed to be touching her there. Let alone… licking her, or whatever was going on. She kicked her hind hoof vaguely in the direction of where she imagined the offending pony would be, but it caught only air, and then a magical grip took hold of her ankle and held her leg still, spread out to give better access.

This alarmed her enough to lift her head and narrow her eyes, but her glasses were gone and all she could see was a blurry gray form standing between her legs, doing… something. “Hey!” she tried to say, but it came out as an indistinct croak.

“Shh,” said an old stallion’s voice from the blurry gray figure. “I’m almost done with your sponge bath, young one. Then you can go back to sleep.” Evidently finished with her left thigh, he switched to her right, brushing what she now guessed was a sponge down from her knee towards her crotch.

“I can wash there,” she mumbled. “Where are my glasses?” It really didn’t come out right, though.

“Just oooone more place to wash,” the old stallion said cheerfully, a slight chuckle in his voice as he moved the sponge to her crotch and with gentle pressure –

Moondancer bucked, kicking him away from her to smack against the wall behind him, then rolled out of bed to collapse in a heap on the hardwood floor. It was much more comfortable than she’d expected. In fact, maybe she should just… she yawned, and her eyes closed.

===

“So he gave all of you sponge baths?” Spike asked, a bit later, when everyone was conscious enough to move around and gather for breakfast. “He just sprayed me with a hose.”

“He’s a dirty old stallion,” Moondancer grumbled. “If you’d been a female dragon he would have given you the same treatment.”

“Aww, don’t be like that,” Derpy said. “He was just trying to be nice.”

“You can’t possibly be that naïve,” Moondancer said.

“Look,” Bon Bon said. “We still have no idea where we are or what happened after we jumped out of the ship. He can probably fill us in. So just keep yourself under control until we find out what we need to know, okay?”

There was a chuckle from the old stallion, as he sauntered into the room. He was wearing a long red robe made of some shiny fabric. “Oh, I assure you, I can help you in many ways, some of which you haven’t even imagined yet.”

“Can you give us back our stuff?” Spike asked.

He frowned. “I’m afraid not. Your belongings were badly contaminated with demonic energy and had to be destroyed. They were able to salvage the golz, at least, so you should be able to buy replacements. And of course, I have outfits for you to wear in the meantime. Unless you’d like to stay nude? I certainly have no objection.”

“Who are ‘they’?” Bon Bon asked.

“The Maidens of the Shrine, of course,” the old stallion responded. “The shrine in which you now reside, at least until you’ve recovered. We would have sent you to the hospital, but they wouldn’t have known how to drain off the demonic energy permeating your bodies. Don’t worry, I have medical training, so you were in good hands on the mundane side of things as well.”

Spike glanced at the pony’s hooves. “Good hands?”

The stallion chuckled. “Hooves, then, if you wish to be archaic.”

“I don’t want to be ungrateful,” Derpy said. “But the demonic energy was really useful. We were immune to fire!”

“There are safer ways to acquire that enchantment,” the stallion said. “Did you really not realize the extent of your curse?”

“What curse?” Derpy asked, tilting her head. “The demons liked us ‘cause we fought them. They wouldn’t have cursed us!”

“Demonic energy is anathema to the world and all things in it,” the stallion explained. “The strands of fate recoil from its presence.”

“And that’s… bad?” Spike guessed.

“In layman’s terms, it’s very unlucky.”

“Our luck seemed normal enough,” Moondancer said. “We were found by our enemies, but escaped. They chased us, but we got away. We were captured, but we escaped again. And then we somehow we survived the ship exploding and falling to what should have been our deaths.”

“It’s not unlucky for you in particular,” the stallion explained. “It’s an aura of calamity. The ship you were on was destroyed – did you think that was by chance?”

“I think it was by Derpy,” Spike said.

“What of the other places you visited before the doomed airship voyage? Were there any unexplained disasters?”

“They were burned to the ground by the army that was chasing us, and everypony was killed,” Bon Bon said. “Do you think the demonic energy is to blame?”

“Hmm,” the stallion rubbed his hoof against his chin. “No, that sounds like an act of mortals rather than an act of fate. I suppose with an army on your tail destroying everything in sight, mere supernatural disaster had no time to take hold. Still, if you’d continued on with this curse, disaster would have followed!”

“So are we being compensated for the loss of our equipment?” Bon Bon asked. “It isn’t going to be cheap to replace even the items which can be replaced. There’s no replacement for the armor I was wearing, in particular, or the magical rings we’d just acquired from the flutterponies.”

“Oh no, the rings!” Spike said, eyes going wide.

“Ah yes, the rings of the heroes,” the old stallion said, with a sigh. “Fortunately for your quest – and yes, I know what quest you must be on if the flutterponies entrusted you with them – the rings were not in your possession long enough to be irrevocably cursed. They are being purified, much as you were, but it will take some time.”

“How much time?” Bon Bon asked.

“No more than a week.”

Bon Bon nodded. “And how long until the army finds us here?”

“They undoubtedly already know that you’re here,” the stallion replied. “Dark Eidous has many friends here, and they keep in touch. But he won’t send his army here – that whole nonsense is strictly an Old World problem.”

===

The clothing the old stallion had laid out for them was surprisingly modest. Utterly useless as armor, of course, but like most other places in this world, the ponies and other races went around clothed, and it was natural to assume that there was some sort of nudity taboo, although the old stallion insisted that he found it completely natural for pretty young mares to be naked in his presence. They removed themselves from his presence at the first opportunity.

“Do you think we’re really safe here?” Spike asked.

“Not while that new general of his is in charge of the hunt,” Bon Bon said. “This place looks a bit too big to burn down without spooking us into hiding, but we should keep an eye out for assassins.”

“Alright, I’ve got an eye to spare now since they burned my eyepatch,” Derpy said. “What do assassins look like?”

“I think they mostly wear black?” Spike said. “Let us know if you see anypony carrying a giant sword.”

Surprisingly, they did not. At first, the city just seemed like a clean, modern town that you might have found anywhere in Equestria, but then they came down out of the foothills and saw the city proper. The first thought on everypony’s mind was ‘Manehattan’, but Manehattan’s buildings weren’t even half as tall, and most of these were completely covered in mirrored glass. Also, the traffic that clogged Manehattan’s streets had ponies pulling the carts, instead of some unknown engine that Moondancer couldn’t even guess at, except to say that it probably wasn’t steam.

As for the ponies, most of them were earth ponies with a few eastern unicorns, with curved horns and tufts at the ends of their tails. The only ones armed at all were what looked like police, judging from the uniforms, but they all carried tiny cannons similar to Derpy’s old one, only smaller and more futuristic-looking.

Then there were the robots, standing guard here and there. They looked like something out of Spike’s comic books – hulking, futuristic, and very military. At least they weren’t actually moving.

“I wonder if we can buy a robot?” Moondancer asked, as they passed one. “I want to take it apart.”

“Probably not on our budget,” Bon Bon replied. “Maybe we can get one of the carts.”

===

They could not afford a cart – the motorized carts cost tens of thousands of golz, and while they technically had enough for a small, used one, it would have used up most of their money, since they’d spent some of it at the last two towns before their destruction, and hadn’t had a real chance to get any more.

They did buy a ‘build your own small toy robot’ kit for Moondancer to play with. They also bought a book of history, a set of inflatable matresses, and an adventurer’s atlas with all the interesting locations in the world marked and rated between one and five skulls. They got a crossbow for Derpy and a set of steak knives for Bon Bon. Magical staves, armor, and swords were nowhere to be found, at least not in the big box store where they bought everything else.

It did have a café built in, at least. It had been a long time since they’d had fancy milkshakes.

“You should make a bag full of milkshakes,” Derpy said, crossing her eyes as she laboriously slurped hers up through a straw. “Then we could always have milkshakes!”

“Despite the name, the Cornucopia spell doesn’t work for food,” Moondancer said, not lifting her gaze from the history book she was reading. “The food vanishes after a few minutes, even if you’ve eaten it. There’s no nutritional value.”

Derpy grinned. “Even better!”

“And don’t forget the gem bag you promised,” Spike said. “It’s been forever since I’ve had a ruby.” He was drinking his milkshake slowly. It didn’t have the gem sprinkles he usually liked, so it automatically ranked in the bottom 10%, even if everything else about it was perfectly competent.

“There’d probably be some healing value,” Bon Bon said. “Food’s effect on health is a property of the world, not of the food.”

Moondancer closed her eyes for a second, and sighed heavily. “Fine. Bring me twenty milkshakes and a bag and I’ll do the enchantment.”

She was halfway through the spell – the milkshakes arranged in a cicle around a cheap saddlebag, while her horn glowed as it infused the template of the objects onto the magical space she’d created inside the bag – when the café manager came over and started yelling at her.

“Hey. HEY! What do you think you’re doing! You don’t have the right to copy my milkshakes! Stop that right now! Are you even listening to me? Stop, or I’ll call the cops!”

“Do you mind?” Moondancer said testily, after winding the spell down safely. “It isn’t safe to interrupt a unicorn’s concentration.”

“Hell yeah I mind! What exactly do you think you’re doing?” She poked at Moondancer with her hoof.

“None of your business,” Moondancer said.

The manager scowled. “Yes. Yes it is my business, which I’ll be out of if I let every smartass wizard make infinite copies of my stock.”

“It’s for personal use,” Bon Bon said. “And we’re passing through. You aren’t going to lose any business.”

“Why else did you think we were buying twenty milkshakes?” Moondancer asked. “I notice you didn’t mention this until after we’d already paid you.”

“Yeah, well. No refunds.” The manager lit her horn, and lifted the milkshakes into the air. “Now get out of my store.”

“Get your damn horn off my milkshakes,” Derpy said, pointing the crossbow at her.

“Alright, everypony please calm down,” Bon Bon said.

“Everypony?” the manager asked, sneering. “What hick town did you crawl out of?”

“Ponyville,” Derpy said. “I wasn’t raised in a barn, though. I’m a mailmare, not a farmer.”

“Yeah, well, here in civilization, we have rules,” the manager said. “And if you can’t –”

Derpy shot her. The milkshakes fell to the floor, spilling cold, slippery sweetness all around the twitching body.

“Oh no!” Derpy said, staring in horror. “What have I done?” She leaned down and started lapping the milkshakes up off the ground, only stopping when Bon Bon and Moondancer physically dragged her away from the scene of the crime.

===

Outside, in the lot where all the carts were parked, Spike started panicking. “Oh no, oh no, what are we going to do?”

“The same thing we do every time Derpy murders somepony?” Bon Bon said, heading for one of the larget carts with some of the smallest windows. “Run away until things calm down? It’s not like people actually die.”

“Oh, I forgot about that,” Derpy said, scowling. “I’ll have to remember to come back and kill her another nineteen times to make up for all the milkshakes she ruined.”

Spike was not comforted. “But what if they catch us? I don’t have my armor or a weapon or anything! I’m helpless!”

“Don’t worry, Spike. I’ll protect you,” Moondancer said earnestly.

Spike whimpered, and held his arms up to her for a hug, which she gladly gave. “I can’t go back to prison. I just can’t!” he whimpered into her neck.

“They won’t catch us,” Bon Bon said, fiddling with the lock on the cart’s door. It popped open after a few seconds. “Come on, everypony in.”

They all piled into the large, square cart. Bon Bon got into the driver’s seat and stared at the controls. “Alright. This must be the throttle… R is for Reverse…” she pulled a lever into position. “It’s just like an airplane. Pedals for yaw, a wheel for pitch. How do we start the engine, though?”

Moondancer flipped through the owner’s manual until she found a diagram of the controls. “’Ignition’ is the little keyhole on the shaft of the big wheel.”

“Weird,” Bon Bon said, leaning down to pick it.

After a few seconds, the engine roared to life, making the whole cart rumble. Nothing else happened until Moondancer used her magic to shift another lever. “Parking brake,” she explained. At that point, the cart started slowly rolling backwards. When they’d drifted far enough that it was time to turn into the aisle, Bon Bon pressed her hoof onto the right yaw pedal… and everypony screamed as the cart lurched backwards and smashed into the cart across the way.

At that point, the other ponies in the lot turned to look at them.

“Right pedal is the throttle. Left is the brake,” Moondancer read off the diagram.

“I figured that much out!” Bon Bon said, searching around until she found the ‘R’ lever and switched it to ‘D’. She pressed down on the throttle, while spinning the wheel, and managed to turn slightly before smashing into the corner of one of the carts parked next to their original position. “Just a second,” she said, switching the lever again, spinning the wheel, pressing the pedal… ponies screamed and dove out of the way as she careened backwards down the aisle of cars, smashing on the brake just before slamming into the store itself. “I think I’ve almost got it.”

“We’re so dead,” Spike said, covering his eyes.

For a second, it seemed like she hard it – the cart zoomed down the aisle without hitting any of the carts or ponies that hedged them in on either side – but then they got to the end of the lot. The cart careened out into traffic, and was promptly hit twice by other carts trying to whoosh by. It spun around, all bent out of shape, then flipped over onto its side.

===

They woke up in the hospital, in four separate beds in a single room. A pair of police-ponies were guarding the door.

“So,” Moondancer said. “What have we learned from this?” Her neck was in a thick cast, so she couldn’t turn her head to look at anypony in particular.

“Don’t let Bon Bon drive?” Spike suggested. He looked basically unhurt, sitting on the side of the bed and kicking his feet. Half a pair of hoofcuffs dangled from his wrist – after he’d eaten the first pair they hadn’t bothered to replace them.

“Yep,” Derpy said. “I’m the one with the cart license.” One of her hind legs had been broken, and she’d managed to tangle herself up in the IV drip and monitoring cables until she could barely move.

“No one would have had to be driving anything if you hadn’t shot that shopkeeper,” Bon Bon said. Half her head was covered in bandages, including a large gauze patch over one eye.

“Should we really be confessing to stuff like that?” Spike asked, glancing at the cops.

“I don’t see why it matters,” Bon Bon said. “We’re obviously guilty, so either they give us a punishment we can live with, or we kill them all and escape.”

“You do have the right to remain silent,” one of the cops volunteered. “But we’ve got the whole thing on video, so.” She shrugged.

“So which is it, then?” Bon Bon asked. “Slap on the wrist, or prison escape sequence?”

“Not our job,” the cop replied. “Since you’re all awake, we’ll summon the judge.” She spoke into a small device, and a tinny voice replied too softly and too garbled for them to make anything out. A few minutes later, the judge arrived.

“Well well well,” said the old gray stallion from the shrine. “That didn’t take long.”

“How are you the judge?” Moondancer asked. “I thought your job was molesting shrine maidens.”

“Oh, I wear many hats,” he chuckled, “although my work at the shrine is more of a hobby. Officially, I’m the judge, investigator, martial-arts instructor, professor of historical warfare at the local college…” He waved a hoof. “And a few more. For example, I’ll also be your jury, today.”

“And executioner?” Bon Bon asked.

“Oh no no no, dear lord no,” the old stallion said, feigning shock. “If it comes to that I’ll give that task to the police. Now, tell me all about your crimes. And be honest! Lying to a judge is a serious crime.”

“It was all Derpy’s fault,” Bon Bon said.

The others (at least, the ones who could turn their heads) stared at her in shock.

“What? It was!”

“It was not!” Derpy said. “It was the shopkeeper’s fault. She tried to steal my milkshakes!”

“We could have gotten more milkshakes!” Bon Bon said. “I’m so sick of this. This isn’t even the first time!”

“The first time was an accident,” Derpy said. “I thought I could bring him back.”

“That’s not what ‘accident’ means,” Bon Bon snarled. “And stealing your food doesn’t make it self-defense.”

“Actually,” said the judge, “that’s not entirely true. Defense of property is sometimes a justification for the use of potentially lethal force.”

“Whose side are you on?” Bon Bon snapped.

“Um…” Spike said. “I’m pretty sure we’re all going to get the same punishment as Derpy, since we tried to help her escape? So maybe you should stop egging him on.”

“Is it too late to demand to be punished by the laws of our homeland?” Moondancer asked. “That’s Equestria, for the record. Not Castle Town or Moriaz or whereever else you’re thinking.”

“I’m afraid I’m not familiar with those laws,” the judge replied. “Do your people have an embassy where I could look them up?”

“We don’t actually have laws,” Spike said. “I mean, not for things like murder. Maybe for the unliscenced cart driving.”

“Serious crimes are taken before the princesses, who dispense high justice,” Moondancer explained.

The judge nodded. “In that case, there’s no need. It sounds compatible with our own approach, unless you intended to ask for extradition which would be quite impossible since the country you’re naming is completely imaginary. I suppose next you were going to tell me you’re a princess?”

“I’m an honorary princess?” Spike said, with a weak smile.

“At any rate, it’s obvious that your difficulties stemmed from a lack of understanding of our society, rather than from any real criminal intent. As such, I’m willing to be lenient, and offer you a choice of punishments.” He smiled, and stroked a hoof along Moondancer’s side. She kicked out at him but couldn’t see him, so her hoof just flailed randomly. “The first is to come back to the shrine for an extended education in modern society. You’d serve under me—”

“No,” Moondancer said.

“We’d get to be shrine maidens?” Derpy asked.

“NO,” Moondancer said again, louder.

“More like shrine maids,” the judge chuckled. “I have just the idea for your outfits –”

“What’s the alternative?” Spike asked.

The judge frowned, and lowered his head strategically so that a shadow fell over his eyes. “The alternative is for you to be thrown into the Well of Demons, where you might find a society better suited for your current… understanding.”

“I don’t think we want to go back to the demons,” Derpy said. “They don’t have food.”

“Ah, no,” the judge said. “It doesn’t lead to a land inhabited by demons, rather to one plagued by them – this land, a thousand years ago, before the light of technology lifted us up from savagry.”

“So…” Spike said, “we could buy armor and weapons there?”

“Then,” Moondancer corrected.

Spike smiled at her, then asked the judge again, “So we could buy armor and weapons then?”

The judge frowned. “You realize that you’ll probably die if you take that option? You should come serve me at the shrine – we have tea! And little cakes.”

“We’ll take the well,” Moondancer said.

“Yeah, sounds like fun,” Spike said. “This city sucks.”

“Maybe we can actually die there, and get a game over,” Bon Bon added.

The judge looked at each of them, confusion on his face. At last he turned to Derpy. “You don’t have to share their fate. Come with me –”

Derpy shook her head. “I’d better go with them. I’m their healer.”

Welcome to the Past

The Well of Demons looked disturbingly like an ordinary well – it had a well-worn but intact little roof, and a bucket and rope to lower down into the dark depths. It was located in the center of a small field on a promontory overlooking a large lake, with ponies playing frisbee and picnicking all around. Nopony paid any attention to them as they were led to the well in hoofcuffs, although the couple reading the informative sign moved aside to give the police priority.

They were unceremoniously tossed inside, one at a time. Derpy’s wings were tied, since apparently you had to fall into the well to trigger the magic.

Spike had expected some sort of magical portal effect, but if there was a portal in the well it was awfully subtle, and he slammed into the rocky bottom of the well exactly as hard as he’d been expecting not to. It hurt, and probably did a bunch of damage, but the hospital stay must have been good for something because he didn’t feel anywhere close to going down.

Not even after the ponies landed on top of him, one after the other.

Fortunately, Derpy had been the last one in, and after several minutes of wiggling and cursing, she managed to get the rope tying down her wings into position for Bon Bon to chew it apart, and then it was just a matter of airlifting them out.

===

Derpy closed her eyes in concentration, and a muffin descended from the heavens into Spike’s grip.

“So… time travel, huh,” he said, nibbling on the muffin as he took a look at the park. It was the same field they’d started in, but there were twice as many trees, arranged in geometric patterns – some sort of orchard, maybe? It wasn’t exactly the same as they’d left, at least, so they were probably actually in the past now. “Do you think we’re here to accidentally change the future in some plot-critical fashion, or just to learn more backstory?”

“I have to admit, this was a very plot-convenient punishment,” Moondancer said, levitating her own muffin up to her mouth. After a few bites she was able to move her head around, although the cast around her neck was still restraining her. Spike walked closer to help break it off with his claws. “Thanks,” she said, stretching it this way and that. “And thank you, Derpy. I don’t want to think about how long that would have taken to heal naturally.”

Derpy smiled. “Don’t thank me, thank the Great Muffin!”

“Thank you, Great Muffin,” Spike said, tilting his head towards the heavens, then turned back to Moondancer. “Can you imagine if they’d put us in prison? We’d just done a jailbreak, so a second one so fast would have started getting boring.”

“We still need to go back for the rings,” Bon Bon said, trotting back over from the edge of the bluff, her injured eye healed as well. “But this should be a chance to replace our equipment, and maybe hunt some demons to restock our golz stores.”

“Hopefully in that order,” Moondancer said. “I’ve still got my magic, and Spike has his firebreath, but we’re really not ready for a fight.”

“The village is right down there, by the lake,” Bon Bon said, pointing towards the cliff. “We’re probably already inside its boundaries.”

Derpy gnawed on her cast, trying to get it off now that the muffins had healed her leg.

“Let’s not wait around then,” Spike said, slicing into the cast with his claws. “I feel naked without my armor.”

===

The burned out farmhouses between the well and the village suggested that they were not in a safe zone, but nothing attacked them before they made it to the village. A pair of griffons were circling overhead, and swooped down to intercept them as they approached.

“Mortal or demon?” one of them asked, pointing a spear at Spike.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Derpy asked.

“Demons are tricky,” the other one said. “And earthbound travelers are rare. The roads aren’t safe.”

“We’re mortal,” Bon Bon said. “Do you want to kill one of us to prove it?”

“Just not me!” Derpy said, backing up a bit. “I have to do the resurrection!”

“You’re a shrine maiden?” the first griffon asked, looking over at her. “If you can demonstrate some holy magic, that’d be proof enough for us.”

“Um… Great Muffin, heal me…” Derpy said, pressing her hooves together underneath her chin, then holding one out to catch the glowing muffin that slowly descended from a crack in the sky, tinkling harp music playing as it descended in a column of golden light.

“Wow, it’s been a while since you did it with all the effects,” Spike said.

Derpy offered the muffin to the griffon, who stared at it suspiciously before prodding it with his spear. When it failed to react, he nodded. “Welcome to the Village of Flock. Due to the demon attacks, we’re under a strict curfew – nogriffon on the streets after nightfall. So I hope you brought some gold to pay for an inn.”

Once the guards were back up in the air. Spike whispered loudly, “So… I didn’t say anything with the guards there, but aren’t we broke?”

Bon Bon shook her tail until a small sack of coins fell out. She kicked it to Spike. “I managed to hide most of our money.”

“Didn’t they search you?” Moondancer asked.

Bon Bon shrugged. “Not well enough. We’ve only got a couple thousand golz left, so I doubt it’ll get us decent equipment, but it should be enough for an inn.”

===

The innkeeper, another griffon, looked bored. “10 gold per night. How many rooms do you want?”

“Just one,” Spike said, counting out 10 shiny yellow coins.

The innkeeper peered at the coins suspiciously, then picked one up and bit it. He spat it onto the floor. “What is this? You think I was born yesterday?”

“It’s golz,” Spike said. “You know, money?”

“This isn’t money,” the griffon said, slamming his talon onto the counter hard enough to make the remaining coins bounce. “It isn’t even gold-plated.”

“It’s money where we come from,” Bon Bon said.

“Then maybe you should go back there and buy some feathering gold,” the griffon snarled.

“What’s the exchange rate?” Moondancer asked. “We’ve got more.”

The griffon turned slowly to glare at her. “The exchange rate between gold and pyrite?”

Derpy hovered up next to the innkeeper, and batted her eyelashes. “I don’t suppose we could pay in… some other way?”

“Oh yeah,” Spike said. “Do you have any giant rats in the basement for us to go kill?”

The griffon put one talon on Derpy’s muzzle, and pushed her back until she was on the other side of the counter. “I don’t do charity. Or ponies. Get out of here, you bums!”

===

The village didn’t have a job board, so they asked around until they annoyed enough griffons that they were sent to see the mayor. He seemed sympathetic, as griffons go.

“So you want to earn some gold,” the massive griffon said, eyes hard and squinty.

“Apparently, our money’s no good here,” Bon Bon said. “So we need some money that is.”

“To spend locally,” Moondancer added.

“Uh huh,” the mayor said. “What’s your trade?”

“We’re heroes!” Spike said. The mayor just stared at him. “Adventurers?” he tried next.

“That’s not a trade,” the mayor said, scowling. “It’s a long, drawn out form of suicide. If you’re lucky. Do you have any useful skills?”

“Um…” Spike said.

“I can cook?” Bon Bon suggested. “I specialize in candy, but I’ve had general training as a chef.”

The mayor nodded at her. “Alright. There are several places in town that might use another talon in the kitchen. What about the rest of you?”

“I’m mostly a scholar, I guess,” Moondancer said. “Although I don’t have any of my reference books with me. And most of them wouldn’t really apply to this world.”

“I spent most of my life as an assistant librarian?” Spike said, trying to smile.

The mayor rubbed at his forehead with his talons. “I said useful skills.”

“I’m a mailmare!” Derpy said proudly. “Um… and I’ve got my cart license, and…”

“And you can summon healing muffins,” Bon Bon said. “The guards called her a shrine maiden?”

“Interesting,” the Mayor said. “Our shrine’s been vacant since… well, since we lost our last shrine maiden. It’s not a paying job, though.”

“So the healing here is free?” Bon Bon asked.

“We’re set for magical healing,” the Mayor said. “It’s the wards I’m worried about, and I don’t think that sort of magic even works if you pay for it. It’s based on purity, after all…”

“I probably can’t do it then. My god pretty much works on money,” Derpy said. “And I’m not exactly a maiden.”

“Shame,” the Mayor said. “Well, we’re always looking for new messengers, I guess. It’s technically paying work.”

“Technically?” Bon Bon asked.

“Nogriffon’s actually gotten a message through in about… three years?” He smirked. “It’s easy on the budget. Their bodies are never found, so we don’t have to officially declare them dead. We just fire them for being extremely late.”

“No thanks, then,” Derpy said. “I don’t work well with time pressure. Or being eaten by monsters.”

“So they stay dead?” Spike asked. “I’m guessing there’s no Giant Floating Crystal to tag here.”

“Yeah, we’ve heard about those from other time travellers,” the Mayor said. “Must be nice, not to have to worry about dying.”

There was a moment of silence. Spike eventually broke it. “I guess we weren’t really trying to hide it. But if it’s so awful here, why not just go through the well?”

The Mayor lifted an eyebrow. “Because it’s one-way?”

===

In the end, the mayor placed Derpy on garbage hauling duty, since she knew how to pull a cart. It was still a little dangerous since it involved leaving the city limits, but she’d be in view of the air patrol the whole time.

Spike was fireproof, so he was sent to help out at the forge. ‘Apprentice blacksmith’ wasn’t usually a paying position, but the forge-griffon grudgingly agreed to give him a few gold coins instead of providing the customary room and board.

Moondancer eventually remembered that pottery was an actual job and not just something used for making firebombs. The potters were impressed by her attention to detail, and wanted to know more about the flammable concoction she usually filled her pots with.

Bon Bon, of course, would work at the bakery.

So with jobs lines up, they could stay in the village, provisionally at least.

Unfortunately, none of the jobs paid any wages on the first day, especially when the first day was basically over by the time they’d worked everything out, and the innkeeper wasn’t about to let them stay on credit. They tried to set up camp in the darkening town square, but one of the guards came up to them while they were still gathering loose wood for a fire, and explained that even if they’d had tents and bedrolls, it would still be vagrancy. She helpfully offered to let them stay the night in jail… and an indefinite number of nights after that, until they could somehow earn enough money to pay the fine from their cells.

They took the other option.

“Why are all the griffons so mean!” Derpy pouted, after they’d cleaned up their attempted campsite and headed out of town.

“She gave us a warning before slapping us with the fine,” Bon Bon said. “By griffon standards, she’s a saint.”

“So now we’ve got to survive the night with no equipment,” Spike said. “I’m really not liking this time-travel sequence.”

“The Well of Demons is supposed to be warded,” Moondancer said. “We’ll be fine.”

“Or else we’ll die, and wake up back home,” Bon Bon said.

“Or else we’ll die,” Moondancer said. “I don’t think getting out of here is going to be that easy.”

“I really don’t think the game has perma-death,” Spike said. “We’d probably end up in Hel or something.”

“Let’s not find out,” Moondancer said. No one argued with that.

So they set up camp in the little orchard by the well. It certainly looked warded – not only were the plants green and healthy, compared to the rocky terrain all around, but as the sun set and the moon rose, the blossoms started to glow softly, no brighter than the moonlight but in a rainbow of colors. It felt safe.

“So once we’ve resupplied here, how do we get back to the future?” Moondancer asked, as the heroes waited for sleep to take them. “Since we can’t just jump back in the well.”

“We should have guessed it wouldn’t be that simple. I don’t think they’d leave the well unguarded in the future if refugees from a demon-haunted world kept popping out,” Bon Bon said.

“I don’t know,” Spike said. “When we banish people from Equestria we don’t magically restrain them from coming back.”

“We should check,” Derpy said, leaping into the air and grabbing Spike by his shoulders.

He barely had time to say, “What?” before being dropped into the well. After a short fall and a loud crunch, he added, “Ouch.”

Derpy called into the well, “Are you in the future, Spike?”

“No, I’m just in a mucky well,” Spike said. “There isn’t even a magic sword in this one.”

===

“Hey!” came a loud shout, waking them all up. The sun was still beneath the horizon, but the sky was brightening with the imminent dawn.

Spike groaned and sat up, stopping there as the pointy tip of a giant bone sword poked at his nose. Following it back, he saw it held in the teeth of a wine-red pony with an off-white mane and tail.

“I thought I told all you demons to stay out of the orchard!” the pony growled around his sword.

“We’re not demons!” Derpy said. “Don’t kill Spike!”

“I don’t care what you are,” the pony snapped, sheathing his sword across his back. “This place is under my protection.”

“And who are you?” Moondancer asked.

“Where did you get that sword?” Spike asked.

“How do you even lift it?” Bon Bon asked.

“Do you want a muffin?” Derpy asked.

The pony paused, then sat down in front of them. “Yeah, sure. I could go for some breakfast. And you don’t look much of a threat.”

Derpy summoned a muffin for him. As it floated down from the heavens, his mouth whipped to his sword and started to draw it, only to stop halfway. He let go, and made loud sniffing noises in the direction of the muffin. “Holy magic… but it’s not purity,” he said, then snatched it out of the air with his teeth. He bit down, and went a bit crosseyed. “Mercy?”

“They’re supposed to be used for healing,” Spike explained. “But if we’re too lazy to cook we just eat them for meals sometimes.”

“The Great Muffin doesn’t mind!” Derpy said. “As long as everyone loves muffins, it doesn’t matter why.”

“Are you a demon?” Moondancer asked.

“I’m Night Dog,” the pony said, narrowing his eyes. “The demons know my name.”

“I’m Spike,” Spike said. “That’s Bon Bon, Derpy, and Moondancer. We’re not demons.”

“But we knew some demons,” Moondancer said. “And we traded Mercy Muffins to them. I haven’t seen anypony else call them that.”

“So you’re in league with them,” Night Dog scowled.

“Not yet,” Derpy said. “That’s all waaaay in the future.”

Bon Bon nodded. “We’re just here to re-equip after the jerks in New Mech City stole our stuff.”

“Are we just telling everyone that we’re time travelers now?” Moondancer asked. “I’m not complaining, I’d just like to be clear on this.”

Bon Bon rolled her eyes. “He guards the well. I think he knows.”

“Does he know how to get back once we’re done here?” Spike asked.

“Yeah, of course I do,” Night Dog said. “But you can’t. Only Twilight can open the well from this side.”

“Twilight?” Spike asked. “You know Twilight?”

Night Dog nodded. “She’s the shrine maiden who keeps this well running. She was from the future too.” He held out a hoof towards Derpy, who looked at it for a little while and then filled it with another muffin. “She used to go back and forth a lot, but since the last thing she did with it was go back in time, that’s all you can do with it until she switches it back.”

“So to get back, we have to find her,” Spike said. “Thanks! Now we know what our quest is.”

“You don’t have to find her,” Night Dog said. “Everyone knows where she is. You just have to defeat the invincible demon holding her prisoner.”

“And how do we do that?” Spike asked.

“You don’t,” Night Dog said. “He’s invincible. You think I haven’t tried?”

Vocation Vacation

Spike slammed the hammer into the metal ingot with all his strength, but it was having less and less effect on the metal as it cooled. Looking around surrepetitiously, he saw Master Gunderson focused intently on one of his fancy spears, and the other apprentices likewise occupied with their own projects and tasks. Leaning down towards the metal, he pursed his lips and puffed a little green burst of flame at it, heating it back up to a nice healthy glow…

Seconds later, he was slammed into the wall of the smithy, Master Gunderson’s talons clasped around his neck. “What did I tell you about cheating!” the griffon snarled.

“Don’t… get caught…” Spike wheezed.

The griffon dropped him to the ground. “Get the brush,” he said. “It’s time to clean the forge again.”

“Aww, come on,” Spike whined, but a dangerous glare from the griffon sent him stumbling over to get the special brush with starmetal bristles, the one that wouldn’t melt in the forge’s heat. He climbed up onto the lip of the forge, and flinched back at the blast of hot air, then screwed his eyes shut and slid into the fire.

“Ahhh,” he said, resting on the coals as he started scrubbing lazily at the walls, basking in the heat. It wasn’t like Gunderson could see how fast he was scrubbing, or even tell if he’d finished by the time he was slated to head out to meet the mares, which meant he was free to relax and clean at his own pace. “This is the life,” he said to himself, letting his mind wander as his claws basically moved on their own, working through a type of task he’d been doing for longer than he could remember.

There were upsides to working for such a strict master.

===

Bon Bon stirred the pot of sticky sugar, lifting up her wooden spoon to check its viscosity. “Alright,” she said to the young griffons standing, perching, or hovering nearby. “It’s about ready to add the flavoring. What flavor should we make today?”

“Do you have a cure for little sisters?” Greta asked.

“Hey!” squeaked her little sister Ginny.

“Well, that depends on what you want to cure,” Bon Bon said. “Why don’t we try for a Silence candy this time? Get me the echo herbs, and…” her eyes scanned the shelves. “Some ginger. Ginger should work well.”

Her little helpers were quick to fetch the ingredients, and she sprinkled the herbs into her hoof, showing it around so they could get a sense for how much she was using. “This should be enough for a lingering Silence effect, which is useful for sneaking past monsters, or for feeding to naughty little sisters who keep making too much noise.”

Greta giggled.

Bon Bon dumped in the herb, then clasped the jar of ginger in her teeth and shook a liberal helping of powdered root into the mix. “Ginger is just for flavor, mostly, so it’s really a matter of how strong you want it to be.” She took the spoon in her teeth again and started stirring. “Keep stirring until the flavoring is completely absorbed by the mixture, and then it’ll be time to set it out on the sheets to harden…”

And once they’d all inevitably snuck a sample, she’d have some peace and quiet for once. Why hadn’t she thought of this sooner?

===

Moondancer sat by the side of the river, carefully shaping a pot with her hooves as it spun on the spinning wheel. Her horn was lit, maintaining a bubble shield around her. Cut off from the noise and distraction of the outside world, she could focus on the slowly forming pot, and not on the gusting wind, the screeching griffons swooping and circling overhead, or the occasional splash of bright red liquid that splattered across her bubble, sliding down and pooling on the ground due to the lack of friction.

And then somegriffon popped it. Her ears flattened against her skull, and she slowly turned towards the offender, making sure to angle her glasses so that the glare from the afternoon sun would flash across his eyes. “What.”

“Yes, what,” snapped the mayor. “What is going on here?! Why are you the only one doing your job? Why are all my potters flying around in midair throwing pots full of paint at each other?”

“They want to be griffon grenadiers,” Moondancer said. “It doubles their hit points and gives +10 dexterity and perception, which should help with their pottery.”

The mayor ignored her, screeching, “WHO’S GOING TO PAY FOR ALL THIS PAINT?” A pot full of paint shattered across his head, drenching his face and neck in sticky red. This failed to make him any calmer.

“Don’t worry, it’s from a cornucopia,” Moondancer said, angling her head towards a large sack by the side of the river. As the mayor glanced over at it, one of the budding grenadiers landed and snatched another dozen paint pots from the sack, quickly slotting them into her bandolier. “It’ll vanish after a few minutes, since it’s just a magical copy of the original pot.” When the mayor didn’t seem to react, she added, “That means no one paid for it.”

“Unicorns,” the mayor muttered under his breath.

“So all they’re wasting for this training is their time. I trust that’s efficient enough to meet your approval?” Moondancer asked.

“I suppose,” the mayor replied. “Although they won’t be very effective in combat unless they have something more dangerous than paint to throw.”

“Oh, they will,” Moondancer said. “I take it you officially approve of this training regiment then?”

“What’s your angle,” the mayor asked, suddenly suspicious.

“Like I said, no one paid for the cornucopia,” Moondancer replied, turning back to her pot. “I’ll send you a bill.” She put the bubble back up before he could reply.

===

Derpy hauled her wagon full of trash through the village, waiting by the gate until the others finished up their own work and joined her.

Bon Bon was the first to arrive, hopping into the wagon and clearing a spot to lie down. She set down the bundle of leather she’d been carrying on her back.

“Did you get it?” Derpy asked, excitedly.

Bon Bon nodded. “Soft leather armor for both of us, light enough not to interfere with flying or stealth.”

“Aaaaand?” Derpy asked, grinning.

Bon Bon worried at the bundle with her teeth for a bit, then tossed a small bit of leather to Derpy, who caught it with a wing, and quickly fastened it in place over her eye.

She let out a long sigh. “Finally! I’m a real pirate again,” she said, adjusting the eye patch until it was comfortable, and looking around with the uncovered eye. “Oh! There’s Spike. Spiiike! Over here!”

Spike waved back. No one had to ask if he’d managed to get his own equipment, since he was wearing it. It wasn’t full plate, but there were plates of armor covering most of his vulnerable spots, and a half-helmet to give some protection for his head. The shield slung over his back was the largest one yet – if he set it in the ground and hid behind it, no one would be able to *see* him, let alone hit him with anything.

“Good haul today?” he asked, unable to see over the edge of the wagon.

Derpy nodded her head vigorously. “You wouldn’t believe what these griffons throw away!”

“Cool,” he smiled, then pointed at her, winking. “Love the eyepatch.”

Derpy giggled happily.

Moondancer was the last to arrive, also dressed in her own new equipment.

Bon Bon stared at her, unimpressed. “That staff. It’s certainly…”

“It’s a stick,” Moondancer said. “Nogriffon has any idea how to make a magic staff, but they know how to make a stick.”

Spike eyed it suspiciously. “It’s a bit… splintery.”

“Sanding and painting was extra,” Moondancer said. “I don’t care what it looks like, I care that it’s a big, heavy stick with a lead core that I can hit ponies with.”

“Isn’t lead antimagic?” Bon Bon asked, scrunching up her face.

“It is,” Moondancer confirmed. “I’m not going to be casting any spells through this thing. Supposedly I could use it to parry spells, if I had any idea how to parry things.”

“Maybe I could teach you?” Spike suggested. “Like, throw some rocks at you until you got good enough to deflect them?”

“Pass,” Moondancer said.

“So I’m guessing those aren’t magic robes either,” Bon Bon said, looking over Moondancer’s poofy bright red attire. It actually went fairly well with her coat and mane, but if all it was was fashion…

“Eh,” Moondancer said. “Supposedly woven from Fire Rat fur. Verifiably immune to fire. I managed to get them for a good price, since nogriffon wants a garment that’d get in the way of their wings. They claimed they couldn’t tailor it, but it’s a robe, so I don’t really care.”

“Does that mean we’re ready to hunt demons?” Derpy asked, heading up the hill towards the orchard. All of them had the money to pay for a place in town, but they’d gotten used to camping by the well, not to mention used to Night Dog’s company.

“That really depends on you,” Bon Bon said. “Have you found a working weapon yet?”

“I found another crossbow in the trash!” Derpy said. “That makes… um… six? I’m sure I can build a working one out of all these pieces!”

“I bought a mainspring from the forge, just in case,” Spike said. “That’s the really important part.”

“Oh, thanks!” Derpy said. “I have a million screws and a couple dozen gears, but I’m always short on springs.”

At the top of the hill, they sat around their campfire, piling on scrap wood from Derpy’s stash while she sorted the rest of her finds into various piles. They had a tent, now, although with the mild weather in the past they had the sides rolled up and just used the roof to keep out the occasional drizzle. Moondancer took a large leather-bound tome from her chest, and curled up near the fire to read it, while Spike tended the fire and Bon Bon started getting together the ingredients for dinner.

Eventually, the sun went down, and the moon rose, and Night Dog dropped out of the sky, into their camp, despite not having any wings. Everypony smiled and waved at the now familiar, possibly demonic pony, and he smiled back, until his sweeping gaze reached Moon Dancer.

“What are you doing with my coat?”

The Adventure Begins

This was it – this was the end of the line. They were all going to die. They hurtled through the dark storm clouds, their tiny chariot tossed by the wind. Spike huddled in a corner, claws wrapped around his tail as he coiled it forwards so that he could suck on it. Moondancer clutched the opposite railing tightly, eyes closed to protect them from the whipping rat’s nest that her mane had become after her hair ties had been taken by the wind. Bon Bon stood stoically in the center, but the look on her face was that of a pony resigned to her own imminent demise.

“Don’t worry!” Derpy shouted, barely audible over the storm. “I make this run all the time! Usually not in weather this bad but I hardly ever drop the packages!”

“Maybe we should land?” Spike suggested.

“What?” Derpy shouted back. “I couldn’t –“

There was a brilliant flash of light, accompanied by a terrifying roar, and Moondancer screamed as the chariot floor dropped out from under them. Spike’s mouth was only open to answer Derpy’s question, he certainly wasn’t screaming like a little filly himself. He did give a manly grunt as the brief freefall was cut off by the chariot slamming back into his feet and belly.

“I’m okay!” Derpy said, shaking off a bit of soot from carbonized hair and feathers. Her voice sounded a bit wobbly, and the chariot started to gradually list to the left. “No no mister chariot, this way!” They levelled off.

They were all going to die, and it was all Lyra’s fault.

“This is all your fault, Spike!” Moondancer shouted. “I told you we should take the train, but you said you knew a professional!”

“She is!” Spike said.

“She delivers packages,” Bon Bon said. “She isn’t licensed to haul passengers.”

“It’s okay!” Derpy shouted, just before wildly flapping her wings to yank the chariot up before it wiped out against a sudden outcropping of angry black water vapor. “You’re not paying me, so it’s all legal!”

“Is it legal to fly in this storm?” Moondancer shouted, squinting her eyes open briefly before squeezing them shut again as they were whipped by her bangs.

“I think so!” Derpy said, turning her head to look back at her passengers. “There’s no storm scheduled so nopony put out a travel warning. We’re in the clear!”

The dark clouds rushed up and engulfed them, and everything was dark, except for the lightning crackling on every side. It was also wet, soaking them to the bone in seconds.

“Hold on,” Derpy said, “I’ll try to get below the cloud cover.”

“No!” cried all of her passengers in unison, and then the screaming started as the bottom dropped out from under them again. Spike flailed around as he found himself floating up out of the chariot, but Bon Bon snagged him with a foreleg and pulled him to her chest. He clutched tightly to her warm fuzzy body and really, really hoped that she was holding on to the chariot with some of her other limbs. Or teeth. Teeth would work.

Then it all stopped. The falling, the wind – not the rain, unfortunately, but it wasn’t being driven with as much force. Gravity had returned, so Spike let go of Bon Bon and gingerly put his feet back on the floor, slick from the driving rain. He peered over the edge of the chariot. “What happened?”

“We’re here!” Derpy said, unhitching herself from the chariot and prancing happily through the rain to unlatch the tailgate.

“An impressively smooth landing,” Bon Bon said. “I couldn’t even see the ground.”

Derpy giggled. “I’ve got a lot of practice landing blind,” she said. “I’m really nearsighted and have no depth perception.”

Moondancer stared after her as she headed for the nearby house. “You – you –“ She turned to Spike. “This is all your fault.”

“That we landed safely?” Spike asked, with a nervous grin.

“That I nearly wet myself,” Moondancer snapped. “Or maybe I did. It’s raining too hard to be certain.”

Bon Bon sniffed the air, but didn’t elaborate on what she may or may not have smelled. “Come on – we’re early, so we should have time to clean up before the game starts.”

===

“You don’t have a key to your own house.” Moondancer said, as they circled around to the back.

“I hid one somewhere,” Bon Bon explained, “but we haven’t actually used the lock in years. It’ll be faster just to go in through the basement. It’s where we were planning to play anyway.”

“So much for washing up,” Moondancer grumbled.

Bon Bon frowned. “Spike can go upstairs and get us some towels.”

“Why me?” Spike asked.

“Because you don’t have a sopping dripping coat and mane to leave a watery trail all over our carpets.”

“Guys, it’s open!” Derpy said, from farther ahead.

They all hurried forwards and crowded into the dark – but dry – depths of the basement. Moondancer lit her horn, and Bon Bon made her way through the clutter to the light switch, with a sigh. “Lyra was supposed to clean this place up. I hope we’re still able to…”

She trailed off as the lights came on, and everypony looked around in confusion.

“This is your basement?” Spike said, taking in the barrels and crates, the strange decorations, and the medieval portcullis set into the wall, beyond which a stone-walled staircase descended further into the earth. He walked over to an alcove and picked up a decorative skull.

“No, it isn’t,” Bon Bon said. “We should go.”

“Too late,” Moondancer said, tapping the solid wall that had appeared behind her. “The door’s gone.”

“Wow,” Derpy said grinning widely. “Lyra really went all out!”

Bon Bon turned towards her, and narrowed her eyes. “Explain.”

“She must have set all this up for the adventure!”

“I was down here this morning, telling her what to clean up,” Bon Bon said. “There is no way she did all this in less than twelve hours.”

Spike looked at the skull. It wasn’t made of plaster, and the teeth were all shiny. He gave it a lick, and frowned. “This is a real skull,” he said. “Do any of you know anypony in town who sells pony skulls?”

Derpy tilted her head, and her eyes wandered in different directions. “I bet Pinkie Pie could find some.”

“Maybe it’s an illusion?” Moondancer suggested.

“Or something like those enchanted comics,” Spike guessed. “Where you’re pulled into an alternate world?”

Moondancer nodded. “That’s a kind of illusion.”

Bon Bon looked between them, then relaxed. “So Lyra really could have set this up.”

“I guess,” Spike said. “Although the last time I got sucked into one of these we were all in character, not just playing ourselves. I mean, this looks like the start of a standard dungeon crawl, and none of us are adventurers.”

“You could be the fighter!” Derpy suggested, bounding over to him and rubbing his headspikes with a hoof “Since you’re a big strong dragon!”

Bon Bon chuckled mirthlessly. “I suppose I could play the rogue. Moondancer’s obviously the wizard.”

“I guess I know a few combat spells,” Moondancer said. “I just hope this dungeon was built for low-level characters. I’m not going to be slinging around fireballs like Spike’s sorcerer.”

“And I’ll be the pirate!” Derpy said.

“You need to be a priest,” Spike said. “We need a balanced party.”

“Is ‘pirate’ even a character class?” Bon Bon asked.

“It’s a fighter/thief gestalt,” Moondancer replied, picking up a long gnarled stick she’d found, and giving it a few experimental swings. “Specialized in naval combat. Just be a priest, Derpy.”

“But look!” the pegasus said, nosing into her saddlebag, and taking out an accessory. She fiddled with it and strapped it to her head. “I’ve got an eyepatch and everything!”

“Why do you have an eyepatch?” Moondancer asked.

“In case of eyepatch emergencies,” Derpy said. “I can’t really see without it. My eyes get all googly and everything goes blurry.”

Bon Bon put a hoof to her forehead. “Then why have I never seen you wearing one?”

“’Cause I didn’t want everypony to know I’m secretly a pirate. Duh.” Derpy stuck out her tongue. “Besides, I don’t know any healing spells so I’d be a really bad priest.”

“It’s a game,” Moondancer said. “If you’re a priest you can just pray to Celestia and we’ll get magically healed.”

Derpy frowned. “But I don’t believe in Celestia.”

“How can you not – Celestia is real!” Moondancer said, advancing on Derpy and waving her staff in her direction. “Everypony knows she exists. She came to Ponyville several times. I’m pretty sure you’ve talked to her!”

“Well, yeah,” Derpy said. “How can you believe in somepony that you’ve met? I might as well pray to Rainbow Dash.”

“So what do you believe in?” Spike asked.

Derpy screwed up her face, scrunching her nose and sitting down for a bit. “Hmm…”

“I could live with a priest of Rainbow Dash,” Bon Bon said. “As long as nopony ever tells her.”

“Muffins!” Derpy said.

“You believe in muffins?” Spike asked.

“No! We can heal using muffins! Food heals you in games like this, right?”

“Where would we get the muffins?” Bon Bon asked.

“You can bake them!” Derpy said. “You’re a great cook!”

“I’m not a –“ Bon Bon sighed. “Fine. But I’m not taking it as my character class.”

“So we have our party, I guess,” Spike said. “Fighter, wizard, pirate, cook.”

“Rogue,” Bon Bon said.

“We should search the room,” Moondancer said. “I found this staff sitting in one of the barrels, I bet there’s starter weapons for all of us.”

So they searched around. Spike found a rusty sword and a wooden shield, and Derpy got her hooves on a mouth-held cutlass. Bon Bon…

“Are you sure you’re not a cook?” Derpy asked, looking at the serrated kitchen knife Bon Bon was strapping to her side.

Bon Bon scowled. “Rogues always have to use improvised knives at low levels.”

Down the River

“We need to turn around,” Bon Bon said, after they’d finished looting the orcs. Between the physical differences between an orc and a pony, and Spike’s newfound ‘melt armor’ power, none of their equipment was usable, and their trail supplies were meat-based, but at least they’d had some golz on them.

“They said they worked for Lord Orcus,” Spike said. “This has to be the right valley this time.”

“Maybe, but that fight was way too hard. I could overlook the trouble we had with the cows since it was an optional sidequest, but if we’re having this much trouble with the main storyline then we’ve obviously missed something major.” Bon Bon frowned. “Maybe we don’t actually improve after levelling up until we find a trainer? I hope we’re not just supposed to walk in circles out in the fields fighting chickens for a few weeks.”

Moondancer spread out the map, and they gathered around. “There’s a symbol north of the church. It looks like a mountain pass?”

“We could check it out, but it’s probably blocked off somehow,” Bon Bon said. “What about this?” She set a hoof on a cluster of symbols to the south. “River Town.”

“It’s a bit out of the way,” Spike said. They’d have to go farther east, turn south for a while, and then head back west, skirting yet another mountain range. “It’ll take us days to get there.”

“There’s nothing actually in the way,” Moondancer admitted. “But won’t it be blocked off like the pass, if we’re not supposed to go there yet?”

Bon Bon shrugged. “I’m sure the river crossing will, but I bet we can get into the town and go shopping.”

“You’re betting a week of our time,” Spike said.

“It’s that or we start grinding orcs,” Bon Bon said. “And with them ignoring Spike, that’s going to be tough. I don’t want to risk going up against a boss until we can easily defeat his minions – Baalzebull came too close to winning that fight.”

“Couldn’t we just go back to Castle Town?” Derpy asked. “I’m sure we missed stuff there. We didn’t buy all the most expensive things in the stores or anything.”

“That’s even farther,” Spike said, cringing.

“So it’s settled, then?” Bon Bon asked.

Moondancer narrowed her eyebrows. “How is it settled? No one wants to go there but you.”

“Sure, but none of you have any good arguments, so I win.” Bon Bon stood up, and headed back towards the edge of the forest. “Come on, let’s go.”

===

They ran into another group of orcs on the way out of the forest. This time, Spike roared a challenge and charged at them straight off, which got their attention, and his armor stood up to their swords a lot better than Bon Bon or Moondancer had.

There was a third orc in the back, though, wearing robes and carrying a skull-tipped staff, who cast a spell to summon a localized blizzard. Bon Bon had to break off her attack and feed everypony some of the mint candies she’d made at the farm – the refreshing taste helped them focus through the blinding snow, and the cold, and somehow made it easier for them to keep their feet with the ground under them slick and frosty, and it was obviously another manifestation of the weird magic of the world they were in.

It didn’t help much against the bruises and cuts from the unnaturally sharp hail that came with the storm, so they all had to snack on muffins afterwards.

“These swords are crap,” Spike said, “and the shields are too big. How’s the staff?”

Moondancer lifted it in her magic, and her eyes went unfocused for a second… then started to mist up, with green and purple smoke oozing from her tear ducts. She dropped it in a hurry. “Cursed,” she said, stomping on the skull and crushing it. There was a brief scream of spectral agony, and then the staff crumbled to dust. “Of course it’s cursed.”

Bon Bon frowned. “We could have sold that.”

===

Back on the road, they ran into some bandits, who weren’t very good fighters but tried to fight to the death anyway. They failed. Derpy spent most of the fight healing them after they were taken down by Bon Bon or Moondancer, and managed to save most of them.

“Aren’t you supposed to be on our side?” Moondancer asked.

“They were ponies! And not monster ponies or anything like that,” Derpy said. “They were just going to rob us.”

“Did you miss the part where they kept stabbing me with their daggers?” Spike asked. “I mean, yeah, none of them managed to land an actual hit, but they were trying.”

“They were just going to rob us until we started fighting back,” Derpy said, glowering at him. “Besides,” she added, after the last of the bandits had limped off out of sight, “I kind of want to fight them again. They were really weak and had a lot of golz.”

“Well, they won’t have any golz if we run into them again,” Spike said. “We just took it all.”

Derpy blinked. “What do you mean? Won’t they just go get more from home?”

“They’ll get more if they can successfully rob other ponies,” Moondancer said.

“Maybe they’ll get some from other enemies?” Spike suggested.

“Like the chickens?” Moondancer asked.

“The chickens had golz? Oh, I knew we should have checked inside the chickens,” Derpy said, pouting.

Moondancer shook her head. “Golz may be worthless play money, but I don’t think it’s literal chicken feed.”

Bon Bon tapped at the ground a few times, glancing back over her shoulder in the direction of Castle Town. “We should check, when we go back that way.”

“Ew,” Derpy said. “No.”

Bon Bon rolled her eyes. “You were butchering chickens left and right, and now you’re getting squeamish about cutting up ones that are already dead?”

“Spike can do it,” Moondancer said. “He eats meat, right?”

“I guess,” Spike said. “Cutting things up with swords is kind of gross but I’m getting used to it.”

===

The next few days – they’d decided to start calling the periods in between sleep days, since they all knew what they were talking about – passed uneventfully, with only routine monster attacks. There were some chickens (that did not have any golz in their stomachs), an evil-cow-and-evil-farmer pair, and even another, smaller group of bandits. They turned south, and turned back west, and then finally River Town was in sight, far in the distance.

That was when the wolves attacked.

A giant white wolf stood ahead of them in the road, blocking their path, and howled. They all rushed forward to attack it, Spike slamming it in the face with his shield while Bon Bon and Derpy circled around to approach its flanks, and Moondancer summoned lightning. It countered Spike’s shield-bash by biting his ankle, dropping him on his tail, and six smaller wolves leapt out of hiding and attacked the rest of the party.

“Ahh! Get away from me! Big Bee’s Bubble!” The bubble expanded around Moondancer, scraping off the wolf that had been biting at her ankle, but she was bleeding badly from a slash at her belly that her robes had done little to stop. This time, at least, the bubble held up against the little wolves’ attacks, and she was able to nose into her saddlebag and get one of the candies Bon Bon had made them all carry, which slowed the bleeding.

Derpy’s reflexes had saved her – she’d managed to dodge one of the wolves outright, and the other was hanging by its jaws from her hind leg while she flew twenty feet up in the air. It didn’t let go in time as she doubled over and swung her cutlass, and soon it was dead weight.

Bon Bon managed to buck one of the wolves in the face as it leapt at her, dropping it, but the other wolf tore a chunk out of her cutie mark, which wasn’t covered by her armored jacket – and then Moondancer’s wolves and Derpy’s remaining wolf joined in. She swung her ladle valiantly, but soon went down under a pile of snarling and snapping wolves, screaming in agony briefly, before going silent.

“Spike!” Moondancer shouted, pointing at the dogpile on Bon Bon after getting his attention. “Use flamethrower, now!”

Spike turned and let out a huge belch of flames, engulfing the smaller wolves and setting them on fire. They scattered, and Derpy and Moondancer charged after them with cutlass and scythe, finishing them off.

But that left the large wolf free to lock its jaws around Spike’s helmet from behind. It lifted him off the ground and shook him back and forth rapidly, then threw him to the ground and leapt on him while he was still dizzy. There was the sound of tearing metal as its claws and teeth started to rip off pieces of his armor.

“Spike, batter up!” said Derpy, and the giant wolf yelped and leapt back as a torrent of chilly, sticky muffin batter poured down over the little dragon. Moondancer wasted no time in putting a bubble around it.

“Bon Bon, are you okay?” she asked. When there was no answer, she added, “Are you still alive?”

“Um…” Derpy said, hovering over the bloody pile that used to be her friend and poking at it with a hoof. “She’s not eating the muffins, so I think she’s probably dead. Can I borrow some golz? Bon Bon took mine.”

“Bon Bon has all the golz,” Spike said, chewing slowly on a muffin while watching the bubbled wolf cautiously. It howled in rage, but couldn’t break out. “She said she wanted to count how much we had, for when we got to town.”

“I’m going to search her pockets, then,” Derpy said, rolling her over. “If I can find them. She’s really a mess.”

“Maybe you should try the resurrection spell?” Spike suggested. “Just saying.”

“The material component is 100 golz,” Moondancer said. “Life isn’t cheap.”

“Found it!” Derpy said, scooping out handfuls of the light, gold-colored coins. “I hope this works.”

“Actually, 100 golz is pretty cheap,” Spike noted. “The hamburgers cost 50 golz each.”

“Oh Great Muffin, please accept my offering, and bring Bon Bon back to life!”

Bon Bon groaned, and twitched. None of her wounds were healed, but at least she was moving. Derpy poked at one of the muffins near what she was pretty sure was her face, and nudged it a little closer.

After three muffins, she was looking a lot better. “I think I was dead,” she groaned.

“Yeah, we noticed,” Moondancer said. “Derpy’s spell works, by the way.”

Bon Bon nodded, climbing to her hooves. “Did we win?”

“Not… exactly,” Spike said, motioning towards the giant wolf, still trapped in its bubble, pacing back and forth now, and watching the party hungrily.

Bon Bon smiled mirthlessly, and took out her lasso. “Drop the bubble, and let’s finish this.”

The lasso-and-scythe trick worked against the wolf almost as well as it had against the cows. Moondancer had to use Reaper’s Strike twice before she could actually slit its throat, thanks to its thick fur and loose hide, but it never actually got to do anything else before it died.

“That wolf fur has to be worth something,” Derpy said.

“Is it still going to be worth something after you try to skin it?” Moondancer asked.

The answer was ‘no’. On the plus side, they got to unintentionally search the wolf’s stomach for valuables, and it actually did have a few hundred golz inside.

===

“So,” Spike said. “Those wolves were pretty hard. Are you sure we’re supposed to go this way yet?”

“I’m sure we’re not,” Bon Bon replied. “But if we can make it to River Town, and buy equipment we’re not supposed to have yet, Lord Orcus and his orcs will be a breeze.”

“And if we can’t?” Moondancer asked.

Bon Bon frowned. “I’m pretty sure we can. If nothing else, we can run away.”

“I don’t think I can outrun a wolf,” Spike said. “I could never outrun the timberwolves back home.”

“Derpy can carry you,” Bon Bon looked up at Derpy. “Right?”

Derpy grinned. “Sure! He’s a lot lighter than the stuff I usually carry.”

“I don’t think I can outrun a wolf either,” Moondancer said.

Bon Bon narrowed her eyes. “Why, Moondancer,” she said, in mock surprise. “Are you saying you want to ride Derpy?”

“You – you –” the unicorn’s face turned bright red, and she lifted up her scythe. “You pervert!”

Bon Bon laughed as she ran away, Moondancer chasing after her surprisingly quickly.

It's Raining Deer

“So now what?” Moondancer asked, as they stood around in the snow next to the church.

“I guess we look around for Death Mountain,” Bon Bon said. “Unless you want to break into somepony’s house and sleep in their bed.”

Moondancer seemed to consider it. “No,” she said, at last. “We can sleep on the train, I guess. Just don’t expect me to do any fighting.”

“We should be safe in town,” Spike said, as they made their way back to the road. There was a major intersection in front of the church, and the cross-street had a marked slope to it, although the uphill segment curved out of sight. “I mean, unless we fall into a sewer or something. Or run into a cutscene.”

Bon Bon led them up the hill. “How do we avoid cutscenes?” she asked, as they rounded the corner and followed the winding road through a snowy park. A mountain cliff loomed nearby, leaving the place in shadow, but it was lit by magical floating globes.

“There you are!” came a familiar, if unwelcome, voice. Obvious Trader emerged from behind a cluster of globes, and approached them. “Come! You must come! Death awaits!”

“Death Mountain?” Derpy asked, as he grabbed her tail in his teeth and physically dragged her off the road and into the park, the others scrambling to keep up.

“Yes. Yes. No,” Obvious Trader said, as they reached a small grove of firs. Red eyes appeared in the shadow of the evergreens, and something started to move towards them. “No, not Death Mountain. Just Death. At last!”

A massive diamond dog emerged from the grove, dressed in red felt with fluffy white trim. In his claws he clutched a thin, slightly curved sword longer than he was tall. Three reindeer pranced out to join him, decked out in color-coded barding: red, green and blue.

“This is your death!” Obvious Trader said, standing aside and pointing a hoof at the diamond dog. “The Red Ninja is the most feared assassin in the land! Once he catches your scent, there is no escape! He knows when you sleep, and when you wake!”

The Red Ninja said nothing.

“You traitor!” Spike said. “We trusted you!”

“No we didn’t,” Bon Bon said.

“We kind of did,” Moondancer said. “Which is embarrassing in retrospect.”

“Yeah, when you think about it, it was sort of obvious,” Derpy said, then suddenly grinned. “Oh! I get it!”

“You will get nothing, except your long-overdue death!” Obvious Trader screeched. “Red Ninja, kill them! Kill them all!”

The Red Ninja stood silently, sword at the ready. The heroes stared at him for a while.

“Is he… waiting for us to go first?” Bon Bon asked, relaxing a bit from her ready pose.

“Oh, I know what this is!” Spike said. “Iajitsu! He’s waiting for us to attack him, so that he can strike first and kill us in one blow.”

“So does that mean we can just walk around?” Moondancer asked, turning to the side and trotting carefully in a wide circle centered on the ninja.

“That is why he has us,” said the blue reindeer, his voice high-pitched and proper. The tips of his antlers glowed as he cast a spell, “Spirits of winter, scourge these fiends!”

A gust of wind quickly built into a swirling vortex of snow, and the heroes raised claws and hooves to shield their faces from the stinging bite of the blizzard.

“Ruby fires of all creation, gather in my hooves and become an inferno!” intoned another reindeer voice, and then a massive fireball exploded among them, burning Derpy and throwing Spike and Moondancer to the ground from the blast wave. Somehow, it did nothing to stop the stinging cold from the snow.

There was a thwack from the direction of the Ninja, and they could vaguely see a small pony shape sinking a blade into the back of the Ninja’s neck, having darted around behind him, concealed by the blizzard. The ninja flung her off quickly, and slashed her badly with three quick swipes of his katana before she could hit the ground, but it was obvious that her sneak attack had staggered him.

“Heal us, oh Giant Flying Spaghetti Monster!” cried the third reindeer, and a green glow shone from the sky, illuminating the Red Ninja well enough for them to see his wound heal over and vanish, as if it had never been.

“Hey!” Spike said, running forwards and breathing a gout of flame at the Red Ninja to get his attention before he could finish Bon Bon off, while Derpy zipped overhead to feed her a muffin, ignoring her burns. He swung his sword at the ninja, but with a flash of steel something wrenched it out of his claws and sent it spinning through the air, out of reach. “What?”

Then there was the scrape of metal on metal, and a searing pain in his chest. The diamond dog’s glowing red eyes met his, and locked him in place as he felt his knees weaken, and slowly slid to the ground, the ninja’s katana scraping its way back out of his chest, coated in blood.

“Ow,” Spike said, staring at the clear blue sky as fireballs and ice bolts and flashes of lightning raged around him. “Derpy?” he croaked, “I think I need a muffin…”

There was a painful scream, and then silence. The wind died down, and a shadow descended as the looming figure of the diamond dog ninja blotted out the sky. The Red Ninja’s mouth opened, glistening with fangs, and a sinister laugh echoed in Spike’s fading ears. “Ho, ho, ho…” Then a flash of steel, and then –

===

“Aaah!” Spike screamed, sitting bolt upright in the basement of the inn, surrounded by treasures and artifacts illuminated by the calm blue glow of the Giant Floating Crystal. He patted his chest, and his neck, making sure everything was attached. “Ahhh!”

“Let’s not do that again,” Moondancer said, not sitting upright from where she lay on her side on the cold stone floor. “We won’t have to do that again, will we?”

“That depends on whether or not he believes we’ll stay dead,” Bon Bon replied, rubbing her head. “He doesn’t know we found this crystal.”

“But the Red Ninja knows, doesn’t he?” Derpy asked, getting to her hooves and shaking her wings out. “He knows when we awake!”

“Ah.” Spike said, calming down a bit. “Wait, we’re alive?”

Moondancer rolled her eyes. “Virgins.”

“Alive, and cursed,” Bon Bon hissed, holding her hooves to both her temples as if she could squeeze out the pain. “I knew we were supposed to be weaker, but I didn’t realize it came with a screaming headache.”

“How long does it take to wear off?” Moondancer asked, still not rising. “Nevermind, I’ll just lie here until it does.”

“I think you just have to go to the church,” Derpy said. “When I was sad that the resurrection spell cost money, the old priest said that it was cheaper than having him remove the curse.”

“Good,” Bon Bon said. “Money we have. Spike, are we going to have to fight that ninja again?”

“Huh?” Spike asked.

Bon Bon stared at him. “You know the genre.”

“Oh, right. Right,” the dragon said. “Um… that fight seemed pretty impossible. If it was a fight we were supposed to lose then we won’t have to fight him again unless we screw up. He did a one-hit kill on me and Bon Bon both, which is usually how you tell.”

“She wasn’t dead,” Derpy said. “I mean, she was really hurt but I was able to muffin her in time. I just had to keep muffining her though and didn’t have time to muffin myself and eventually all the fireballs just kind of… ow.”

“Yeah, it took him three hits to kill me,” Moondancer said. “You should have been able to handle him, Spike. What happened?”

“I don’t know. I just swung my sword at him, and then –”

“Ah,” Bon Bon said.

“Oh Spike,” Moondancer said. “Why did you do that?”

“What?” Spike asked. “What did I do?”

“You attacked the ninja with the instant-kill counterattack, and got instantly killed by the counterattack,” Bon Bon explained.

“You warned us he was going to do that,” Moondancer said.

Spike cringed. “Oops?”

===

Getting the curse removed was more expensive than Derpy’s resurrection spell, but not as expensive as they expected – for one thing, a single spell covered the entire party.

“How did you get cursed?” the priest asked, as he sprinkled them with holy water. It wasn’t part of the spell, as far as any of them could tell, but he insisted on doing the long version of the ritual – there were people watching from the balcony, after all. “We haven’t had a Giant Floating Crystal in town since the one in the inn went missing.”

“Arena town,” Bon Bon said. “We couldn’t afford to remove the curse then, but we’ve come into some money since.”

“Couldn’t… afford?” The priest narrowed his eyes at them. “I don’t understand. What does that mean?”

“It means we didn’t have enough money?” Spike said, squinting at his strange expression.

The priest laughed, “Ah, I see. It’s true, you can never have enough money.”

===

Once they were all feeling better, it was time to shop. “If we can just find a couple of fire resistance accessories we’ll be set,” Bon Bon said.

“Or Derpy could wear the battle saddle,” Spike suggested. “I mean, she’s the one we need to keep alive, right?”

“Um… I don’t know, Spike,” Derpy said, staring down at Moondancer and prompting her to drag her braided tail down to cover herself more tightly. “Isn’t that wizard armor?”

“Thank you so much for reminding me I’m prancing around town basically naked,” Moondancer hissed.

“You always walk around naked at home,” Spike said.

“No I don’t,” Moondancer said.

“You’re thinking of every other pony in Equestria,” Bon Bon said. “But you know what? We’ve been here long enough that keeping covered is starting to feel natural. I’d feel a little weird going around naked myself.”

“Not me!” Derpy said, doing a loop-the-loop in the air over their heads. “Whenever I start feeling weird about it all, I just imagine everypony’s naked!”

“Huh,” Spike said, staring at Derpy thoughtfully, until Moondancer chucked a snowball at his head.

Eventually, they found a store that pretended to sell weapons and armor. Extremely fancy, extremely expensive weapons and armor.

“Be careful with that!” the shopkeeper cried in alarm.

“This doesn’t seem very strong,” Moondancer said, waving around a jewel-encrusted staff experimentally, “Can you actually hit people with this without it breaking?”

“Wait wait wait!” the desperate pony said, leaping at her and catching the delicate staff between his hooves. He twisted it out of her magical aura and set it gently back against the wall. “You want something you can actually hit people with?”

“That’s what weapons are for,” Bon Bon said, looking up from the array of brightly colored scarves, none of which seemed to have any magical properties whatsoever.

The shopkeeper looking around furtively, then headed for the front of the shop, where he locked the door and flipped the sign to ‘closed’. “Come with me,” he said, motioning to them to follow.

He shifted a display of gleaming swords aside, revealing a small wooden door that he had to kick twice to unstick before he could open it. In the backroom was a much smaller selection of much uglier goods. “Sorry, I didn’t realize that you were real adventurers,” he told them as they started to look around. “It’s been ages since anyone who wasn’t an orc was interested in the good stuff.”

“Do any of these resist fire?” Bon Bon asked, sorting through a small bucket of amulets.

“I sell to fire-resistant orcs,” the shopkeeper replied. “If you want to resist ice, now that I can do.”

===

Obvious Trader paced back and forth in the clearing. “What is the problem? All I need you to do is to sign the form acknowledging the completion of your task, and then I can return to my master and report success.”

He glanced over at the bodies of the so-called Heroes one more time. Yep, still dead. The little dragon didn’t even have a head.

“They wake,” the Red Ninja insisted, continuing to stand in the middle of the road, his sword sheathed but with one claw resting on the hilt.

“Are you perhaps sensing them awaking in the Land of the Dead?” Obvious Trader asked, shaking a hoof at the ninja, who didn’t react. “I assure you, they are not among the living! Their crystal is smashed!”

The hulking ninja did not reply.

“They’re still here, and still dead.” He pointed at the charred remains of the pegasus. “The bodies didn’t vanish!”

“The bodies don’t vanish,” said the blue reindeer. “How would the orcs eat their victims if the bodies vanished?”

Obvious Trader froze, and turned to face him. “They don’t vanish? I was sure they vanished. Don’t the orcs eat their victims alive?”

The reindeer shivered, little bells worked into his outfit jingling. “Sometimes they try? But you usually die before they finish.”

The pony scowled. “It doesn’t matter. I smashed their stupid crystal. They have nowhere to respawn.”

“And yet, they wake,” the Red Ninja said.

Obvious Trader sat down and clutched at his head. “No. No! If that’s true, they could be anywhere!”

“They still have to come through here,” the red reindeer reminded him. “That’s why we picked this as the ambush spot. If they don’t come back soon we’ll go back and hide in the trees again.”

“We’ve got a whole camp set up!” the green reindeer said, prancing around in a circle. “You could wait with us. We don’t have an extra tent but the pine needles are soft enough.”

There was a soft *shink!* sound, and the Red Ninja drew his sword two inches from its sheath. The reindeer turned to follow his gaze, which seemed to be focusing on a cluster of glowing globes that was slowly creeping past them.

The red reindeer slowly began to smile. “Crimson fires…”

The cluster fell to the ground, revealing three ponies and a dragon. “Okay! Okay, you found us,” Moondancer said. “Are you sure we can’t just… not fight this time? I don’t think I mentioned it last time but I really hate being stabbed.”

The Red Ninja pointed his sword at her. “You have been naughty.”

“It’s fine,” Bon Bon said, placing a hoof on Moondancer’s shoulder. “Just remember the plan.”

At that point, the red reindeer finished his fireball and chucked it at the heroes, and Spike raised his sparkly new shield and gave a fearsome roar as he charged into the fight. It was on!

Once again, the ninja took his defensive stance, while his reindeer spread out to support him. He locked eyes with Spike as he charged… only for the dragon to turn at the last second and slam into the green reindeer, knocking her to the ground.

“What? Hey! Get off!” she shrieked, kicking at him as he stabbed his sword into her gut, over and over.

“Spirits of Nature!” “Crimson fires of all creation…” the other reindeer began, trying to distract the heroes as they all focused on their comrade, who was trying to heal herself. The blizzard didn’t seem to slow them down this time, though, and while the fireball singed the pegasus it didn’t stop her from lining up a shot with her portable cannon. There was a loud ‘bang!’, and a massive bullet ricocheted off three trees and struck the red reindeer in the side, knocking him off his feet, if not out of the fight.

The Red Ninja himself advanced on the attackers, but Spike turned to face him, shield held high. The katana flashed, but couldn’t get past the dragon’s focused defense. Behind Spike, Bon Bon appeared out of nowhere, and sank her cleaver into the green reindeer’s throat just as she was starting another healing spell. She choked, and her eyes glazed over as she fell, bells jingling festively as her blood stained the snow.

“Dark Eidous Dark Eidous Dark Eidous!” shouted Moondancer, and lightning descended to strike all three of the remaining enemies.

“Flaming Hooves!” cried the red reindeer as he got back to his feet. He charged at Moondancer, only to slam into a bubble that sprang into being around her as she turned to meet his charge. He staggered back, off balance, and then one of his hind legs collapsed as Bon Bon chopped at the tendons with her cleaver. He turned and kicked her in the face, knocking her back, but her next blow lodged her cleaver in his forehead, right between his antlers, and he barely had time to go cross-eyed trying to look at it before collapsing in a heap.

The blue reindeer glanced over at the Red Ninja, who was still trying to take down the little dragon. He’d scored some good hits, but the dragon was tough and wasn’t making the mistake of fighting back with his sword this time – he just held his shield in place and used his fire breath to get the Ninja’s attention whenever he looked like he was going to break away.

“Dark Eidous Dark Eidous Dark Eidous!” Three lightning bolts crashed down, two of them hitting the reindeer this time, while Derpy flew over to give Spike a muffin and Bon Bon advanced on the last reindeer steadily, bloody cleaver held in her teeth.

“Oh, I hate this part,” the blue reindeer said, taking a few steps back. His antlers glowed as he summoned an ice bolt, but it shattered against the chef’s apron without even leaving a mark. Suddenly, the pony crouched, and leaped, and the reindeer turned around and around to try to spot her. But it was no use – a sudden pain shot through him as she landed on his back, and the cleaver sunk into his neck. His eyes rolled up as he fell.

Bon Bon yanked her cleaver back out of his spine, and sat down using his cooling corpse as a cushion. “All right, girls. The rest is up to you.”

The cannon roared, the lightning flashed, and sure enough, with only one target left every shot and spell was focused on the Red Ninja. It still took a long time to wear him down – Derpy had to break off and heal Spike with a muffin more than once – but without his reindeer cluttering the battlefield it was a foregone conclusion.

At last, the Ninja fell to his knees. “You have defeated me,” he growled. “You’re all on my list now. Pray that we do not meet again.” Then he took a page out of Bon Bon’s handbook, leaping into the air and vanishing before they could finish him off.

After a tense minute or so while they waited to see if he’d reappear, Bon Bon pulled out a smaller knife, and started skinning the red reindeer.

“What are you doing?” Moondancer asked, looking horrified.

Bon Bon stopped and looked up. “We’ve skinned people before,” she said. “You’re wearing something we skinned before.”

“Didn’t we have the farmer skin him for us?” Spike said.

Bon Bon looked thoughtful. “Oh, right.” She went back to slicing off the reindeer’s hide, mumbling around the blade. “Learned how to do thish in Cashle Town. No thenthe wathting a good corpsh. I mean, he’sh not ushing it.”

“I’m going to be sick,” Moondancer said.

“You could look away?” Derpy suggested, landing next to her and glancing at her for a second.

“No. No I can’t,” Moondancer said, continuing to stare.

“Yeah, me neither,” Derpy said.

===

After looting the three reindeer pelts, three sets of reindeer antlers, five perfect eyeballs, eighteen herbivore teeth, and one engorged liver, it was time to move on. The road they’d left just looped back to town, but pushing on through the fir trees revealed the entrance to a mine, set into the cliff that led to the mountain peak. There were some signs that it had been worked recently, although nopony was working there at the moment.

Nopony except for Obvious Trader, who was busy tying some strange red sticks to the supports holding up the mine. Seeing them, he gave a cry of alarm, and tried to run off.

They gave chase! It wasn’t a very long chase, because while the park had done a good job of looking vast, it was actually a tiny park wedged on top of a mountain pass, and in less than a minute, the heroes had him at bay, trapped on a ledge above a thousand-foot fall onto sharp, snowy rocks.

“I may have failed, but don’t think that you have won. Death still awaits you!” the traitor screamed at them, clinging to the slippery stone as the wind tried to tear him off his perch.

“Death Mountain,” Derpy corrected him.

“Yes, this time yes,” he said, giggling to himself. “And what do you think waits for you inside Death Mountain?”

“A train?” Moondancer suggested, hopefully.

Obvious Trader glowered at her.

“Who are you working for?” Bon Bon asked. “Who is your master?”

“It was the princess, wasn’t it?” Spike said.

“Ha!” Obvious Trader laughed. “The princess is but a pawn in my master’s plans. I serve the one true king, the rightful ruler of all who live on this blighted world!”

“The Immortal Emperor?” Moondancer asked. “But we’re trying to help him. Why would he –”

“No!” the traitor shouted, interrupting her. “Not that fool! The true master!”

“King McGuffin?” Spike suggested.

Derpy rubbed her chin, then her eye brightened and she raised a hoof. “Is it the Flying Spaghetti Monster?”

“No you imbeciles! The pony the emperor betrayed and cursed! The nameless one! Dark Eidous!”

Lightning crashed, striking Obvious Trader, who jerked in surprise and lost his grip on the ledge. He had time for one last terrified expression before slipping off the edge, screaming as he fell.

Derpy crouched as if about to launch herself into the air to save him, then folded her wings back up and relaxed. The scream cut off suddenly.

“I was going to save him, but then I remembered that he was a bad guy,” she said.

“You forgot he was the bad guy,” Bon Bon said, deadpan.

“He’s been our friend for days!” she said, pouting. “I got used to thinking of him as one of us.”

Bon Bon sighed. “Derpy… he was in the middle of giving us a villain speech when he fell.”

She smiled. “I know, but it was kind of a cool speech, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Spike said. “The next time I die I hope I get to make a cool speech like that.”

Quest With the Best

Moondancer’s robes aside, Night Dog was not impressed with their new equipment. “You really expect to fight demons in this?”

“It’s pretty basic, but the stats are good,” Spike said. “It’s better than our old stuff if you just look at the damage of the weapons or the defense from the armor.”

“Do you know where we could get better?” Bon Bon asked.

Night Dog scowled. “The place I know got trashed. But everyone knows you need demon-bone weapons to fight major demons. Steel and wood won’t even scratch their hide.”

“So if we had a demon-bone weapon, we could take out the invincible demon?” Bon Bon asked.

Night Dog frowned. “Not as long as he has Twilight. Her aura protects him from demonic attacks.” At their expectant looks, he explained. “She’s a powerful shrine maiden. When we hunted demons together, she used to enchant her bow with holy power – it could purify any demon with a single shot. But the demon that captured her twisted that into an aura that ‘purifies’ demonic weapons used against him.”

Derpy scrunched up her face. “So… the weapons we’ve got are exactly as good against him as the special demon-bone weapons you want us to use?”

“Exactly as useless,” Night Dog said, rolling his eyes. “And there are more demons than just him to worry about.”

“More major demons?” Spike asked.

Night Dog nodded. “More than you’d think, especially with Twilight trapped. I try to keep them in check, but it’s harder on my own.”

“But there are some minor demons around?” Spike said, looking to Night Dog for confirmation. When he nodded Spike smiled. “I think I know what we have to do...”

===

The demon village looked a lot like a mortal village… because at one point, it had been one, until the village ward failed and the demons moved in, driving out the original inhabitants.

There was no replacement anti-mortal ward, so the heroes were able to just walk right in through the front gate. It wasn’t even guarded. Or closed. Or put back on its hinges.

“Yeah, they don’t need guards,” Night Dog said. “They’re all demons. Anything that can threaten them wouldn’t bother walking through the gate.”

“Except us!” Derpy said.

She was answered by hissing, coming from all around, and spotted movement in the shadowy interiors of the surrounding buildings, and the alleyways between the huts.

“Don’t underestimate them,” Night Dog said. “If I wasn’t here, they’d probably have already attacked.”

A pair of giant serpents slithered into the street in front of them – one glowing bright blue, the other a shiny green.

“That’ssss far enough,” the blue one said. “Your kind issssn’t welcome here.”

“We’ve come to bargain!” Moondancer announced, thumping her staff against the ground firmly.

The green snake responded by leaping right at her. A solid thwack from her stick sent it reeling back, and then Spike was in front of her, fending it off with his shield.

“Stop!” Derpy said, hovering ten feet up. “We’re here to talk!”

The blue snake spat poison at her face, but she turned her head to take it on the eyepatched side, keeping it out of her eyes. It sizzled and blistered her skin as it ran down her cheek, and she fired her crossbow wildly in its general direction.

“Enough!” Night Dog said, brandishing his sword which suddenly grew to massive size. He slashed at the snakes from far out of reach, and the air rippled as a shockwave shot down the street, hitting the blue snake and slicing it into dozens of squirming, bleeding pieces.

The green snake backed away from Spike, and glowered hatefully at Night Dog. “We won’t forget thissss!” It turned tail to run, only for Moondancer to peg it in the back of the head with a magic missile – a frying pan, to be precise, which clonged against its snakey skull and laid it out unconscious. Bon Bon appeared from the shadows, burying a paring knife into its back, severing its spine.

“That’s not how this was supposed to go,” Derpy said, nibbling on her muffin and looking around at the shadows, where more snakes slithered and hissed but didn’t dare attack. “We were just going to trade them for their shed skins.”

“And now we’ve got skin, blood, bone, and teeth,” Night Dog said. “Much better raw materials.”

===

A metal bar wrapped in green snakeskin, crossbow bolts tipped with bone, and a set of tiny knives carved from the blue snake’s crystalline scales.

“It’s not fair,” Spike said. “All your weapons are cool.”

His shield and armor had been coated in scales and skin respectively, like the staff, but there was no realistic way to turn any of the materials into a workable sword. Maybe the blacksmith in town could have managed it, but even he was specialized in metal.

So Spike had a club-axe thing, made of snake jawbones with a spine for a handle. The fangs jutted out dangerously, and if he’d been some sort of necromancer or maybe a barbarian, it might have been on theme. “This isn’t really a knight’s weapon.”

“You aren’t really a knight,” Bon Bon said.

“Technically he is,” Derpy said.

“Yeah, I was knighted in the Crystal Empire,” Spike said. “Big ceremony and everything.”

“What?” Moondancer said. “Why didn’t I ever hear about this?”

“Because you don’t live in the Crystal Empire?” Spike said. “I’m kind of a big deal there.”

Derpy nodded enthusiastically. “There’s a giant statue!”

“What did you do to get knighted?” Bon Bon asked.

“I saved the whole empire from Sombra,” Spike said. “There I was – Twilight trapped, the evil clouds of gloom closing in all around, and it was up to me alone to carry the Crystal Heart to safety…”

“And then he tripped,” Derpy said. “And dropped the Heart, and they were both falling with all the crystal ponies watching… and Princess Cadance swooped in and saved them both.”

Spike looked at the ground, and rubbed the back of his head. “Er, yeah… that part wasn’t –"

“But Spike got the credit, because swooping in to save the day is just what princesses are supposed to do,” Derpy continued. “Dragons, though – dragons are supposed to *eat* crystals! So only a hero dragon would carry it long enough to trip over a dark crystal and drop it out of the sky.”

“Can you imagine what they’d think if they saw me waving this thing around?” Spike asked, waving it around.

“The crystal ponies aren’t going to see you waving it around,” Moondancer said.

“Are you sure?” Spike said, looking around nervously. “What if this world really is a game, and there’s a big game board in Lyra’s basement with us walking around as pieces, and everyone’s gathered around watching us as we go through the story?”

“Then they would have rescued us by now,” Bon Bon said.

“Unless they reeeeeally want to see how the story turns out,” Derpy said, frowning.

“No,” Bon Bon said. “No one’s watching.”

There was quiet, and they stared at the fire for a bit.

“Huh,” Spike said, “I was sure someone was going to sneak up on us, after a line like that.”

===

“So explain this part again,” Night Dog said. “You know our weapons are useless against the invincible demon, but you want us to attack him anyway?”

“You said he doesn’t kill his challengers,” Spike said. “So we’ve got nothing to lose!”

“Except our dignity,” Night Dog snarled. At the unanimous round of shrugs and chuckles, he relented. “Ugh. Fine. I’ll go fight him again if you really think it’ll help.”

“Remember, we need to make it look good,” Spike said. “Don’t hold back!”

Night Dog growled, and started to transform – growing larger, and fluffier, and much more canine. His hooves split like a goat’s, with viciously sharpened tips, and claws protruding from his ankles, pointing backwards. He took his sword in his teeth – and stabbed it into the ground next to him, sinking it two feet into the solid rock. “Let’s go,” he growled, through a mouth full of fangs.

“Aren’t you going to use your sword?” Spike asked.

“If I use my sword, he’ll use his sword,” Night Dog said. “Trust me, you don’t want him to use his sword.”

Spike frowned, glancing at his ridiculous jaw-axe. “But we can use our weapons, right?”

Night Dog growled, “There’s no point, but sure, knock yourself out.”

They approached the cave. Night Dog threw back his head and howled, then shouted, “Destroyer of Hope! Get out here and face me!”

A pair of glowing red eyes appeared within the cave. “Go away,” said a surprisingly gentle voice. “I’m not in the mood to fight you.”

“Then give back my Twilight!”

With a heavy sigh, the eyes closed, and the Invincible Demon, Destroyer of Hope, slowly emerged from the cave. He was a wolf, twenty feet high at the shoulder, his super-fluffy fur blowing in an invisible breeze. As his gaze swept across the group that stood before him, they felt it press them back with almost physical force. Moondancer levitated her staff out in front of her to part the invisible energy flow, while Spike held up his shield. Derpy was forced back a few feet, before shifting her wings and swooping as though in a headwind.

“Impressive, for mortals,” the invincible demon said. “But you should really flee. If you stay to fight, it will not go well for you.”

“We’re not afraid,” Derpy said proudly. “The Great Muffin is with us!”

“Also, Night Dog,” Moondancer said.

“I told you I already lost to him once,” Night Dog complained. “Don’t count on me to do your work for you.”

“So which of you should I defeat first?” the Destroyer of Hope asked.

Spike stepped forwards. “That’s usually my job,” he said, smirking. “But we fight as a team.”

“Pathetic,” the invincible demon said.

“You use a mortal’s help, I get to use a mortal’s help,” Night Dog said. “And you know that Twilight’s worth more than the three of them put together.”

“Very well,” the demon replied.

…and then Spike was flying through the air, batted aside contemptuously by a giant paw, until Moondancer’s magic gripped him and flung him back at the giant wolf, which was leaping into the air to take out Derpy. Spike splatted against his side like a pegasus trying to punch down a mountain.

But the wolf’s jaws didn’t close around their healer, despite the speed of his attack. Derpy soared, following the air currents, and they swept her aside and out of his reach. He landed gently on nothing, turning to jump again from his perch in midair, only for Night Dog to grab his tail and fling him back into the ground near the cave. “Don’t forget about me!” he snarled.

===

Meanwhile, Bon Bon made her way deeper into the Invicible Demon’s cave. It wasn’t the most difficult place to sneak into – it wasn’t even that hard, really. It was cluttered with treasures and knick-nacks and the ordinary things that any household needs to make a cave livable; there were even tapestries on the walls, which was basically begging someone to sneak around behind them.

There also weren’t very many demons. She only spotted one – off in a side cave that looked sort of like a stable – before she got to what had to be the main living area, since it was the only part of the cave with light.

If she hadn’t just snuck in through a passage of natural stone, Bon Bon might not have recognized that the chamber was underground. The walls were smooth and covered in white plaster and illustrated scrolls, with a floor of pale stone tiles carved with flowers and vines. Mats and low tables were placed around the room, and in the back was what looked like a shrine to a fancy sword. In the middle of the room was a giant birdcage, where a pony rested on a purple cushion, while a beam of white light shone down on her from no clear source.

But it wasn’t Twilight. Or at least not Twilight Sparkle. Bon Bon approached, after a second to process her disappointment. This might make things harder.

“Twilight?” she asked, quietly.

“Oh!” the pony said, sitting up quickly. She was a pale green pegasus with a black mane, wearing a simple white dress. “If you try anything I’ll scream,” she said, her eyes focusing on Bon Bon’s knives.

“I’m not here to kill you,” Bon Bon said, although it occurred to her that that would, in fact, solve half their problems. It would make the other half potentially unsolvable, however – this Twilight was the only one who could work the well, if Night Dog could be believed.

“If you’re here to rescue me, I’m afraid the Destroyer of Hope has made that impossible,” she said, with a sigh. “If any living thing passes the cage’s threshold, he’ll know immediately, and you have no idea how quickly he can move when he stops playing around.”

“Then I suppose it’s Plan B after all,” Bon Bon said. She took a bundle, and passed it through the bars.

Twilight unwrapped it, revealing a steel sword, a lead-cored stick, and a bundle of crossbow bolts.

“Bless them, please,” Bon Bon said. “Holy weapons can slay a demon, and won’t be stopped by holy protection.”

Twilight flinched back, withdrawing her hoof as if the weapons were poison.

“What’s the problem?” Bon Bon asked.

“You’re going to kill him?” she said, in a soft voice.

“We’re going to beat him down until he stops fighting and lets you go,” Bon Bon said. “It’s up to him if that’s before or after he dies.”

“Holy power is torture for demons,” Twilight said, looking at the ground. “Even my aura is like bathing in a sea of fire – a wound from a holy weapon…”

“Would you rather stay here forever?” Bon Bon asked, palming a small knife in case the answer was ‘yes’, and she had to move on to plan C. Which was still not killing Twilight, she reminded herself. “Please, I don’t have much time. My friends are fighting your captor as we speak, with no way to harm him.”

===

Spike let up on his fire breath, and Derpy dropped him to the ground, continuing to circle the gigantic muffin she’d just had him bake.

Well, muffin was a misnomer – it was more like a giant muffin top, made by roasting a huge pile of batter. Without a muffin tin, you couldn’t really bake a proper muffin.

“How long do you think that’s going to –” Spike started to say, stopping to hold up his shield as half-baked bread and batter splattered from the monstrous pastry as it exploded, followed quickly by a half-conscious Night Dog. Apparently he’d lost the grappling match before the batter had set.

“You thought you could stop me with bread?” the Destroyer of Hope said, softly, but his eyes were hard and his fur was flickering with literal flame.

“We were all out of fruit, or we’d have baked you a pie!” Spike shouted back, not peeking from behind his shield as the ground beneath him started to wear away just from the demon’s presence.

Jaws closed around his shield and tore it from his grip. Spike cringed and closed his eyes as the painful wind pouring from the demon scourged any bit of exposed scales, and felt his armor loosen as the straps and padding began to rot away around him – and had no way to dodge as a giant paw pinned him to the ground, and tons of weight pressed down on his chest, stopping his breath and slowly crushing the life from him.

“Get off him!” screamed Moondancer, and then the pressure let up.

Spike opened his eyes to see the Destroyer of Hope staggering to the side, the paw that had been pinning the little dragon held now to his face, where the wizard had just whacked him with a gnarled, leaden-cored stick… that now glowed with holy power. Moondancer took another swing at his face, and the Invincible Demon leapt back to the cave mouth, growling.

Spike felt something press against his empty claw where he’d dropped the useless jaw axe, and closed his fingers around a familiar sword, also glowing now. Without a shield, he took it in both hands, and grinned at his enemy as he got to his feet. “Now we can start the real fight.”

“Or you could surrender,” Derpy said, aiming her crossbow, a shining white light glowing from the bolt’s tip. “We’re just here for Twilight.”

“A true demon doesn’t back down in the face of death,” the Destroyer of Hope growled. “If this is to be my end, then so be it. But I won’t go down easily!”

He leapt at Spike, snarling, paw outstretched with fearsome claws, and a demonic aura of pure malice extending several feet from the physical limb… but Spike dodged the paw and slashed through the aura with his holy sword, following through with a scream as he brought the sword up into the Invincible Demon’s armpit. It sliced through the demon’s flesh like a fan parting smoke, and the severed limb flopped and skittered across the rocky ground. Purple, noxious blood spurted from both ends of the wound, eating away the rock and splashing over Spike in a poisonous wave.

Already off balance from the lack of resistance from his swing, Spike staggered and fell as a wave of weakness passed over him. His sword clattered to the ground, and he felt his armor shift and melt off his body, as a slowly building pain spread from the places the demon’s blood had touched, turning his blood to ice.

“Spike!” Derpy shouted in despair, firing her crossbow. The flash of holy light that shot from it failed to even pay lip service to gravity or wind, and splattered harmlessly against the cliffside above the demon’s head, missing him completely.

“Stop this!” Night Dog shouted, leaping in front of the heroes, standing over Spike protectively. “We’re not mere demons, brother! We can be more than power and rage!”

“Easy for you to say,” the Destroyer of Hope said, pulling himself up on three legs. “You were always more pony than demon!”

“And yet hundreds of demons have fallen to my claws,” Night Dog said. “You’re beaten, brother. Stand down before you get yourself killed for your stupid pride!”

“Give him an antidote!” Derpy hissed to Bon Bon, the two of them tending desperately to Spike at Night Dog’s feet, not wanting to interrupt their family drama. Bon Bon lifted the unconscious dragon’s muzzle to show the red-striped candy already resting on his tongue. Derpy whinnied. “Give him another one then!” Bon Bon poured out the whole bag of candies into Spike mouth, holding his muzzle closed and lifting it up to try to get him to swallow some.

Despite their attempts at discretion, the Destroyer of Hope was distracted. He sighed, and shrank down into the form of a small demon pony, like a paler, masculine version of Moth. With only three legs. “He’s been infected with my miasma,” he explained. “Only Twilight can save him now.”

“Then we’re done fighting?” Derpy asked, still pointing her crossbow in his general direction.

He nodded, and the winds gathered beneath Spike, lifting him into the air to follow the formerly invincible demon into the darkness of his cave.

===

“So this was all a big misunderstanding?” Spike asked, sitting on a mat around a large low table that Destroyer of Hope had had his servants drag into the middle of the room, after he’d disintegrated the cage as a symbol of Twilight’s freedom. They were having tea, cookies with jam, and little cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Spike was still too sick to eat anything, although at least he wasn’t dying anymore.

“Not really,” Twilight said, still staring at the floor, unwilling to meet anypony’s gaze. “He was already the strongest demon in the land, but he wanted to be completely invincible. He thought Night Dog was wasting my power.”

“What’s the point of being invincible if you’re stuck living in a cave?” Moondancer asked.

“In time, she would have come to love me,” the Destroyer of Hope said, sipping his tea.

“Yeah, that was never going to happen,” Night Dog said, crunching up a cookie in two bites and taking another.

There was a brief silence, broken only by the sounds of food and drink.

“So, um,” Spike said, uncomfortable in the relative silence. “Sorry about your foreleg? It’ll grow back, right?”

“No,” Destroyer of Hope replied.

The silence returned.

After a minute or so, everypony stood up at once. “Alright, this has been fun, but we’ve got to get back to the future,” Bon Bon said.

“Yeah, really important, um, quests and stuff. To do,” Derpy said, heading for the exit with the others – and Twilight, and Night Dog – close behind. “Have fun not being invincible anymore bye!”

The Destroyer of Hope remained seated, watching them go, then took another sip of tea.