On a cold dark night in the Everfree forest the only noise that could be heard was the crunches of leaves that had fallen off the branches of the trees near the end of the autumn months. The forest was shrouded in darkness from the lack of any natural light in the new moon, but not all was dark. Near the source of the crunching leaves a dim light flickered. The source of this light came from a simple lantern being carried along on the back of a unicorn that had most of her body covered by a cloak that ruffled a bit in the cold night's wind.
As she continued to move forward she would duck her head down to avoid hitting it against a low hanging branch of a tree, though most ponies would still be able to walk right through the forest without that worry in mind this mare stood far taller than most ponies. She still stood smaller than the princess of the sun, but her large height would have forced her to look down to see almost anypony right in front of her. On occasion she would lift a hoof up to pull her platinum white mane out of her eyes, with the wind being the main attribute to that annoyance. After quiet a bit of walking a rather strong gust of wind blew a fair amount of her loose mane into her eyes, but she continued to walk as she pulled the mane off her face again, and quickly came to a stop with her dull gray fur standing on end and bright green eyes going wide once she saw that she was a single step away from her blind walk leading her over the edge of a chasm she could not see the bottom of.
The mare took only a few moments to recompose herself as she looked across the chasm, the reason for her ventures to the dreaded forest right across from her, but separated by a pit she didn't wish to find out the depth of. She began walking around the pit, looking for a way to get across the void below safely, but ,with the only way across she could find being an old rotted bridge, she felt she may have to make a compromise for safety.
Before she began moving across the bridge she reached a hoof out and genitally pushed it down on one of the planks, slowly adding more and more of her weight onto it, and to her surprise it didn't break, or even crack. She took just a few more moments before moving another hoof onto the next plank of the bridge, slowly pushing more of her weight on as she watched for the slightest sign of a possible collapse. A sigh of relief escaped her as the bridge held up, and she slowly and carefully began to move across as her heart pounded in fear. Once she finally crossed she let out a held breath in a sigh of relief.
The mare wasted no time, and continued walking forward as soon as the sigh left her. She made her way to the entrance on the castle, the door having been rotted with its age gave way when she pushed on the old piece of wood. When she stepped inside she held the lantern up high, filling the room with its light to show it full of cracks and plant life filling the inside.
After a quick look around the main room her horn began to glow with green light as a book that appeared tattered with age slide out from her cloak and to the front of her face. She flicked over a few pages while beginning to walk along again, going through a few rooms she had no interest in until she made it to the throne room. Once in the throne room she stopped flicking the pages and kept the book open on a page that had a drawn out image of the room she stood in, but with a circle marking the sun themed throne. Once looking between the throne and the book a few times she closed the beat up tome and slide it back under her cloak.
The mare stepped up to the throne, and began looking it over. After a few moments of examining it, she stepped behind it, faced away, lifted her back legs up, and bucked the throne down the stairs with a crash, her lips almost turning into a smirk for a moment before she turned back around and looked down at the floor where the throne was. Her horn began to glow again, and a square slab of stone that was once under the chair began to glow as well. With some effort she pulled it out of the ground it had rested in for centuries before tossing it onto the top of already tattered throne at the bottom of the stairs.
In place of the slab was an opening that revealed a set of stairs that lead down further into the castle. The mare didn't take a second to wait before heading down staircase, going down for a straight minute before the stairs came to an end. Once at the end she was meet with a large corridor that had been dug out of the underground stone. She walked along the corridor for minutes, the only light coming from her lantern and the only sound being the echos that came from her hooves clicking across the ground.
As she walked along the already cold air began to get colder, an almost unnatural chill behind it now that continued growing stronger until she reached the end of the corridor. By then the air was cold enough for the mare to see ever single breath that escaped her mouth as she shivered, but instead of slight worry of getting ill from the frosty temperature her face showed a grin. The grin appeared on her face once she seen what was in front of her, a simple bronze door that possessed a handle with a keyhole under it. Her horn began to glow again once she saw the door, her focus on the handle. Her grin turned to a look of worry when the door's handle didn't glow at all in response to her magic. She lifted a hoof up to the handle of the door and began pushing down on it, but it was locked, her worried looking only getting bigger.
The mare took a few steps back and said"It's locked.. It's bucking locked... No. no, no no! It can't be locked!" her voice to echoed across the corridor as she reached out and attempted to make the door's handle budge once more to no avail.
She slammed her hoof down into the stone floor with a small crack forming under it, and said. "I wasted my time for a locked door, it would of been better if this thing actually didn't exist in the first place if I can't get in it!"
The mare huffed out her nose like a bull, no help from the fact that the cold air added a visible puff of air, as she turned around and almost began to walk away until a voice that sounded to be from behind the door spoke."There is a key you know?"
The mare turned back around the second she heard the voice, staring at the door with wide eyes as she spoke."Did I just hear something talk from behind a door that no one has been to for centuries.. I think.."
The voice gave a simple response."You did, but that's not something you should be worried about right now. For the moment, I can guess you want something. Why else would you come to a place, as you put it yourself, 'no one has come to for centuries'. There must be something you're after, something that no conventional means is able to get you, not even powerful magic. Either that are you have way too much free time, because this isn't a place that I think that princess would make easy to learn about. Also, if it's not too much of an issue, I would like to know your name as well Ms? least I assume you're a Ms, from what I can hear through this door your voice seems a bit deep, so could be either I suppose."
The mare gives little response at first other than a surprised blink at the last sentence spoken to her as she gives her response."I'm Mina Mountain, and yes I a, a mare. Not my fault my great grandfather liked Minotaurs.. anyways, the other thing you said is true, I am looking for something that I haven't been able to get any other way, not that I haven't tried other ways either, but from what little the vague writings I did find told me, I have to get this door open to get anything, but nothing said anything about it being locked."
The voice behind the door chuckled "I always thought anyone that found this thing and wanted it open would come with the key as well, but I suppose that was a shot in the dark. Anyways, if you do open this door, you can have anything you want, to your hearts desires, and seeing as you already found this place once the thing that I would think is the hardest part is already over for you. All you have to do now is get the key." it said
"And where exactly would this key be? It isn't really mentioned in what little history this place is mentioned in." Mina said
"Where it is will be more simple than how you get it. I'm sure the princess wouldn't let the key be too far away from her. So, wherever she is, the key shouldn't be too far away. The hard part will be getting it from wherever the location may be." The voice said
Mina rubbed the bridge of her snout."Of course that would be it, and here I thought you said it was gonna be the easy part."
"Well, for me it would of been the easy part, but I shouldn't be holding others to that light I suppose. At least the key won't be that hard to identify, no matter how old it gets it lacks any form of wear and tear, and can never be broken, just like this door here. How it looks is a bit odd, it's bigger than most keys, and has a small sun as its bow. You will know when and if you see it. That's all you got to do though, get that key, and bring it here to unlock this door." The voice said.
"Well, suppose I should head back into that small town and rest for what little of the night I have left now that I know what I have to do next. Gonna take some time for me to think up of a proper plan to steal anything from the princess, plus I need to find out where that key is first anyways." Mina said as she turns around and began to walk back to the stairs.
"I hope you return with that key soon, and trust me, you won't believe how much I can do once you get me out." The voice said, going silent as Mina walked out of hearing distance, continuing on until she got back out of the corridor, up the stairs, and out the castle, heading straight for a small little town of Ponville for her nights rest.
Morning light bathed Ponyville when morning came, the darkness of the new moon from the previous night being replaced by the more pleasant light of the sun as it slowly rose high. Ponies all over the small town began getting up and going about the start of the day, though one mare was anything but awake. In a small, well kept, motel a loud noise could be heard coming from inside one of the many upper floor rooms. The noise had been going on since before the sun had started rising and having had enough of the noise, one of the employees of the motel went up to the room and knocked hard on the door several times. "Whatever that noise is, could you please stop it! You're gonna gonna wake up all of Ponyville!" He yelled.
The noise came to a stop, but was then followed by a loud thud of something having collided with the floor. The stallion raised a brow, wondering what exactly made such a loud noise as the door swung open to a large gray furred mare with a tired look on her face, with a white mane in a complete mess."I didn't ask for a morning alarm with my room." She said, a yawn following.
The stallion craned his neck up and took a few steps back to actually see Mina's face as well as he could. His eyes went a bit wide when he finally registered just how big the tired mare in front of him was. A nervous chuckle left him once he did realize the size of the mare."Sorry ma'am, I was just checking on what the noise in there might of been. I'll just leave you be to your rest." He said, stepping back and away from Mina. He didn't turn around, or break away from his stair until his backwards walk almost sent him tumbling down the stairs.
Mina huffed and shook her head a bit, closing the door and heading back into the room she had been sleeping in for the night. There wasn't much in it, but it was in better condition than nearly anywhere she stayed before. The fact the bed had been just big enough to of kept her whole body on did sway her opinion to be more positive, though.
She reached up a hoof and rubbed her eyes as another yawn left her. "Well, no point in going back to bed. This is probably as awake as I'm gonna get." She said, and walked over to a small desk that came with the room that had a large shoulder bag rested on top of a cloth cloak. Her horn lighted up and opened the bag as she slid the cloak inside, pulling a brush out from the bag for a few moments to brush her mane, a few grunt leaving her with almost each brush.
Once finished, she put the brush back into the bag, and looked back up and around the room in silence. After a few moments her horn lighted up again and an old familiar book came out of the bag."Alright, I know where that door is, how to get there, and that all I need to do now is get a key, that someone I haven't actually seen told me about, from the most powerful being in all of Equestria, and it is likely the most secure city in the country as well." She said, sighing at her own words.
She opened the book and flicked around the pages."This is gonna take some time. Gonna need to find out where the key is somehow, a reason to get into the castle without suspicion, and make sure the key going missing goes unnoticed for quite some time." She continued to say to herself."I bet I'll need to get some kind of connection to someone high up enough in the castle to be allowed to go almost anywhere, and to take along anyone anywhere they wanted to." She said, and sighed out after having heard herself talk."I spent awhile to get to this point, so what's a few more months, or possibly even years." She said to herself just after her sigh, flopping onto her side."But it might take longer than a few years. I have to steal something from an alicorn, and not just any alicorn, bucking Celestia herself. There is only so much one mare can do, and that is way pass what I can do alone. I'm gonna need help, a lot of it." She said, and blinked, looking around the dark motel room she was sitting in."I think I'm going crazy, I'm just sitting alone in a dark room talking to myself. Well, this can't be healthy. If I'm gonna talk to myself, might as well do it in the daylight."
Following her own advice, she stood up and walked to the door of her room, walking out and closing it. She headed back downstairs to the main room and turned her key in to the mare at the front desk, walking out with a good portion of the workers catching a glance at her as she stepped out.
She walked around the dirt path of a road for a few minutes, taking in some of the scenery the small town of Ponyville had, catching more than a few ponies awkwardly staring up at her before they darted their heads in the opposite direction. Mina returned little acknowledgment to those that did stair at her, seeming to be use to the odd looks that come from her size.
Mina stopped her walk awhile later when she felt a rumble of hunger come from her stomach. She looked around and spotted a small outdoor diner, and headed over to it. She walked up to one of the tables and sat down next to a seat that was far to small for her.
A waiter walked over to Mina and spoke in a meek tone quiet enough for only a few of the words "What will you be having." to be heard from the timid pony.
"I'll have whatever is popular for breakfast here." Mina said, looking down at the waiter who gave a small nod before he turned and almost ran.
Mina looked around, the light chatter that had been going on before she arrived had been replaced by awkward silence and a few stares from those around her. by the time the waiter came back and set a plate in front of Mina the light chatter had came back somewhat, a few eyes still giving the occasional stair at her as she ate what was put in front of her, little attention being giving from her to anything at the time.
Mina slid a few bits from her bag once the waiter returned with a check, the awkward air having vanished for most around her. She stood up and turned going back to her walk down the dirt road once more. She passed a fair amount of the town, a set of eyes almost always directed toward her when another pony was around.
Mina's walk eventually lead her to a large part full of bushes and trees, with no other pony in Mina's sight. She continued down the part until she came across a two pony bench. She walked over to the bench, wanting to take a quick rest. She hopped up onto the bench, and rested her head on one of its hoofrests.
Mina remained motionless until a rustling bush caught her attention. She raised a brow at the plant until a squirrel jumped out off it and ran up a tree. Mina let out a chuckle."I'm too paranoid. Always feel like I'm being watched." She said, taking her attention away from the bush.
What Mina didn't know at the time was that she was right, something was watching her. Something crazy. Something beyond the laws of nature. Something... Pink.
