Rainbow Dash found her hoof caught in a magical grasp.
“Another urchin come by to nick a share of the harvest? My, on behalf of the town, I feel quite honored, miss…?”
A pony emerged from the behind the cart. His stocky frame cast a shadow which fell upon the prismatic mare.
Then she looked up and saw his horn.
Light glinted off the steel covering his hooves, and Dash saw an iridescent apricot glow flowing from his saddlebag and into his horn.
Dash kept her eyes trained on him, briefly glancing down at her frozen hoof. She strained against his magic, then gave a hard yank, almost tugging her foreleg out of its socket. This one was strong. She didn’t have any gemstones on her, so she couldn’t directly fight his grip. Should still be able to get away if she waved around a bit. Quick, sharp movements always caught them off guard.
She froze in place, waiting for him to relax.
He sauntered toward her. His face would be an easy target. Good solid buck right on the muzzle would do him some good. Plus he’d be distracted.
Not yet, though.
“Not gonna answer? That’s fine. Just fine,” he said. Smug. It made not going at him even harder.
He stopped in front of Dash and tilted his head down, looking her in the eyes. “I don’t care about a few apples here and there, little scamp. Got a certain fondness for the likes of you. Plus, it's not really convenient for me to track y'all down one by one.”
“So just you’re gonna let me go? Outta the kindness of your heart?”
He chuckled. “Gonna take a little bit more than my heart to motivate me, little miss. I’ll tell it to you straight, then: you’re gonna get hungry, and this place is nice and locked down now. Won’t be any more proverbial pies left out on windowsills, no siree,” he said.
Dash didn’t know what the hay he was talking about. The whole town ate apples plain, as far as she could tell, and none of them were rich enough to put anything on display, in windows or otherwise.
“Now, Any more fellers like you in town?”
Dash said nothing.
“Well, I find them, and I might be willing to overlook a rat or two scuttling around, if you catch my drift.”
She grit her teeth.
“Not gonna turn anyone in. Definitely not to a merc. That's worse than the guard,” Dash said, stamping at the ground.
The stallion turned around, walking away from her with slow, plodding footsteps.
Now. Now was her chance. She stretched—
There was nothing there. No orange aura holding her in place.
He looked back. “I might be a mercenary, but I ain't a mean one. Anyone comes by here with news of a few starving miscreants running around, they get a meal, and I treat every one of them right nice. Get my payment, then drop them off in the next town over. Let them do their thing there. Might even let ‘em have a cut of the payment.”
She waited for a moment. When nothing happened, she darted off deeper into the farm. It was time to leave. The thought was like a knife to her heart. And she wasn’t about to start considering the mercenary’s ‘offer.’ It was a scam. She'd seen others taken in by those kinds of lies before.
She slunk through the fields for a bit. Once she got out of sight of the apple carts, she burst into a full gallop, dodging between squat rows of apple trees—they were more bush than tree, really—reveling in the feeling of just running. The doubting voices fell silent, and she felt a smile spread across her face. Farms, even as risky as they were, had real dirt. Packed earth, with water. Running was almost as good as flying places like this.
A clay wall stood at the edge of the farm, bent in odd places. Like it’d been shaped by ponies who’d just slapped it together when it was wet, waited for it to dry, then forgot all about it.
She jumped over it, landing on the dry ground with a big thump, leaving the lighted area of the farm. A cloud of dust spread around her. She bent her head down, coughing, rubbing at her eyes with a wing. You couldn’t run out here, or even walk too hard in some places. Dash took a step forward, ripping her hooves from the wet muck underneath the cracked mud with a grimace.
The town was over to the left. A path led to it, not much neater than the land around it. At least it didn’t break and cover your hooves in mud if you jumped too hard. Dash padded toward it, trying her hardest not to break out into a run.
She squinted into the night. A few lights shone over little mud and clay domes.
“You get food?” A weak, hopeful voice came from her left. Dash looked at the filly beside her.
“They had it locked down tight,” she said. The words rang hollow. It was an excuse. She looked away.
“Oh…” Bright Wind sat down on the dusty path, head drooping. She had the unnatural stillness of those who’d lost hope. Her untidy wings didn’t flicker to test the air.
“Hey. Don’t worry, I’ll getcha something. Just gotta find an opportunity,” Dash said. She scooted over and spread a wing over the younger filly, ignoring the cloak of dust that hid an intense yellow coat beneath it.
Bright Wind was silent. Dash snuck a look at her face. Her eyes were dull.
“I’ll...go now, then.”
Dash trotted into the town, leaving the filly sitting in the dust. She’d come back soon.
They didn’t have doors here. Instead, heavy fabrics hung from the doorframes to block the dust. She poked her head in the nearest one and made out the snores of several ponies. Too risky.
This town was poor. Too poor to just leave food lying around. Her best bet was the orchards.
But those too were locked down, as she’d just experienced. There was nothing she could grab without being caught herself.
She suddenly felt a burning anger toward the mercenary. Why couldn’t he have just let her alone? And then lying to her face—
She gave a nearby house a swift buck. It bent under her hooves, the malleable clay absorbing the hit without more than a dull, unsatisfying thud.
She bucked it again, holding back a scream. Why? Why did everything have to go so—so wrong? Why did she have to let down everyone she cared about? Why—
The wall crumbled under a final buck, a small section beneath her hooves collapsing inward. She froze, finally feeling tears streaming down her face, and galloped away. Hopefully it wouldn’t wake them up before morning.
Dash slowed down at the other side of the town and leaned against a large empty cart missing a front wheel. Probably the only wood in this place outside of the orchards. She angrily wiped away the tears. She couldn’t afford to be stupid. If she was unlucky, somepony’d already found the hole in the house, and finding food would be even harder.
Heavy hoofsteps came from the other side of the cart. Dash froze.
A heavyset earth pony walked by, something in his saddlebags jangling with every step. He whistled a simple melody, not noticing Dash. She let out a breath of relief after he’d passed by. The ponies here knew her now, and wouldn’t hesitate to haul her off to jail.
She hated small towns.
She watched him round a corner, the subtle light of a protective spell surrounding him.
A spell?
Dash crept after him. If he had a spell crystal on him, she could just take it.
The problem would be getting past the spell without draining it. The easiest way to do that would be to follow him around until he stopped his patrol and then take it out of his bags while he was sleeping.
But she wasn’t going to do that anymore.
The less expensive shield spells usually only stopped things that moved fast enough. If she got inside of it at walking speed, she should be able to just grap his bag and rip it off.
She sped up slightly, but hid around a nearby dome house whenever it looked like he was about to turn toward her. He never did.
Dash barely kept herself from yawning. Was he just going to keep doing this all night? It looked like he was just going in cir—
She flattened herself against the ground, not willing to take the chance that he’d hear her hoofsteps.
The mercenary was there.
“Any trouble?”
“Nah. Think she left?”
Dash raised her head an inch off the ground. Thankfully, this street didn’t have any sun globes.
The mercenary shook his head, the horn visible through the projected orange-tinted glow around him. Why anypony would bother with that kind of light, Dash had no idea—it didn’t light up anything outside of the bubble the slightest bit, and ruined the night vision of whoever used it.
“I don’t know. Maybe they they have a stash somewhere. Biding their time. I gave one of ‘em a pretty tempting offer.”
The earth pony snorted. “Right. Well, you try that. I’m sure it’ll work eventually.” He dug inside his saddlebags and brought out a gently glowing turquoise stone. “Meanwhile, this thing’s started flickering on me. Think you can give it more juice?”
“Sure thing,” the mercenary said, levitating the stone over. Its protective aura vanished. He touched it to his horn, then closed his eyes.
Now. This was her chance.
Dash leapt up from the ground and arrowed toward the unicorn.
The earth pony shouted and attempted to grab her, but she dodged to the left and rolled under his hoof, then sprang up and smacked the unicorn’s horn. He gasped. The orange aura around the stone fizzled out and it dropped toward the ground. Dash scooped it up in her mouth and flung it into her bags then darted away. She glanced behind her, and saw the unicorn still sprawled on the ground, clutching his horn, the earth pony bent down beside him.
He’d be okay. Horns were harder to break than the foundations of a cloud city. Jarring one while the pony using it was trying to do magic would knock them out for quite a while, though. It apparently made their own magic attack them. Or something.
Dash reached the same cart from before and pressed herself against it. She took the gem out of her bags. A few seconds of concentration and she was connected to it. It didn’t have that much magic compared to many of the gems she’d handled, but it’d be a whole bunch for somepony like Bright Wind.
She drew in some of it, feeling the accompanying aches and pains of several days travel fade away. A relieved breath escaped her and she felt herself relax.
Time to go. Dash tucked the gemstone away and galloped through the streets to the edge of the town, the magic making her light and quick enough to make the risk of falling through the ground nonexistent.
There.
“Hey kid. You alright there?”
No answer.
Dash knelt down beside the filly, taking the stone out and placing it beside her. “See this? You ever taken magic from one of these before?”
It’d be rare for somepony like Bright Wind to have handled one. They usually got their magic the natural way, from storm clouds.
“C’mon. Just focus on it a bit.” Dash placed the filly’s hoof on the stone’s surface.
Bright Wind showed a glimmer of recognition as she felt the stone. She breathed in, as if to drink in the magic. A whirling blue glow shone out of her eyes.
“Better?” Dash asked, stepping back and putting the noticeably dimmer stone back in her saddlebags.
The filly nodded. “Yes.” Her voice was stronger, and she no longer had the beaten-down look of before.
Dash grinned.
“You still gonna leave?”
Her smile faded. “Yeah,” she said. Canterlot mountain stood in the distance, waiting.
“You know, there was a mercenary in the farm. Offered food. Pretty sure he’s lying about it.”
Wasn’t going to keep it from Bright Wind in case it wasn’t, though. She deserved to know everything that was going on.
The filly nodded.
“You know, you could still come with—”
“No.”
Dash hesitated, then nodded. She’d expected it, but the final ‘no’ still hit her hard. Time to go. She got up and walked in the direction of Canterlot.
“You leaving already?”
Dash couldn’t help turning back. Bright Wind’s searching gaze tore into her. “Yes.” She couldn’t stay. The gem would run out eventually.
Canterlot mountain loomed above her, the castle ruins still displayed for all to see, like an old stallion who’d finally stopped trying to disguise his age after it was made blatantly clear to him that it wasn't working.
Dash trotted along on the rich, empty dirt, settling into a steady pace that she could maintain for days on end.
She licked her dry lips.
Well, with water. And food. Or magic, but she was saving that.
She kept her pace throughout the night with only her complaining stomach and dry mouth to keep her company, occasionally drawing on the tiniest bit of magic to keep her going. She almost wished somepony’d broken all the edicts and laws and stuff to plant something here. She could deal with fighting a cursed, mutant plant as big as she was as long as she got to eat it after.
Streaks of gray marred the night sky by the time Dash reached the edge of the cursed fields. Stopping on a yellow patch of grass between an otherwise unrelenting plain of rocks, slick with melting ice, she scanned the horizon. Sol often floated around Canterlot, even when the Everstorm came this way. It could avoid the storm just fine, being powered by Celestia herself.
No clouds in sight.
Dash loped around the base of the mountain. The old, cursed city above might have some edible weeds or something, not just a few blades of yellow grass that’d take more energy to eat than they’d give.
The one thing she never got used to were places with complete silence. Except for the pounding of her hooves against stone, she was utterly alone. Speaking of her hooves...she'd need to use up a bunch of the next batch of magic she found just to fix the damage she was doing to them from traveling.
She stopped circling the mountain’s base, spotting the remnants of a winding path leading up. Rubble and broken carts covered everything, but Dash slipped through the obstacles without any trouble, then reached a pretty stable piece of road and trotted along it.
She eyed a sizeable gap in front of her. Yeah, she could definitely jump it. She backed up and pawed at the ground.
There. Dash galloped toward the edge and jumped. She landed with a thump, and had to scramble forward to keep herself from slipping down into the mini-landslide she’d created on this side of the gap.
She froze, clinging to the side of the cliff, ears twitching, trying to catch—
A pebble fell from the side of the mountain. Dash saw it fall as if in slow motion, bouncing against the cliff beside her before clattering to a stop in front of where Dash’s forelegs dug into the ground. She stared at it for a moment before looking up.
A unicorn was trying to climb the mountain. Her coat was stained gray from many near-falls, almost completely covering up the white under it, and her mane was a frizzy mess. She scrabbled against a bit of still-uncollapsed path above Dash, relying on her levitation to keep from falling.
“...but of course, we’ll just have to go a bit farther, dear. I do hope you don’t mind…”
And she was talking to herself.
Dash slowly crept to the side of the mountain, trying to present as little of herself to the pony above her as possible. It didn’t look like it mattered much, though. She was still happily talking to herself, barely catching herself time and again through her magic.
Maybe she should trying talking...
Nope. Probably feral.
Dash waited impatiently for the mare to get far along enough that they wouldn’t be able to hear each other. She twitched against her spot, wanting to move.
Finally.
She continued along the path, the silence almost painful after seeing another pony. She hopped over a carriage that had somehow been flattened, then continued on a much more stable piece of road. It even had a flower and a few blades of grass, which she couldn’t resist nibbling on. Only made her even hungrier though. It was getting harder and harder to resist the urge to just drain the stone.
Still. It was kind of relaxing, just moving. She settled into an almost dreamlike state where each jump, dodge, and roll became almost instinctual. Move. Fast. Slow. Scramble against an accidental rockslide. Eat the patch of grass that somehow managed to grow on a surface made almost completely of rock.
And then she was at the end.
She blinked.
There was a lot of grass here, right before the castle entrance. Dash grazed a bit. It was only grass, but it helped quiet her stomach. And there was a little pool of water, too. She drank from it greedily.
Necessary stuff taken care of. What next?
She needed stuff to sell. That's why she'd come. So that was the first thing. Next was doing it quickly. She had three days before Cantrlot’s magic started getting to her—a little more with magic—and the Everstorm was going to be here soon. Sol usually floated around Canterlot, but with an Everstorm approaching she couldn't be sure of it being anywhere.
So. After she was done here, she should probably look for the nearest city as soon as possible.
Dash walked to the gates. One was twisted off its hinges, dangling by a thread. The other had a huge circular part of it that was just gone. She stepped through the half-disintegrated one, not trusting the other not to fall on her.
Her hooves made soft clicking sounds against the cobblestones, which displayed cracks and chips all over. Patches of moss grew in every place the cracks didn't cover. Buildings sagged to the side, abandoned houses and shops in pieces around her.
The castle would probably have the most stuff. It was built inside the mountain, and the mountain still stood, so some salvage probably did too.
Dash galloped around piles of rubble and vegetation. The double doors lay in smithereens, leaving the dark cavernous room inside wide-open. Dust and broken marble spread out all over the place, giving the floor a slippery, treacherous grip. Dash entered, the clip-clop of her hooves against the ground echoing through the chamber. Her ears twitched to catch the sound and she flicked her tail to rid herself of built-up tension.
An ornate door stood out to the side. She turned mid-stride. Her hoof caught on something, and her leg twisted painfully. She gasped as she fell, catching the object—a fallen tapestry—out of the corner of her eye. Then she was on the ground. She grunted in pain.
Not good. Should’ve been more careful. Everyone told her that. Even her old crew—
No.
She gritted her teeth and dragged herself back up, untangling her foreleg from the tapestry and bringing it to her chest.
The single, half-powered gem might just barely heal her leg, but without it, the chance of surviving the travel to wherever the nearest city was low.
Dash popped her saddlebags open and set them on the ground, gazing at the glowing gem within.
Then again, a low chance of surviving was better than no chance.
“Don’t move, darling.”
Dash froze. She slowly reached toward the gem, feeling at the magic.
“I wouldn’t do that. Things might get...messy.”
The voice was like cold iron. Stern and dispassionate.
“Then what do you want me to do, huh?” Dash challenged, completely still even though every part of her thrummed with the need to move.
“Just stay where you are. I shan’t be long.”
Dash considered her situation. She could either stay in place, helpless against whatever this other pony was going to do, or she could draw on the gem as quickly as she could.
She pulled in the strands of magic curled up inside the crystal, sucking it up at a dangerous rate.
Something hit her side and she tumbled across the floor. She angled her body and turned her fall into a roll, then sprang up on all fours.
Then immediately fell down again, cursing. Foreleg hurt. She stood up on trembling legs, finally getting a good look at her attacker.
It was that same mare from before, the one who’d been talking to herself on the cliff.
What struck Dash the most was how clean she looked. Before, she’d been stumbling on the trail with nothing but her saddlebags and her magic. Now she was pristine and her hair was arranged in neat little curls.
Dash swayed on her hooves, then looked down at the place where the...whatever it was had hit her.
That’s a lot of blood, she observed. The hole in her side didn’t hurt all that much. It was pretty shallow, but wide.
Oh. The magic. Yes. Dash focused on the tight ball of magic she’d pulled from the crystal, unraveling it and dispersing it throughout her body. Normally she wouldn’t have to do this, but absorb too much magic at once and it liked to stick to itself.
The ball dissolved after a few seconds and the magic flowed through her body. Her legs grew sure and steady. She placed her foreleg on the floor, then subtly adjusted her stance, now able to feel tiny cracks in the marble that could throw her off balance. The dark castle grew brighter until she was able to see the dust and cracks on the other side of the room. Her wound closed over, light blue light seeping out of the hole and solidifying into flesh and fur.
Dash locked eyes with the unicorn, who narrowed her own eyes in turn.
Dash growled, stalking toward her. The curse had probably infected the mare. The best thing to do would be to stop her suffering. The unicorn’s horn glowed, and small chunks of blasted stone drifted toward Dash. Dash dismissed it with a flick of her ear. The unicorn was too far away to lift anything near Dash with any speed.
The unicorn backed up under Dash’s advance. “Perhaps we can talk about this?” she tried.
Dash burst into a gallop, flying inches above the floor. She still had some magic left.
“Yes Sweetie, I know. I suppose—oh, but I do wish I could’ve avoided this. I didn’t even know they could use magic.”
Something was wrong. Dash tried to stop herself, to slow down.
But the unicorn was moving as well.
She levitated several large chunks of marble around her, then set them spinning. Faster and faster they spun, changing their positions every time until it looked like she was surrounded by a see-through bubble of rock.
Dash swerved out of the way in a burst of pure speed, a trail of rainbows stretching out behind her, then flew into the air, getting some distance between herself and the mare as she struggled to take stock of the situation.
The unicorn was shielded. Dash needed to break the shield. Maybe if she used her Skill—
She ran out of magic, gently drifting to the ground on the last of it.
The unicorn. She had magic. All Dash had to do was take it. The unicorn was still levitating the rocks. Dash concentrated, focusing on the air surrounding her. An almost invisible stream of light flowed into her from her saddlebags.
Dash galloped toward the levitating shield, scooping up a small rock on the way.
That was close enough. Dash opened her jaws and swung sideways, being careful not to catch her legs on anything as she moved. The rock sailed toward the unicorn and smashed against the rotating barrier spraying tiny fragments of rubble across the room.
A sharp pain bit Dash in her left wing. She glanced at it and saw a spot of blood.
The unicorn’s shield was still up. Dash picked up another rock. She only needed to stay lucky once.
She neared the shield again and flung her rock at it.
The shield disappeared, the heavy stone dropping to the ground around the unicorn.
Dash was never more thankful of the fact that unicorns couldn’t just fling objects wherever they wanted. If the stones had just gone flying off, one of them wouldn't probably hit her.
A magical glow suddenly enveloped her.
Oh no. Too close. Too close.
She scrambled against the air, helpless against the levitation. The unicorn looked at her. She wasn't smiling.
“Perhaps you're not really one of—”
The stone reached her. It bounced off her saddlebags, causing her to flinch.
Levitation needed concentration.
Dash dropped, free of the unicorn’s telekinetic grip, then dove forward. The unicorn backed up, horn lighting up. Dash swung a hoof at it, but the unicorn dodged. Didn’t matter, though. She gripped the unicorn’s saddlebag in her teeth and tore. It ripped, a hole opening up where the rock had struck it. Two glowing gems clattered to the ground, one a deep red, the other green. Dash scooped up the red one and flung it in her saddlebag, then rolled away, dodging a chunk of stone with a teal glow around it.
The unicorn raised her shield of rubble, hastily sending the pieces spinning, leaving gaps.
She absorbed as much magic as she could hold. It wasn’t much, compared to what the crystal could. The thing had to be extremely expensive. Dash unwove the ball of magic, molding it into the shape of her skill. She didn’t know how she did it—no one did.
There.
She released it.
And she became awesome.
Dash rushed for the unicorn. The air tried to push against her, but she wasn’t really there. She was between. Then the little air that did push against her broke. Sound didn’t exist. The world was blue and red. Time stopped, confused. It stretched.
Dash extended a hoof.
The unicorn’s cocoon of rock shattered. Marble fragments flew everywhere. Dash stopped using her Skill and stopped midair, flapping her wings. Flying.
She buzzed. Even after that, she still had magic.
Wait.
Her eyes zoomed to the other wall, locking onto the battered and bleeding unicorn slumped against it, unconscious.
Unconscious, but alive.
The unicorn had attacked her first.
But now it looked like she might be dead. Like Dash’d killed her.
She’d done it before.
It had hurt.
Dash fell out of the air and slumped to the floor, not exhausted, but drained.
She slowly got up, eyeing the unicorn collapsed on the other side of the room, then slowly walked forward, ears pricking at the sound of each step she took.
She reached the unicorn and tentatively prodded her with a hoof. Hm. She stayed unconscious. Her saddlebags were still attached, the right one with a large rip in it. Inside, she spotted the glow of another large crystal.
Wow. The whole bag—half her storage space—was taken up by these gems. Stupid. Anyone could take them. Dash would take them. She looked at the other bag, flipping it open. What was this stuff?
Mane curlers? Coat shiner?
What’d this mare been thinking?
Dash dug through the saddlebag. There was a small tin of dried fruit, which she took and put in her own bags. She came up with more mane and coat supplies and some extra food, all of which she transferred to over to herself.
She turned her attention back to the pony.
The problem was, she didn’t know much about dealing with hurt ponies. When she’d still traveled with others, they’d had someone who did all the healing. After, all she needed was magic. Fixing up someone else was beyond her.
Maybe Dash could take the magic from the gem and sort of...force it into her. She’d heard of ponies doing something like it.
She took a breath and drew in a tiny bit of magic from one of the crystals.
This was good stuff. Nice and pure. Just these gems could keep her going without any food or water for days. Weeks, even.
She focused on the magic.
“Go to her,” she told it in a whisper. “Fix her up.”
It didn’t listen.
“Come on! Go!”
Worth a try. She abandoned her attempt at persuasion and gathered some magic up into a dense little ball and shoved it at Rarity. Nothing happened.
She nudged the mare with a hoof.
The ball of magic flowed through her leg and into the pony, whose wounds glowed white with magic and closed.
“I’m sorry Sweetie Belle, what was that?” she said, rubbing at her eyes. Then she opened them. “You?”
Dash drew in a little more magic, enough to dodge or shrug off any magic if the unicorn shot at her.
“You! What...happened?” the unicorn said, regaining her wits and scrabbling to her hooves. “Not that I’m ungrateful, little one, but...what?”
Dash relaxed her stance a bit. “Why’d you attack me, huh?”
“Darling, we’re in Canterlot! A filly just happens to be wandering around the place? I think not!”
Oh. “It didn’t get me,” Dash said.
“Yes, I see that now,” the unicorn said, moving a hoof dismissively. “But, well...pardon my language, but you can’t deny that you look like an urchin. Here, that usually means you’ve been taken.”
“Fine,” Dash said. “What’re you doing here?”
“Searching for artifacts. What else would one be doing in Canterlot?”
“Same.”
The mare eyed Dash. “Really. You?”
“Yes.”
“Well...what will you do now, then?”
Dash shrugged, looking back toward the entrance. She’d fixed up the unicorn. Time to go.
She must’ve seen where Dash was looking. “Wait!” the unicorn said, holding up a hoof.
Dash raised an eyebrow.
“I just realized that I’d not introduced myself. I’m Rarity. You?”
“Dash.”
“Just...Dash? That’s it?”
“Yup.”
Rarity frowned. “If you don’t mind, would you like to tell me where you’re going? It might be that I can accompany you.”
“Don’t need accompany-ness.”
“Ah. Alright. I’m going to Sol.”
Sol, huh? “Is it close?”
“Not really, but it’s the closest one that will be able to weather the Everstorm without rebuilding.”
“Might be I’ll go there, then,” Dash said, looking at Rarity’s saddlebags. “You got a map?”
“Indeed I do, Rarity said, reaching into her bags and pulling one out of a pouch Dash had missed. She didn’t seem to have noticed the new location of her gems.
“Did you come here with anyone?” she asked, studying the map.
“No…”
“And you don’t have a home?” Rarity said. From anypony else, that statement would’ve made Dash want to buck them in the face. But Rarity didn’t have any fake pity in her voice. She said it like she understood. Like she was asking out of real curiosity, not because it was the thing you did because everypony else did it.
“Nope. Not for a long time,” Dash said. Still, wouldn’t do to trust this mare too much. Sometimes guards would come out on the streets and lure in anypony they could with food and promises. They sounded sincere too. All lies. She knew what those guards did to anyone they caught.
Rarity straightened up, and Dash was confronted by a confident noblepony. “Well then, I have a business proposal for you. I’m going on a little adventure, but everypony I’ve asked has been too boorish and concerned with practicality to accept. As if they know practicality. They didn’t even look at my… Ahem. Anyway. I need a scout, you see, somepony to find deposits of resources I can use to keep my airship aloft when I really get going.”
Dash eyed Rarity suspiciously.
The unicorn caught the look. “Oh, of course! How silly of me. Let’s see...how about a flat rate of ten bits a day, with an extra twenty bits an hour whenever you’re scouting? I’m afraid I can’t afford too much more than that, but I can provide free meals and housing.”
Ten bits a day. And twenty an hour. This was definitely a trap. An airship rigging rat got paid a half-bit a day, if they were lucky, with food and a bit of the deck to sleep on.
But she’d promised bits, and Rarity’d have to pay at least the first ten if she wanted to lead Dash on any more. Ten bits would get her enough food for days. She’d take the first payment and run.
“...Sounds good,” Dash said cautiously. “But what’re you looking for?”
Rarity smiled, flicking at her hair in a way that somehow brought it springing back into its former shape. “The Elements of Harmony.”
“If you want to understand magic well enough to become mages, you will need to cease relying on your cutie marks. Yes, yes, I know your trite little saying: ‘they work, and that’s what matters,’ but you’re never going to get anywhere with that attitude. Cutie marks are an evolved process. They channel magic extremely inefficiently, resulting in an over sixty percent loss in power and efficiency. By all means respect the results, but do not worship the mechanism.”
Twilight lurked near the door, her ears flicking toward any little noise, ready to flee at the sound of any approaching hoofsteps.
“Now, magic is a difficult thing. Most ponies you meet outside of this room will advocate pure instinct as a valid method of finding new spells. If you try this, your spells will be weaker, volatile, and probably kill you. Yes, Forbearance?”
Another voice spoke. Female, with an odd accent that hinted at lunar origin. “Back home, mental magic is used to predict spell effects. Death or injury is not caused, unless proper care is not taken.”
A sigh. “We do not use dark magic here. It’s too dangerous.”
“Mental magic is used by the Inquisitors to—”
“That’s them. We do not use it. Now, to continue—”
The soft sound of hoofsteps approached. Twilight gasped, spinning around and stumbling, then straightened off and tried to look as if she was just walking past.
“I should’ve checked here first,” Celestia said with a soft chuckle.
Twilight bowed, glancing up at the Princess under her eyelashes. She stood at the height of two normal ponies, or one and a half of the foreigners down south, and exuded a heavy aura; not an oppressive one, but one that demanded respect. As always, she was clad in her court regalia. The nearby Sun Globes glinted off the gold metal coating her hooves, wings, and forehead.
“Princess. I was just—”
Celestia held up a hoof. “You do well in your studies, Twilight. But you have your duties. Are they not satisfactory?”
“No! I mean yes!” Twilight reared up on her back legs and wheeled her forelegs defensively. “Of course it’s satisfactory! It’s just...this is just so interesting,” she said.
Celestia shook her head fondly. “Very well. I shall make the journal transcriptions a higher priority.”
Twilight couldn’t keep a high-pitched eep of excitement from escaping her mouth. Actual, scientific data on how magic worked was so rare. Most ponies relied exclusively on the spell afforded to them through their cutie mark, maybe along with another purchased—by great expense—from other ponies who stuff their own spell into a suitable crystal. The Princess had just begun spreading a new way of using magic—by understanding it. Being so new, there were less than thirty books throughout all of Equestria on the subject that weren’t blatant superstition, and Twilight had read the twenty-one she had access to. Multiple times. Having access to the Princess’s personal notes on magic…
Twilight blushed and snapped her mouth shut. Had she been salivating?
Celestia gave her another amused look. “Now, are you ready to replace poor Sunset? She’s all but dropped dead from exhaustion by now.”
“Oh no! I’m so sorry, I must’ve lost track of time! I’ll head out right away,” Twilight sprung into a gallop, racing down the corridor past Celestia. She felt the Princess’s eyes staring at her as she fled.
Down the hall, past ponies going on errands, out the nondescript metal doors the guards took—all in all, the trip took only a few minutes and all that Twilight could remember of it was a series of blurs.
A royal guard trooped up in front of her, armor glinting in the early morning sunlight. “Inquisitor,” she said, wing tense around his spear, “a chaos incursion was just barely repelled a half-hour earlier.”
They’d prepared for that, with the Everstorm’s approach. Twilight settled into Royal Inquisitor mode, walking calmly but quickly through the streets as she continued listening to the guard’s explanation.
“It was Pinkie Pie,” he said.
Pinkie Pie. The most feared chaos agent in the entire Solar Empire, she traveled the land persuading the populations of entire cities to travel to the Everstorm, using a combination of magic and enchanted chaos artifacts to sway large amounts of ponies, and always escaping the Empire’s forces through trickery and sheer skill.
“I thought we were warded against her. Specifically.”
“We are. Or...were. She somehow circumvented the wards. We think it’s another chaos artifact. And…” he hesitated.
Twilight turned to face him. “Spit it out, captain,” she said, speaking the rank granted him by his bronze armor.
“Royal Inquisitor Sunset Shimmer sacrificed herself to shield the city, allowing herself to be taken by Pinkie Pie’s magic.”
No. Not Sunset. She and Twilight had been—well, not exactly friends. In fact, it was more the opposite. They tried to foil each other at every step. And yet...Twilight didn’t want Sunset to leave.
“Anything else?” Twilight asked, making her voice brusque and emotionless. Emotions were for later. She had a job to do.
“There were a few more victims beside Inquisitor Shimmer,” the guard said, then turned to face Twilight. “But they’re already either gone or taken care of. We need an Inquisitor at the entrance, though…”
“Yes, yes, I understand. Don’t worry, captain, I know the way,” Twilight said. The guard looked uncertain for a moment, but eventually nodded and peeled away. Twilight continued down the crowded road, still not entirely used to the smooth feeling beneath her hooves.
It was impractical to lay down each structure piece by piece on the clouds, so every section of the city was made in its entirety before being added, with the construction being split into even smaller pieces that could be fit together in less than an hour once everything was on-sight. This resulted in many...odd structures. The roads were smooth slabs of a single thin stone. Buildings were all boxy and alien-looking. The only contrasting examples were the castle, its construction supervised by Celestia herself, and the Apples’ constructions.
There was an example of the Apple’s need for distinction right in front of her, beside the gate that led to and from the city. It was one of their smaller farms, a rustic-looking red barn with trees spread at random intervals around it, and grass covering the entire plot. The square of land looked out of place, like a piece of another world, rudely yanked into this one.
Twilight dismissed the thought, moving into the shaded watchtower that anyone coming in or out had to pass. The shimmering magical barrier of the city floated in front of her face, a translucent, almost undetectable layer between Twilight and anyone behind it. A barrier that she couldn’t work through. The wards preventing flight or magic in or out buzzed as Twilight poked her head through. In front of her was a family of earth ponies and a team of mercenary-looking pegasi. Hired to protect the family on their journey to Sol, most likely.
She took a deep breath, smiling at the ponies outside the watchtower. “Do not be alarmed by anything you may see. This is standard procedure,” she recited as she drew on her magic.
A specific gem in her saddlebags—specially prepared by skilled earth pony rock farmers so that it would hold a spell matrix without breaking apart—glowed to her magical senses. She fed it a thin stream of magic to keep the intrusiveness of the spell to a minimum.
The ponies shield away from her. She gave them a reassuring smile. They didn’t look any less fearful. She sighed. She knew how she looked: glowing green eyes, suppressive aura of hate, colors leaching from the world, yadda yadda yadda.
“I need all of you to look me in the eyes. Just for a second,” Twilight said, hearing the slight double-echo the mental magic—or dark magic, if you wanted to call it that—added to her voice.
A red earth pony mare was the first to glance up. Looked like the mother. She stared at Twilight defiantly.
...this even for? I bet she’s just gonna write everything she sees down later, so she can get bribes from us. Just as bad as the Lunar Republic, it is…
Twilight broke the gaze. Interesting. Her family had apparently been in the Lunar Republic recently. Still, she wasn’t a threat.
“You’re clear,” she said.
The mare hesitated. “That’s it? I thought…”
You thought it would hurt.
Twilight was used to it. Ponies had certain expectations about mental magic. It was evil. It hurt. It made the user evil. It had great costs. None of that was true. All it did was allow the user an easy interface with other minds. Everything it accomplished could theoretically also be done through conventional spells, but crafting such a spell would be so time-consuming, and the result so inefficient, that no one had ever tried. Why do what could already be done with a ready-made interface that took a fraction of the power that standard spells did? The only problem with it, and the reason it had such a stigma, was that it made anyone who used it look evil. The glowing green eyes, the aura of fear, and the faded colors were pretty obviously evil, despite the fact that there was a reasonable explanation: mental magic needed a sympathetic connection to the target, and it used fear. Theoretically anyone could resist a probe by not being afraid, but no had ever done so to Twilight’s knowledge.
“Hey. Inquisitor! Are they clear?”
Twilight shook her head. She’d been thinking too long. It was a hard habit to break.
She looked into the eyes of everypony in front of her; two colts, a filly, and a stallion from the earth pony family, and then the four rough-looking pegasi.
“Clear!” she shouted.
The group entered the gates, the guard stepping aside to let them in, then closed them behind him.
Then she waited. This was the part she hated the most. She’d gotten over her reservations about peeking into the thoughts of complete strangers after the first time an agent of chaos had attempted to enter, and after that it was kind of entertaining to listen to the snippets of thought she picked up in each pony’s head. Most ponies thought with internal voices, strange, shifting things that sounded subtly different each word they thought. A tiny fraction thought in writing, thoughts of scrawling ink. An even smaller amount thought in images, their minds vaults of meaning and symbols. Twilight backed out of those ones as quickly as she could. She could coax meaning from them, but it was hard, and she couldn’t shake an irrational feeling that staring too hard would eventually drive her insane.
A pair of ponies popped into existence before her in a bright white flash of magic. Celestia’s wards were quite extensive. Twilight would love to take a day to figure out how she’d configured them to detect any ponies below Sol and teleport them up here. But she had a job to do.
“Do not be alarmed by anything you may see. This is standard procedure,” she said, voice low and reassuring. “Please look into my eyes.”
