Where You're Needed Most

Night had fallen, and there was no sign of Rapid Waters.

"Ok, we've waited long enough. We've been standing about and looking around for what, hours?" Weighted Words asked.

"I'm not moving until we get a signal from Rapid." Triple Blaze said. "She knows better than to get herself in real trouble."

Weighted Words smirked. "Saying Rapid can keep herself out of trouble is like saying Rarity can make a decent dress."

"Be nice." Sunny Rose said, playing around with several samples of plants she had picked up. The plants and trees here were unusually hardy, with even the stiffest stems bending enough so that they would not break. She'd spent a lot of time mixing various flower pollens in varying amounts, and had been rewarded with a sleep-dust concoction she put in her saddle for later. Several of the plants were meat-eating, and she'd witnessed one catch a particularly long-tailed rodent of unusual size and nearly swallow it whole.

Triple Blaze looked up at the sky, where the moon was beginning to rise. "That doesn't mean I'm not getting a little worried, but I'm not going anywhere without her. She knows enough to at least cause a small storm as a sign when she's in trouble."

Sunny Rose nodded as she collected some makeshift tools she'd hoof-carved from the local varieties of wood.

Rapid Waters was very, very well known for her skill in water magic, and she was an expert in creating downpours, storms, and gale-force winds to go along with it. Oddly enough, she hated deserts, where her considerable skill would be able to bring so much life to the dusty, barren landscape. She'd always thought that deserts were too depressing places before the "finished product" was put into place.

She was also good at lightning-sculpting, and on a good night's storm, she could create flashes of "works of art" using lightning. The flash of light from such an effect would linger for longer than mere moments after the lightning went off, making for amazing memories.

"Well, we can't wait here forever. I'm getting hungry." Weighted Words said.

Sunny Rose motioned to some of the plants growing on a rather thick, strong tree nearby. "The land is in abundance; help yourself. Some of those leaves are quite delicious."

"Is that wise, just eating whatever you find without..." Triple Blaze turned his head to look at her.

"No, but I have tests I can do even bare-hoofed to determine if something is edible or not. And if you'll look further, some of these leaves are big and strong enough to be folded over and if we take some other leaves like these over here..." Sunny Rose said, going on a roll with her education of the other two. "... we can fold them up and 'stitch' them together, forming a backpack of sorts."

"I'd like to stitch Rapid Waters' mouth shut. It's the only way to shut her up sometimes." Weighted Words said, as he picked up one of the leaves Sunny Rose had motioned was edible. It was a long, spiky-looking thing, with a twisty little pink fruit by the end of the stem and a sharp tip on the other end, but it also looked like it retained water or sap or something, making it plump. He cautiously took a bite and then another. "Hey, these are actually good."

Within a few minutes Triple Blaze had crafted packs for all of them, and filled his with the edible leaves. Afterwards he went back and looked out over the cliff. Far below was a lake and a waterfall, and the ground on the other side rose in a series of giant "steps" each of which was well over forty or fifty feet tall. Nearby there was a trail leading down into the canyon between them and the other side, where even in the twilight they could still see the large structure that Rapid had flown off to. It looked like some kind of small castle nestled directly into the rock carved of a dark, "swirly" stone.

"All right, I'm not waiting any longer." Weighted Words said. "Let's go. We can leave a trail for Rapid to follow if she gets back. I want to at least go to that castle or whatever it is and maybe we can get out of here."

Sunny Rose nodded. "For once, I agree; we've been here too long. It should have been a day trip."

Triple Blaze looked up at the sky. "All right, let's go." He didn't seem happy about it; waiting for their friend was easier than going down into the canyon and getting lost. He scratched a series of marks indicating their direction of travel in case Rapid returned, and then they began to slowly make their way down the trail. The rock turned from reddish orange to darker brown; it was as if huge chunks of brown stone had been carefully piled along the cliff wall so as to make a "trail" (such as it was) leading down to where they could see a lake, and a river flowing away from it.

One of the first things they came to on the trail was a gravesite. The site was very well-kept, with signs it was taken care of regularly.

"What's this?" Sunny Rose asked, pointing to the gravestone.

Triple Blaze read the words on the stone. "Here lies Silent Eagle, wizard and magician."

Weighted Words squinted. "Something's not right here."

"What do you mean?" Sunny Rose asked.

"I mean, it... it's..." Weighted Words' horn lit up and the gravesite shimmered. "It's a false grave. There's nothing in there." Sure enough, when he tapped on the mound of dirt in front of the stone, it collapsed, revealing an empty grave. "... But there's something else here, a trace of magic." He squinted again, trying to make heads or tails of it.

Triple Blaze made a face. "I've heard of this guy. Some in Ponyville say he was insane."

"I've never heard of him." Sunny Rose said.

"He was a unicorn with the power of chaos. Well, that's the wrong word." Triple Blaze replied. "His magic was unfocused, he was born with a defect that didn't allow him to focus his intent when he was casting spells. Things... went strange around him, and he ended up warping his perception of reality extremely badly, on more than one occasion."

"Aren't there horn covers to offset that? I know somepony with an unconscious lack of control..." Sunny Rose said.

Triple Blaze shook his head. "I read in history books that he had to be 'cured' on more than one occasion by Princess Celestia herself. Eventually he was found to be casting 'forbidden' spells and banished to the Everfree, not to come back to Ponyville or Canterlot."

"Well, that settles this." Weighted Words snorted, his horn going dark. "Not only is this a false grave, but it's got some warding spells and location spells on it. Whatever owns this marker probably knows we're here. There's also a connection between this and the big structure we sent Rapid toward; you can't see it since you're just earth ponies but I can see a shimmering aura around this stone. It matches what I'm seeing far in the distance toward the castle thing on the other side of this canyon."

Sunny Rose tilted her head. "Silent Eagle faked his own death? Where there were no ponies to see it or mourn him? Why?"

"I wouldn't say one 'mourned' somepony like him." Triple Blaze said.

"I think there are more of these scattered around the island. Sort of like watch points so that whomever cast this spell could keep an eye on the island in various locations." Weighted Words said, pawing at the stone. "It's like the stone is a magical 'lens' that one can remotely view through, like a one way mirror. We're on the wrong end." Weighted Words looked directly at the stone. "Give us back Rapid Waters!" He said, as if talking to the unseen watcher.

He was half-joking, not expecting a response and figuring Rapid hadn't gotten into trouble yet, but when he turned his head to look back at the castle, two flashes of explosive reddish pink light flew into the sky from the opposite end of the canyon. They exploded over the castle, with the letters "N" and "O" suspended in midair for a few moments, and the light that illuminated the structure made it clear that it indeed was a castle of some sort, and it was not unimpressive even from this distance.

Sunny Rose gasped and Triple Blaze's jaw dropped.

Weighted Words looked up at the letters before they faded out. "Didn't think I'd get backtalk, much less a response. Okay then, since she's actually captured... we're coming for her." He turned to the stone, his horn lighting up. Sparks jumped from his horn to the stone, which lit up with a reddish-pink aura as it tried to resist.

Weighted Words finished building up his spell, then released it in a bright blue-gray flash of light at the center of the stone. The "grave" stone shuddered twice and then fell inward on itself, reduced to gravel. "... Now you see us, now you don't."

Sunny Rose picked up her pace. "Let's go! She's in trouble!"

"Called it... so called it." Triple Blaze sighed.

Sunny Rose jumped down from stone ridge to stone ridge. "If this Silent Eagle is still alive, it's obvious that he--" She took a misstep and skidded to the edge of one of the stone ridges making up part of the trail. "Yikes!" Triple Blaze zoomed down and grabbed her hoof in his teeth lightly, pulling her up and away from the ridge. "Oops?"

Weighted Words smirked. "That's one way to get down to the bottom of this canyon."

"Weighted..." Triple Blaze began to say, but he was already on his way down, jumping down one ridge and then another, using his magic to shield his fall. "Let's go. I want to at least see what kind of trouble she got herself into this time."

"I didn't know you cared." Triple Blaze replied, cynical.

"I don't. I just want to laugh at her." Weighted Words shot back. "This is the last time I let her guilt trip me into something. I can find the rest of these stones and we can make our way to the castle."

**************************

Rapid Waters awoke, suspended from chains. Her head swam and she yawned, bleary-eyed. She'd flown full speed toward the castle and away from her friends, and as she turned to look back at them roughly halfway there, she'd felt herself slam into... something? It felt like a ton of bricks and she didn't remember much else other than a flash of reddish-pink light. Now she was hanging from chains in what looked to be a dungeon of some kind. A humid dungeon, at that.

On the far wall there was a table filled with various chemical compounds, with beakers, flasks, open flames, and what appeared to be a ball of thick, silver liquid moving about on the table under its own power and leaving a slimy trail of greenish goo under it as it moved. The ground beneath her hooves was made of a white stone, with mossy dark gray tendrils reaching up every so often a few inches above the ground. The walls were thick stone, tinted a deep green and black; it felt to her like she was in somepony's basement.

"Bleah. Where am I?" Rapid Waters asked herself. "Other than in trouble..."

Only one door led out of the room, and this appeared to be barred from both the inside and outside. She could see out into the hallway through a tiny hole in the door, and could see a large form on the other side, obviously a sleeping guard of some sort. Not wanting to attract attention, Rapid Waters looked around for other ways out. There was a hole in the corner, but the smell coming out of the hole made her recoil.

She struggled against her chains a little bit; these things were secure and seemed to have been made specifically for somepony of her size. She was suspended four feet up against the wall, her legs and arms stretched out. Fortunately, while she was ditzy, she wasn't altogether stupid, and focused inward.

The area between her hooves and the chains began to frost over as the water in the air began to freeze and expand. She was awarded with an audible series of cracklings and metal slowly being forced out of its intended shape; with heavy breaths she maintained the spell long enough to slip out of her chains without falling to the ground. Fluttering quietly, she flew to the potion table, giving it a good once over before landing and giving her wings a good stretch.

"I love being a rainpony." She said to herself with a smile.

The table was cluttered beyond belief. Minerals labeled "Flizzium" and "Blorkite" shared the table with such chemicals as "Polybendite Compoundium" and "Floobis Juice" and "Fizzy Humming Elixir". The ball of thick silver liquid seemed to take an interest in her as she pushed potions and rocks to either side of her, and she picked up some papers to read their equations. She quickly put down the papers; the equations made her head hurt from a mere glance.

"What IS this stuff?" Rapid Waters asked herself as she heard a series of hoofsteps coming toward the door from the other side. She reached out toward the ball of liquid, which reached toward her in turn, and where hoof contacted liquid there was a flash of light, a sizzling sound, and Rapid Waters screeched in pain, falling backward. Her hoof had been badly burned... not by an acid, but by some kind of powerful magic that left black streaks crawling up her hoof. Her hoof went numb as she heard the sounds of the bars on the other side of the door being lifted.

"Well, well, well. Look what the dragon dragged in." Came a hollow, evil-sounding voice as the door opened.

Rapid Waters turned to the speaker and squeaked in surprised. Standing there was a pony in a hooded deep crimson robe, a staff levitating next to him. He was completely skeletal, with one eye socket glowing with a pale ice blue light, and the other glowing with a deep emerald green light. His hooves were adorned with iron shoes studded with spikes and etched with a pony skull motif, and his own scorched, blackened skull was adorned with symbols, sigils and other runes that made Rapid Waters turn away.

"Who... who are you?" Rapid Waters managed to squeak out, the numbness on her hoof disappearing. The black streaks were gone too, but they left painful welts on her skin where they had crisscrossed.

The bony pony lifted his head, that frozen grin unnerving her and his horn beginning to glow with a pale reddish-pink light. His horn had been chipped in places, and it had seen at least one clean break at some point. The "scar" where it had been reattached was midway along the horn, completely circling it. "That... is unimportant. What is important is that your arrival is most beneficial to me."

"I... I have friends, you know." Rapid Waters backed up a little bit.

"I know. They are of no concern to me, and I am going to be sending one of my... shall we say, pets... out to deal with them before they reach here." The bony pony pointed his staff at the door and it slammed shut, that same reddish-pink aura flowing between the floor and the door, sealing it. "Even if they got to the castle, I'd just phase it out so they couldn't get in unless that brat that's with you knows how."

"You're Silent Eagle, right? You have to be..." Rapid Waters edged closer to the table of potions and chemicals.

The pony nodded. "I must admit, I am surprised my spellbooks weren't burned with the rest of my belongings when I was so unceremoniously thrown out of Ponyville. And don't you dare try to make a mess of my alchemical table in an escape attempt; I will suck the life from you, cutie mark first."

"What do you want?" Rapid Waters asked.

"Your soul."

"What?" Rapid Waters backed up against the wall, eyes wide.

The skeletal pony seemed to be grinning even more. "Give it freely and I'll make your death... and eventual undeath... quick and painless."

"Fat chance, bone-icorn." Rapid Waters launched herself into the air and flew over the skeletal pony's head. The skeletal pony turned his staff on her, and a bolt of solid red lightning sped from the staff's spiky reddish crystal tip to blast her in the flank, knocking her off course and against the walls and ceilings like a pinball for several feet. A second bolt blasted her through the door and out into a corridor; Rapid Waters skidded to a halt dazed and stunned at the corridor's end. The last thing she saw before blacking out from a third and final bolt was the front talon, sheathed in black iron and longer than she was, of an absolutely gigantic creature still concealed in the shadows.

"You'll give it to me eventually..." Silent Eagle said, the symbols on his skull flashing in sequence. His eyes lit up with a purple haze. "I can't take it by force, but I have... other ways..."

Silent Eagle's hollow laughter echoed through the castle.

**************************

Sunny Rose, Triple Blaze and Weighted Words reached the bottom of the canyon only to be separated from the other side by a swift river. The river went over a second series of falls further downstream; if the group fell into it they'd be swept away and over the falls another forty or fifty feet straight down to sharp rocks. Triple Blaze managed to find a series of stones jutting up out of the water, and after quickly jumping from one to the next to make sure it was safe, helped Sunny Rose across.

"You could have asked me, y'know." Weighted Words said, levitating himself over the river and landing next to them. "I can carry both Sunny Rose and your tubby flank."

Triple Blaze ignored him as they looked for a way to scale the other side of the canyon. "You said you could track or find the rest of these stones?"

"Sure I can." Weighted Words concentrated again and his horn lit up. "They're all tied in to the same spell and give off the same aura that I can see using my magic. Destroying one makes the rest of them stronger and have a longer "radius" of sight to compensate, though."

"We don't need to destroy them." Sunny Rose said, pointing with her hoof up a trail.

Weighted Words shrugged. "It still feels good. Whomever has Rapid Waters is going to pay for taking her."

"So where's the next one?" Triple Blaze asked.

Weighted Words squinted, looking up. "Higher up on the cliff side. Let's move upstream to the lake and go from there."

The group walked in silence after that finally reaching a large lake at the bottom of the canyon. Upstream, the water flowed out of the cliff wall from some unseen source, to flow down the cliff side and into the beginnings of the river. The water flowed into the lake, effectively a reservoir for the owner of the castle. The entire area was eerie and quiet; it was as if no life at all was stirring.

"There should at least be life in the area." Sunny Rose said. "Insects, fish, something."

Weighted Words shuddered. "Something's not right here."

Triple Blaze stepped forward. "Then I'll stay in the lead. It'll have to go through me to get to you, Sunny."

"Hey, cool, a pony shield." Weighted Words grinned. "Nice to see we have somepony to absorb the punishment of any trouble that finds us."

"I assure you, I'm not playing the role of shield because of anything I like about you, Weighted." Triple Blaze said, cautiously stepping forward and sniffing the air. "Something smells off, too. Dead. Do you smell that?" The stink of a dead body was faint on the wind.

Sunny Rose nodded quietly while Weighted Words concentrated, throwing up a circle of light that lit the area around them. As they continued to the lake, they saw that while the surrounding brush looked alive at first glance (especially at night), it was all dead, or mostly dead. The reeds were dead and brittle, the grass gray and brown, breaking off into dust at the touch of a hoof. The water, while clean out in the middle of the lake, seemed to befoul itself if it touched the shore.

They found the source of the smell a few minutes later where they found the dried up corpse of a pony. Weighted Words' eyes had grown wide and said he'd seen it in a textbook once; the unfortunate soul had been mummified on the spot by a powerful necromantic spell of some kind. Such a spell would cause the caster to be banished from civilized lands, at the very least."

Triple Blaze stopped. "Poison Joke ahead." He motioned with a hoof towards the left of the lake, where a HUGE meadow was covered with the stuff. While Weighted Words threw up more circles of light around them to illuminate the area, Sunny Rose edged close to the meadow with a look of interest.

"Careful, Sunny." Triple Blaze said.

"I know what I'm doing." Sunny Rose said, taking a step back and respecting the flowers. "I had an unfortunate encounter with this stuff twice before."

"Couldn't have made you any worse than you already are." Weighted Words said. "I mean, it's easy to laugh at you." His tone suggested pure sarcasm; he respected the Poison Joke just as much as she did. Triple Blaze figured he'd been on the receiving end more than once by it.

Sunny Rose ignored him. "There's something strange about these flowers though. They look more like hybrids."

"How so?" Triple Blaze asked. "I don't know a hybrid from an orchid."

"Nor your head from your flank." Weighted Words snarked.

"Most Poison Joke has five or six petals. These have nine, and the flower looks wrong, it has one too many stamen... and the flowers are curling up like it's biting something." Sunny Rose said, pointing with a hoof. "It looks like somepony is hybridizing Poison Joke, but I can't imagine why." She cautiously pulled one plant out at its stem and plopped it into her leaf pack without touching the more dangerous parts. "I'd hate to think what else we're going to find around here."

Weighted Words' ears perked up. "Hey, there's movement in the meadow." He pointed with a hoof, where they did see some movement, like a large turtle trying to hide in the meadow. Were it not for the circles of light that Weighted Words was putting up, the creature or whatever-it-was would have gone completely unnoticed. All three of them took several steps back from the meadow.

"I don't know -anything- that's immune to Poison Joke." Triple Blaze said.

"I don't know if we want to stick around." Weighted Words replied, pouring on the magic and brightening the circles of light into what basically amounted to spotlights. Whatever was in the meadow moved away from them, trying to avoid the light. "I can't hold this forever, we'd better keep moving."

The group backed away from the meadow and continued up the side of the lake, where they found the first of many "giant steps" leading up the canyon wall. Each one a mini-cliff in its own right, the group started to slowly and cautiously climb from step to step using what hoof-holds they could. Weighted Words levitated the group for the first couple of steps, but afterward his magic was spent; they camped for the night on one of the steps overlooking the lake. They could see the meadow far below and several things moving about in it.

"I hope Rapid Waters is ok..." Sunny Rose said, sounding worried as Weighted Words settled down to sleep and Triple Blaze took the watch.

"She'd better be." By now Triple Blaze was annoyed, in equal parts at Rapid Waters for getting them into this and at Weighted Words for being guilted into casting the spell. Still, something else was nagging at him. If this Silent Eagle pony was still alive, why did he take care to fake his own death in the middle of nowhere with all these markers? It was clear he watched and controlled the majority of the area... the question was why. The entire place was too elaborate to be a summer home of some sort... there was something far more sinister going on here, and he was going to get to the bottom of it.

******************

Next: The heroes enter a Very Dangerous Place, get stuck in a situation that's truly for the birds, and meet an unlikely ally... or is she an enemy?