Sunset Shimmer and the Last Trial of Daring Do

Chapters

Prologue
There’s Rapture in Battle, Bliss
As on the Edge of the Abyss
And in a Raging Ocean's Fury
Midst Angry Waves and Darkness Vague
And in the Desert Whirlwind's Hurry
And in the Breeze that Brings the Plague
Epilogue

Prologue

The old lantern was swinging in the wind, making all the shadows in the barn dance along the hay-covered floor. The smell of freshly-cut grass and old apples spread through the warm autumn night on the gentle gusts of wind, making five pyjama-clad girls shiver and wiggle deeper into their sleeping bags.

Sunset piled more hay on top of herself, seeking warmth, and stuck a straw in her mouth, the familiar taste summoning a wave of fond nostalgia.

“Hey, Sunset, wanna tell another story?” Rainbow Dash asked, half-asleep. “Something cool, though, not the mushy stuff about old ladies.”

"Well I, for one, happened to like that story," Rarity interjected, "Sad as it were."

"Pff, yeah, you would."

“And what,” Rarity rose out of her sleeping bag to peer at the source of the comment, “might I ask, is that supposed to mean?”

Their glares crossed and the air grew thick with threat and tension.

"Um, I liked the talking animals from the second one," Fluttershy offered gingerly, defusing the feud before it could start.

"Technically they're all about talking animals, sugarcube, seeing as how Sunset used ta be a pony–"

"See!" Rainbow interrupted AJ triumphantly, "Rares got a mushy romance story about princess-horses, Flutters had her talking animals story, so it's now my turn to pick. And I pick something with adventures and magic, and like, awesome lost ruins and evil, insane maniacs and stuff!"

“Alright, alright.” Sunset smiled unhappily. “I’ll tell you a story that has all those things, although perhaps not in the way you’d expect. I'll tell you a story of my teacher.”

“Teacher? Ya mean the Princess, right?”

“No. The other one.”

“Ah’ thought ya were a student of the Princess?” Applejack asked suspiciously. “That’s what Twilight said.”

“Well, yes. But Celestia has always let me pursue my studies outside of what she taught me — even an immortal cannot know everything, much less so when she has to rule a kingdom as well. I have studied from many a pony, and I have always learned from the best. Still, in the line of my teachers, she has always held a special place…”

The old lantern was swinging in the wind, dredging up the shadows of the past, and as the girls scooched closer as Sunset began her tale.

Author's Note

This is not a wholly original work of fiction. This work contains сharacters, setting, ideas, gags and on occasion straight bits stolen nigh-verbatim from many popular and obscure works of fiction (and, on occasion, reality). In order not to spoil the reading experience, the full list will be provided at the end of the fic.

Meanwhile, when you find any - please feel free to point them out. He who finds the most will... I dunno, be a cool dude. I don't have any prizes to give, sorry.
Maybe a shout-out?

There’s Rapture in Battle, Bliss

My next adventure began in Baltimare. It was a beautiful evening, the sun had already set, and I was drinking. Because believe you me, even in Equestria no great adventure ever began with a salad.

As you’d expect from a cheap watering hole in the harbour-side slums, the drinks were not great, and the glasses were probably last washed sometime before the Discordian era. But the place did not ask for an ID and sold the 14-proof, proper hard cider and that was good enough for me.

I took a swig of it from the glass I’ve been levitating while I grabbed the dice off the table. A heavy silence hung over the game board as my opponents waited for me to put the glass down and for my horn to stop glowing before I would roll for my turn. Heh. Suckers always expect a unicorn to use magic when she plays.

I did not need any fancy magics as I rolled the dice with my hoof.

"Easy Ten," I announced. A howl of pure anguish and a string of foulest curses I’ve heard so far split the stale air in reply.

Still, the dice were on the table, and even as I moved my token over the last snake and into the final square, I was already pulling my winnings into the heap of bits by my side with my magic.

Patented Lulamoon hoof-twist, it gets them every time.

"Twice or none at all!" the stallion bearing the cutie mark of a skipper demanded, throwing a hoof-full of bits on the table.

I took another drink and gestured for him to roll first.

We played in silence, and as the figurines made their way across the board, rising and falling on the whim of a die, I retreated into my thoughts. Thoughts that turned inevitably to the past.

A lucky throw and my figurine climbed a ladder as I thought of hot Arabian days and warm evenings, of first love and first loss. Of cold Arabian nights in the desert ‘neath Arabian moon; howling wind as my companion, and of the nightmarish things I saw and learned in the hidden ruins.

I nudged the die a little bit with a push of a subtle spell, forcing my token to slide down a snake almost to the beginning of the board, letting my opponents build up their confidence, and I thought of my second adventure. Of a prophecy and a curse, of a friend betrayed and murdered, of Kings and Lions, and of magic Deep and the one that’s even Deeper that bound them all.

Despite the setback, my little token was still climbing ever upward, avoiding the trapped fields, and I took another sip from the glass and thought of my return home.

Well, not home. Not exactly.

Whether the Lion lied or was as ignorant as I, I do not know, but I could not return home.
Oh, beyond the portal lay Canterlot, and Celestia, worried sick after my week-long sudden disappearance, welcomed me home, doting on me like a mother on a prodigal daughter.

Equestria had not changed in my absence; it was I who was different.

Restless, for months I'd haunted the marble halls of the castle, tailing Celestia like a baby duckling follows its mother. Neither the silence of the High Library nor the familiar scent of musty tomes and alchemical reagents in my workshop could quiet the iron smell of blood that followed me in my sleep and my waking hours alike. Everything felt wrong and hollow and empty, and when I dreamt of night raids and skirmishes, of red-hot forges and burning campfires, I could never tell which was a dream and which a nightmare.

Celestia herself was not quite right. She has always been a perfect mentor, a perfect… perfect everything. I could trust her with any problem or fear, and she would always find the right words to fix it.

But when I tried to talk to her about my nightmares, about the blood and the murder I saw, she could not help me — even Celestia, the once warrior-Princess, perhaps the only one who could understand what I was going through, looked clean through me saying empty platitudes and meaningless phrases, as if I’ve been speaking in an alien tongue.

Then Cadance came back to Canterlot, her new boy-toy of a Guard Cadet in tow, and Celestia had even less time for me, abandoning me to the pointless probing of counselors and doctors, and a feeling lurched within my soul, dark and heavy. A feeling I could not yet give a name.

Distracted with my drink and reminiscence, I stumbled with my token upon another slide downward, and now my winnings were in some serious peril.

I set the cider aside and prepared to forge me some luck from my skill.

***

The gentle buzz of hard cider and the ups and downs of the game distracted me from thoughts I preferred to avoid and let me relax. But, however fun was it to return to the golden days of my fillyhood, listening to the tall tales of the travelers and hustling the simple sailors and traders out of their meager earnings, I was back in Baltimare for a reason, and as the game was slowly coming to a close, that reason had finally made his appearance.

A cloak-clad figure, twice as big as any pony, entered the bar. Despite his great stature, he had no trouble making his way through the tightly-packed floor — everypony who would have stood in his way seemed to almost evaporate before he could approach them. The chatter and the clinking of the glasses died around him, and even before he arrived at the table, its previous occupants disappeared with a speed and efficiency of a master teleporter, their dishes and glasses vanishing as swiftly as the ponies themselves.He sat down, and his gaze, heavy and full of slow power, slid along the bar and as if by a wave of a director's wand, everypony immediately stopped watching and fully pretended to return to their drinks and games. The gaze relented as the cloaked visitor settled in his seat, but still, his heavy presence remained, hanging over the tables like a storm cloud. Talking grew hushed around him, gamers seemed to lose their ardour and a thin stream of ponies began to line up towards him.

My eyes lingered on the newcomer for a moment, as doubts I thought I had long since put to rest came back to haunt me again. There was still a chance to call everything off. The last chance, probably. Finish the game, go home...

I met his eyes, glinting in the dim light of a bar, for less than a second, and that's when the shakes hit me.

They came as they always did - suddenly, without warning or provocation. First I shook and trembled, then my breath hitched and my muscles cramped as if I were running. I gripped the edges of the table like a lifeline just not to fall off my chair and snapped my eyes shut, just as the second wave of mind-rending terror threatened to rip me apart, dragging me into a quagmire of half-memories-half visions.

She looked at me from within the gates, smiling, and all it took was for her sight to touch me, and all the breath left my body as if I’d been bucked in the chest.

I gritted my teeth, and I could hear a quiet "pop" of the glass imploding in the grip of my magic.

There was a quiet, wet popping sound when the tiny blade of the toy dagger found his armpit, separating the bone from the joint. He squealed — a thin, grating sound.

All I could do was hold out against the whimpering almost ready to escape my lips, until the memories, sated with my fear and suffering, have retreated into the back of my mind.

Memories. Just memories.

I reminded myself, as I adjusted my mane and released the table carefully, straining my lips to smile at the stallions opposite me — memories had no power over me. No power to stop me, no power to scare me. No matter how much they'd torment and make me shiver and shake and wish I could just curl up in a corner, I'd do what I came here to do. Which meant that first of all I had to get my little game over quickly.

I took a large swig of cider, straight from the bottle, to calm my nerves and returned to the board. Despite the tremors and cramps in my foreleg, I managed to roll a double four, landing at the foot of a ladder going to the topmost row and granting me another die roll. A little hoof-twist and a bit of chicanery got me a five and a six, proceeding my token squarely to the finish line.

“Six Five, gentlecolts,” I announced to the collective gnashing of teeth. My voice wavered, but consumed by their sudden and crushing defeat they did not notice, “you ain’t got no jive.”

You could read all the stages of grief on their long little faces. The denial, swiftly taken over by anger, and then just as quickly - bargaining, the gambler’s best friend.

“Another round!” he demanded, “Double or nothing!”

“Sorry, colts, my evenin’s up. Things to see, ponies to do.”

...and just like that, we were back to anger. One of them grabbed me by the forehoof, pushing me back down, and I tensed up. I had no doubt I could take them all down in seconds - the whole bar if I had to, but that was not my intention.

“You give us a chance to win, lil’ lady.” One of them demanded.

“Yeah, or what, are you a cheater, huh?” the other chimed in.

There are seven working gambling disengagement strategies that give a good chance for a player to escape without foregoing his winnings or starting a bar fight. Three of them require a long set up, two others — a companion at the table, none of which I had. Luckily, if there was anything Celestia has ever taught me, it was to always be prepared in advance.

“Ugh.” I plopped back down on a seat, making it wobble unsteadily. “As if I care about your stupid money. Y’know what?” I grabbed the gold with my magic and shoved it to the nearest bar worker. It was an earth pony colt, barely into his teens, with large, cute eyes and floppy ears who was furiously scrubbing a table with an equally dirty mop. He grabbed onto the sudden riches as if his life depended on it. His eyes teared up, as he tried to stammer out mixed thank-yous.

“There. Nopony gets it now. You guys happy?” I said, feigning irritation.

They looked away - it would take a heart of stone to force such a cute little thing to give back what was clearly the biggest money he’s ever seen, and sailors may be a crude bunch, but robbing a child was very much beyond them.

They grumbled something, and using their confusion I slipped away, grabbing my cloak and my saddlebags as I went. I cared little for my winnings — I knew that the colt would be storing them in my room: I made quite sure he knew better than to try to cheat me.

The line was just beginning, one stallion or mare after the other, bringing things and requests to the new guest, hoping and fearing for his attention. I had no time for this, as I let my magic flare up, tendrils of green light pushing the ponies aside and making way for me.

Whines and whinnies rose from every side, and those few petitioners who were not complete pushovers reached for their knives, spells, and amulets, horns glowing every color of magic. The cloaked figure at the table raised his forepaw, silencing them. His eyes settled on me once again, as everypony waited for his verdict.

"Speak, little pony." his voice was a high, scratchy tone, contrasting sharply with his powerful frame. "What have you brought me, that cannot wait with the others?"

I chose my words with care. He was a power once, the sort none would dare to raise their hoof against, and even though fallen, not all that have fallen are vanquished.

“Not to disrespect you, Elder One, but I came not with a tribute or a gift. I came with a bargain,” I said, taking a cloth-wrapped item out of my saddle bag and throwing it on the table.

It unfolded when it hit the table, and the item within shone with a soft golden glow, lighting his face underneath the hood. The blue bristles of his coat, the long blunt muzzle ending in a jagged row of canine teeth and the earring that shone back with a dull glint of ancient gold.

Ahuizotl’s eyes lit up, greed apparent on his inequine face. “A feather of light!” He stretched his tail-paw towards it. “Is it Hers?”

The way he said “Her” sent shivers down my spine. It was hatred, and it was fear, and something else… envy maybe? Still, I whacked him across his tailpaw with a whip-smack of my magic, making him yip with pain and recoil away. The crowd gasped and wavered as if I just went all-in on a chance of a double-six.

“A bargain, Elder, not a gift,” I reminded him forcefully.

“Very well,” he said, his eyes only barely flashing with anger. “You have surprised me, pony -- a thing well worth your impertinence. What do you want in return for this treasure?”

"A knife," I said carefully. This was the moment that would decide the whole of the adventure. "A coin. And a name forgotten."

With every item that I named his expression grew darker, his face retreating further into his cloak.

"I know what you're after. I want in."

He said nothing, looking at me with quiet intent. I had thrown the metaphorical dice on the table, staggering him with my knowledge and my demand, and I could almost see the thoughts turn and roll in his mind... though I would not dare predict where they'd end up.

"Walk with me, little pony," He half-asked half-ordered, standing up to leave the bar. "This is not a place for such talk."

The hisses and whispers in the crowd intensified, as he stood up to leave, but all it took was a growl of displeasure from Ahuizotl to make them swallow whatever they had to say.

"Insolent pests," he grumbled, making his way to the exit, as I trotted along. "Pay them no heed, little pony. We have business to discuss."

The night enveloped us, chasing away the smells of burnt food and cheap drink with the salty wind of the harbour and the smell of flowers in early bloom. Nothing was said — we navigated in silence along the narrow alleys of Baltimare. Ahuizotl walked quickly, making me occasionally break into a canter to keep up with his longer stride, a pace that did not invite a pleasant talk.

We were followed as we walked. Large cats, silent predators in the darkness, jumped softly off the roofs and the trees as we walked by, no more than shadows in the night, detected — barely — by the light steps of the padded paws and occasional glint of moonlight in the slitted yellow eyes: Ahuizotl's pets making sure I don't run away from meeting with their master.

I ignored them, alcohol and adrenaline making me bold and cocksure; even if I did have any intention of running away, it wasn't like a bunch of kitties could stop me.

The Elder took turns and chose side alleys without hesitation, easily shying away from street lamps and crowds, navigating past the docks. Streets grew narrower and dirtier, more broken and abandoned houses, like skeletons of what once was here, appearing and disappearing in the light of the sickly-pale moon, surrounding us ever closer, with dulled bricks and rotten wood.

Even at night, I recognized this place - this was the bit of the harbour every filly in Baltimare knew to never walk alone in the darkness. The bit where only those that asked no question weren't told a lie and where everypony learned to watch the wall when the "gentlemares" went by. The bit of smugglers and pirates, rogue warlocks and refugees, where ships with no flags arrived in the night like ghosts, only to disappear with the morning mists.

There, in the very heart of the forbidden and closed part of the town, the Elder stopped and knocked on a door so grimy it could barely be distinguished from the surrounding wall. It creaked open, and in the portal of the house lighted by torches, an earth pony stallion bowed to Ahuizotl, prostrating himself on the ground.

"Tlatoani! You grace me with your presence. By your power our breath flows..." he mumbled nigh-incomprehensibly, prostrated before his master, the freshly drawn Coltec tattoos smudging against the bricks of the road.

"Be my guest, little pony." Ahuizotl invited me in, stepping over the bowed stallion as if he was less than nothing.

He led me to the patio of the house. A Griffon-style small inner court under the open sky, with balconies, perches and seats set at every level for the convenience of pegasi and griffin guests. Once green and lustrous, it was now an abandoned and barren bit of brownish cracked ground fenced by walls of other buildings, just as ready to surrender to the time and lack of care as the house we just went through.

The Elder chose his seat first — the sole chair-throne big enough to accommodate him in the yard. The construction groaned and strained under his heavy frame, and behind the tightened drapes of carpets and cushions, you could guess the awkward angles of once lawn chairs and sunbeds cobbled together. His cloak came unfastened, revealing more ancient red gold in plates hanging off his collar and bracelets on his forelimbs.

Ahuizotl’s cats caught up to us seconds later, taking their places on the roofs and balconies to bear witness to our talk.

"You!" He finally graced the still-prostrate host, who followed us crawling on his belly through the dust, with his attention. "Little worm! Bring us drink, and be hasty about it!

"And bring Green,” he added, after a short consideration. "We have a guest."

"I know." A mare's voice said from behind and above, startling me. A pale green pony, somehow unnoticed before she gave voice stood up on one of the inner balconies of the courtyard. She jumped down before I could turn to face her fully and landed behind me, softer than even Ahuizotl's cats, her hooves making no sound against the stone of the road.

"What do we have here…” Moving around me towards the Elder, she almost rubbed her sides against mine and gave me a long, evaluating look. “The Canterlot accent, the enchanted saddlebags, the prissy mane-cut... what's a little princess like you doing in the bad part of town? You got lost, little filly?”

“I am not little,” I said levelly, letting my startled fear turn to anger and spill from my horn in a wave of magic. It hit her straight in the chest, making her rock slightly on her hooves. “And we’d be the same height once I drop you on your butt.”

"Feisty." She clicked her tongue. "Reminds me of a certain ‘all that’ teen. Zoti, is she a gift?"

Ahuizotl chuckled. “The little pony wishes to join us.”

Her expression soured instantly.

“Oh no. No way. I am not babysitting - it is not in the job description.”

"I am not a foal," I repeated, the haze of magic around me thickening into an almost tangible aura. "I am a combat-sorceress. In Saddle Arabia they call me the Fire of Seven Oases. In the Beruna-forest they called me the Red Witch. I came with a bargain and a proposition, and you will have a use of me:

"A feather of light, a knife from under the hill, a coin of stone and a name long forgotten-"

"I do not have those things." Ahuizotl interrupted me casually.

"...what?!" He might as well had slapped me with a wet fish for all the effect it had on me. "But Señor Caballeron said—"

"Bah! That pompous buffoon talks too much of things he has no idea of,” the Elder dismissed the very notion with a wave of his paw, “but say I had them - what would you want out of it, little pony? A share of my power? Wealth? Knowledge? Patronage?"

"I want the other part. Whatever is left when you take the power will be mine to do as I please."

The Elder grew silent and sombre, considering my demand. His hand slipped idly to pet the snow-white kitten that jumped onto his lap. The silence stretched, as I watched him think, until the pause was broken by the host appearing once again with a tray of drinks and snack on his head, nearly falling over himself in his haste to please his master. Salty breadsticks and daisies, a wine bottle and tall glasses full of almost clear white drink.

"Drink my wine, pony." Ahuizotl animated again, awakening from his musings. "Eat my bread. You are a guest, after all." He gestured with his forepaw, giving me the first choice of the glass.

I took one, but I was in no hurry to drink it. Even if I was a guest, I was far from feeling at ease.

Ahuizotl chose the other glass without looking, his prehensile tail-paw snaking out to grab it. It looked tiny against his paw when he took a sip. The green mare took the last glass and settled back on the ground by the Elder's throne, almost hidden in its shadow.

"Drink," Ahuizotl ordered, seeing my hesitation. Something slipped into his voice, like a sharp glimpse of steel suddenly revealed on the bottom of the stream, and I found the glass at my lips before I could think of an answer.

The taste of it surprised me — I was used to the sweetness and fizziness of the cider, but this was almost bitter, rolling with undertones of salt and spice.

"So you know things, little pony." He considered the thought while I drank. "You know my purpose, and you know my means. Do you then know the name?"

"No..." I had to admit. "It was erased from Equestrian history."

"I remember it, little pony. My memories are deeper than your little records. Do you know where the knife is hidden?"

Sitting by this parody of a throne, answering the sudden questions, feeling the familiar desperate desire of a teacher's pet to get the answer right, the fear of disappointing the “teacher”; it felt like a twisted mockery of my lessons with Celestia, making me shiver with the same cold fear I got when caught without my homework. I shook my head, feeling my chances slip away with every failure to reply.

"I know where it is. I know were the things are, little pony, things lost and things secret, especially the weapon that she has once wielded against me."

There it was again, that”she” he hissed like a foulest curse, though I knew it didn’t quite refer to Celestia this time.

"And you have no way of finding the coin," he concluded, satisfied and somewhat smug. "Why would I have any use for you then, little pony?"

"I have the feather," I reminded him.

He dismissed my argument with a wave of his tail-paw. "I have the use for the feather, true, but the journey would be long and arduous, and as Green said, I am not in the business of babysitting."

"Do you know what is the name of the wine you're drinking, little pony?" the mare asked me, from underneath Ahuizotl’s shadow, changing the topic suddenly.

I looked up at the Elder in surprise and shook my head, failing to answer again. I only knew the names of the Arabian wines, and this one tasted nothing like any that I've tried.

"They call it the 'Widow's Tears.'" Ahuizotl held his own glass, tiny in his tail-paw, up to look at the play of moonlight in its liquid. "Made from the fruit that grows in the Southern Jungle, drinking the salty waters of the Narrow Sea. Yet its name comes not from its salty taste, little pony. No, it derives its name from the tears shed by the wives and husbands of those little ponies that ventured into the jungle to collect the fruit — never to return."

It was not a random question, then. The Elder was testing me, seeing if I would get afraid. I finished the glass in a gulp and set it aflame in my grip, letting the glass melt and crumple it into a tiny glass ball.

“I am not a foal, Elder,” I repeated, for the third and final time. “I am a battle-sorceress. I can take care of myself."

He smiled. A most unsettling expression, entirely too many sharp teeth splitting his long and narrow muzzle almost in twain. “Can you now, little pony? Then I desire a demonstration.” He set his drink aside, the clink of the glass somehow echoing with the finality of the bear-trap slamming shut.

***

Green slipped from the Elder’s shadow, and we stood against each other on the narrow brick road winding through the patio. The demonstration Ahuizotl demanded would not be an exam or a spellcasting test - it would be against her that my mettle would be tested.

In the direct light of the full moon, I could now have a good look at her and take my new opponent’s measure. She was tall and lithe, higher than I was almost by a head. Her body was lean and taut, pale green peppered with a pattern of black diamonds and old scars even her short fur could not conceal, and her mane was as black as a raven’s feather.

She stretched in a single luxurious motion, sinewy muscles rolling under pale green coat, animating the green fire of her cutie mark. With the predatory look in her emerald eyes and the black spots on her coat, she reminded me of a leopard. I blinked and forced myself to look away.

“Well, little filly.” her hoof scratched the ground in anticipation, “let’s see what you’re made of.”

I was not afraid. Unlike the unexpected quiz I had no answers for or trying to guess the Elder’s mood, the battle is a simple affair, with one of her and one of me. A fair and clean fight - a fight I thought I could not lose. Student of the Princess, forged in war the likes of which have not been seen in Equestria for centuries, none, I believed, could rival me in the art of battle spellcraft, and not even an earth pony had any hope to fight me and win. My hooves shuffled with the feverish excitement of a coming fight, and my horn took aflame when I summoned my magic.

She jumped, swift as a striking cobra, and it’s only by reflex that I caught her in my magic, struggling to hold her against the push of her earth pony strength, adding height and speed to her jump. She sailed over my head - a long arc ending right in the brickwork of the wall behind me.

She twisted in my grip, her strength ripping my spell to shreds and landed on her hooves, quick and nimble, and just like that she was already charging right back at me, faster than a pale-green lighting. She’d be on me before I could even…

“Onyx.” I released the spell without conscious thought, pure battle instinct taking over. It hit her square in the chest, and she froze in the suddenly viscous air, like a fly in amber. I breathed a little sigh of relief. There’d be no way she could move now.

She did. Slowly, her muscles, overflowing with her magic, pushed her through the hold of my spell, even as I poured more and more power into it. The spell strained under the energies it was never meant to contain; my horn burned and sparkled with the energy I poured through it, trying to force her to stop - and still she moved, slow but steady. The distance between us - not too large to begin with - was closing fast, and I had to come to a decision.

I dropped the spell and rolled to the side, barely avoiding her sprint. Still, she tagged me, her shoulder throwing me aside with inequine strength, my breath knocked out of me. Not enough to stop me - I was back to my hooves, ready to attack and defend within seconds - but still enough to hurt.

Turning back again to me, she grinned.

“Not bad… for a frou-frou little princess.”

That little barb stung more than the fresh bruise. Well if she wouldn't stay put, I’d just have to put her down - hard. My horn took alight again and the Scourge of Shahab, weaved from street dust and the salty wind of the harbour appeared at its tip, whipping and snapping, ten yards of stinging, coiled sharpness.

It snaked out, my spell almost as fast as my thought, and brick and mortar exploded around us, where the Scourge hit them, filling the small yard with deadly-sharp splinters flying in every direction. The whip of my spell curled and twisted, not letting her close and chasing her wherever she would try to feint or dodge. Once I connected, leaving a red-raw bleeding mark on her barrel, and then another, the tip of the sand-whip ripping a chunk of meat from her side, and then, suddenly she turned and leaned into the strike instead of dodging, as if gluttonous for the punishment of the lash.

She grabbed on the Scourge as it wrapped around her, ignoring the winds and sand cutting into her skin, rivulets of blood marking the touch of the whip, and pulled. Her strength ripped me clean off my hooves and threw me right into the buck of her hind-hooves.

Stars and sparks danced in my vision as I rolled along the road, losing the hold of my spells, and feeling every bump and hole with my barrel. I panted and tried to stand up.

“Ooh, little princess got some skill,” she teased, licking the drops of blood of her shoulder and shuddering with pleasure. “but you’re not quite in my league!”. She leaned towards the earth and pounced on me again as soon as I was back to my hooves.

A shielding spell stopped her - just barely, the crash of her body against it making my teeth rattle and my horn pulse with the pain of feedback. I tried to think, to get my bearings, but before I could even breathe another buck shook me to the core of my magic.

“Gotta come out of there sometime, little turtle,” she mocked, unleashing another blow to the shield. It held - if only by the skin of my teeth, and I stepped back. “Can’t hide forever.”

She was right. I could not sit there forever — her stamina would last her much longer than my magic. I had to end this, and I had to end it soon.

Taking a few steps back, she scratched the ground again with her hoof, and then, from a standing start, she broke into a long gallop, gathering the momentum to punch through my defences.

I reached inside of me, for my magical reserves, for my fear and my anger. All that brought me to the dirty street of Baltimare and that I tried to drown in alcohol, I dredged up from the furthest recesses of my mind and channelled through my horn.

The shield blazed with green light, energized beyond what the spell was meant to take, and the semi-translucent wall shot towards her, no longer a shield, but more of a battering ram, meeting her half-way. No pony flesh could withstand the combined power of her run and the energy I gathered.

She didn't break her run. Instead, her forehooves took alight with fire - not the red-hot fire I could summon with my magics, but sorcerous green flame, thick and vicious. She jumped towards my attack, her body streamlining into a perfect straight line, and smashed clean through, dashing my shield into million splintering bits.

Reeling from the feedback of the violently shattered spell, and the sudden - impossible - magic that broke my shield like it was made of glass, I shot blindly, my fear erupting from the tip of my horn as a wave of flames.

The earth pony slid along the gravel underneath the stream of fire I released in a classic basebuck slide, haunches first, and my front-right ankle exploded with pain, my leg giving underneath me sending me face-first into the road. She twisted about, coiling around like a snake, and before I could even think of a spell to cast, she was standing above me, her hoof on my neck pressing my face into the dirt, pinning me down with more weight than her thin frame had any right to conceal.

Her tone was sneering, almost bored when she asked: “What will it be, little princess — pain or death?”

I tried to turn around and get out of her grip, to cast another spell, but that was the wrong answer. Her other hoof hit me in the ribs, knocking all the wind out of me and breaking my concentration.

It lingered on my side, tracing along my ribs “Pain or death?” she asked again, “Do I light up my right hoof and boil your little unicorn brain, or will I use my left and just leave a little… hickey?” she mused, almost to herself, as I snarled and struggled without any effect but her amusement and another bruise from her hoof.

“Or maybe… maybe I just take your little prize and leave you here, huh?” Her foreleg slipped into my saddlebag, searching for the feather I brought, and a cold wave of fear washed over me like a tsunami. Not even a threat of death scared me as much as the prospect of losing it.

This was perhaps the first time I truly understood how reckless and small and stupid I was. For no reason, save for my pride, have I believed that I could handle anything that anyone could throw at me and that's why I ended up under the hoof of an unfamiliar pony in a dark and damp alley, losing a treasure and aiding an enemy of Equestria.

I redoubled my struggles, even as I felt another shake coming on, spurred by despair, pain, and anger.

“No.” Ahuizotl stopped her suddenly. “She is my guest, after all. She drank my wine and ate my bread, and let no one say that Ahuizotl is not a gracious host. You came with a bargain, little pony, and that bargain I will take.”

Just like that pressure that held me down was gone. I froze, surprised and not quite believing my sheer dumb luck.

“And take her,” the mare tossed the comment over her shoulder, before picking me up with her teeth like a puppy, by the scruff of my neck. “Filly got skills, and she got spunk. We ain’t finding anything better this side of Griffonstone anyways.”

"So be it." Ahuizotl nodded, reaching into his cloak. Something shone in his paw with a dull yellow shine. "Will you take my coin, little pony? From this moment until my prize is reached."

I shook, from relief or from the almost-flashback, I could not tell, but still, I managed to nod.

“Woah there, pumpkin,” before he had a chance to pass me the coin, Green had inserted herself between me and Ahuizotl, ignoring her boss’ annoyed look and flopped a stack of papers in front of me. The wounds that already stopped bleeding that hardly seemed to bother her when she moved.

“Now, I don’t help newbies all too often, but you have some potential. So — I’m giving you a hint, free of charge. And the first rule of being a henchmare is getting a good, union-approved contract, like this one here.”

She flipped through the pages, semi-hugging me possessively as she traced out the points of the contract: “See? The no cloning clause, no mind-control clause, the 401k, the dental…”

I furrowed my brows as I read it. This was definitely a better deal than the Royal Guard at Canterlot were getting… though the necessity of the “no mind-control” clause did trouble me somewhat.

Filling the necessary details, I signed it and passed the other copy to Ahuizotl, who put his paw-print on the thing with the sour expression, before flipping his coin towards me. It was old, dimmed by its age, and much bigger than the usual equestrian bit. Somehow it felt heavy in my hoof, heavier than even the pure gold should have.

“We leave at dawn. Do not be late, little pony mine.”

As on the Edge of the Abyss

"Not bad, little princess," Green noted, as I dodged the snapping jaws and aimed my horn at the creature to return the favour. "Chin up, and keep your back straight. Eyes on the prize, not on the dirt."

I hated her sooo much. Even as I came up from my roll (chin up, back straight, eyes on the prize — I was learning), and the Scourge of Shahab finally wrapped around the ugly creature trying to swallow me whole, I could not help but feel annoyed at Green's backseat fighting.

The length of my whip interleaved with the coils of the vinaconda, keeping the creature’s giant maw at leg’s length from me. It writhed and slithered, trying to reach me with it’s crooked wooden fangs or long tail, even as the whip cut into its body, revealing the homogenous leafy core.

Before it had the chance, I pushed more magic into the whip, cutting the thing into half a dozen slices. Viscous tree sap, sweet and salty splashed in every direction, drenching my mane and coat, and stinging at my eyes.

I wiped the sticky viscera, gave Green, who somehow evaded every single drop of it, a glare.

“Don’t drink too much,” she advised, undaunted by my stare, before turning away, already having lost her interest in me.

"Wow! That was so cool!" Wild Stab greeted me at the campfire, passing me a towel. "Whoosh! Grr! Bam!" he swung his favourite spear in every direction in his excitement. I ducked under his wild stab and carefully turned him away from the other minions, before somebody lost an eye. The guy really had no clue how to wield this thing, no matter what he thought his cutie mark was telling him.

"I saved you some daisy fritters," Bear Claw offered shyly. A big and oafish pony, she was as shy as she was huge, her dough-like soft body betraying the physique of someone who has never fought anything more dangerous than a doughnut.

"Thanks." I grabbed the hot food, burning my hooves and tongue on the delicious sugary goodness, and shooed Piano String away from my spot. The quiet little colt slunk away wordlessly, as he always did, and finally, joining the circle of other minions I could relax, taking my place at the campfire.

"Oh, I wish I was could do that!" Lemon Slice chipped in, "To serve the Master the way you do!"

Somebody passed me a cup of hot cocoa, and let the chattering of the minions fade into the background, enjoying the warm evening and the warmer fire. I have gotten used to this routine for these past two weeks, journeying with Ahuizotl’s dozen-strong coterie through the Southern Jungle as one of his henchmares.

True, as the Elder said, the journey was arduous, though not overmuch so. The Elder was an excellent guide, leading us easily through the jungle. Attacks such as today’s one were pretty rare - the monsters that the Southern Jungle is rife with chose to avoid our small coterie, the nip-cats and the vinacondas giving us wide berth at the merest whiff of the Elder's presence. Even when a more foolhardy or hungry beast did try to cross our path, Green Glow would usually make a short work of them without even breaking a sweat. Unless, like this evening, she would make me handle one, deriving some sort of strange pleasure in watching me fend the creatures off and commenting on my many shortcomings in doing it.

I threw a look at her, as she lay in the shadow of Ahuitzotl’s tent. She was a breed apart, never mingling with us, mere minions, never joining us when we would gather around the campfire, and they’d tell me — almost insistently — their little life’s stories or when quiet little Piano String would start one of his songs.

When on the march, she’d be stuck right behind Ahuizotl and a step to the right, like a shadow, and when we’d set up camp she would always read one magazine or the other and almost obsessively file her hooves to perfection, seemingly disinterested in anything that was going on.

But I knew — I have witnessed — how beneath that indifferent veneer, a sorcerous green flame of purest battle-lust would ignite at a moment's notice, and I couldn't help but to watch that strange mare that vexed me so.

She raised her head and looked back at me, smirking. I blushed and quickly turned away.

She always did it — watched me. Studied me. Singled me out. She'd appear, silent and unexpected, always with a snide remark or biting mockery, but within it, practical advice betraying a wealth of experience. Whether it was about pitching a tent, telling the poisonous berries from edible ones or fighting monsters, she’d throw out a comment and then she'd turn back to her reading and hoof-polish, seemingly not caring whether I'd listen or not. I learned quickly to heed to her advice, even when it annoyed me to no end.

“Tlatoani!”

The talk around campfire stopped dead, as each of the henchponies looked at Ahuizotl, as he crawled out of his tent.

“Tlatoani!”

His title like water spilt on the flames, doused all conversation, all laughter, all motion, everypony watching him come closer, Green Glow at his side.

“He comes!”
“He’ll speak!”
“He’s here!”

They bowed, prostrating themselves on the ground, murmuring their droning supplications to their master. I shivered a little when I saw their eyes growing vacant - it got to me every time to see how the Elder's presence changed them.

Piano tugged at my mane, from his prostration, urging me to bow. He always did. I never followed - just nodding politely, barely a bow. Occasionally the Elder even nodded back, amused by my little insubordination.

He raised his forepaw, cutting the ponies off, and everything grew silent, little minions facing the ground, their muzzles touching the dust at Ahuizotl’s paws.

“Pay attention, little ponies mine!” he proclaimed. “The first destination is almost upon us. Tomorrow we come to the once place of my powers….

Tomorrow!

I’ve lost the count of days on our march, so the news took me by surprise. Tomorrow we’d already come to the first place, the first of the objects needed for Ahuizotl’s — and my — plan. Tomorrow the true adventure would start….

“...there will be traps. There will be sentries. But you, little ponies mine, shall clear them for me. You shall pave my path—”

“Me!”
“Choose me!”
“I will go!”

They stretched their hooves towards the Elder, begging, eager to be the fodder to the traps and sentries, happy to become the steps for the Elder’s return to power. Even Piano String raised his hoof in the air, like a teacher’s pet volunteering to answer the question, almost wrenching his leg from the shoulder joint in the effort.

“I’ll go first.” Green cut off any discussion. “And the little princess will come with me.” Her hoof poked in my direction.

“Uhm, me?” I did not expect getting singled out of the ranks of our little unit. “Why me?”

“Because I said so.”

… ask a stupid question... I threw a questioning glance at the Elder.

"You two shall go forth, ponies mine," Ahuizotl confirmed, all pomp and pathos, his short cape swishing dramatically when he pointed into the darkness, towards the goal of our march. "Tomorrow, in my name you shall clear the traps, take the knife, and from the heart of my pyramid I shall open us a path!"

The ponies stomped on the ground in excitement, applauding the speech and the coming inevitable success.

“Rest!” The Elder commanded benevolently. “Eat, drink and sleep. Tomorrow, the first day of a new era begins.” He waved his paw to release us and retreated to his tent, Green leaving with him, and we went back to the fire, ponies only fully rising when Ahuizotl was out of sight.

I watched them as their chatter started slowly anew, their boasting of serving their lord and of the rewards to come growing louder and ever more over the top.

They were a strange bunch, the ponies that came with Ahuizotl. The Elder's aura of power called to them with the same pull you feel when you look into the abyss, and something in you almost wants to let go and take that last, final step. Their silent, unquestioning devotion to him went far beyond rational and into honestly unnerving.

That I saw coming and prepared for. That was the hardship I expected of this journey, and that is why I was surprised at its levity — when I planned my little outing, I was sure I would have to fight my disgust at every step and to trample my pride, my loyalty, and my civilized sensibilities to pretend to be one of the bad guys. But the Elder’s coterie was something completely unexpected — They were, in many more ways than I was comfortable admitting, ponies that were almost like me.

Losers and outcasts, those who lost their way or had never found it to begin with — they all left their lives and took Ahuizotl's coin, drawn to him like moths to the flame. But they were also the searchers, the questers, touched by something outside the normal idyll of Equestria, that gave us a kind of connection that I've never had with anypony in Canterlot, a sense of quiet camaraderie.

That, I think, is what gave me contentment in my travels, what made me, against every expectation, truly feel good on this journey: The kinship around the campfires, that made a simple fire-cooked food and grazed grass taste better than lavish meals of the Castle, and my sleep on the hard earth more mirthful than on the silken sheets of my bedrooms. That, and the goal, which moved closer, with every step we took.

When the night came, and I lay among the heap of the bodies in our tent, I imagined the future for once, instead of thinking of the past.

Tomorrow...

Tomorrow I would go and get the knife from under the hill, tomorrow I would be one step closer to coming home. There’d be a celebration for me when I return, perhaps even a real, Old-style, pegasi triumph in Upper Baltimare, or maybe in Cloudsdale, a victor’s mantle of purple on my shoulders, ponies cheering and even maybe bowing, and most importantly, me giving the treasured prize, the gift beyond any gifts, to my teacher… and then I was asleep and when the nightmares came again, they almost didn’t bother me.

***

We reached our destination after the half day’s march, when the Sun, high in the sky, was beating mercilessly on our backs through the gaps in the jungle’s canopy. The trees and bush of the jungle turned sparse, and then apart entirely revealing a small clearing. A building within was a pyramid or a ziggurat, so ancient it looked more like a hill, taken over by vines and soil so much that you could barely see the original masonry. That would be our first destination. The old knife, the first of the objects needed for Ahuizotl's plan — and mine — was there.
.
I followed Green up the overgrown stairs, my hooves slipping on the wet grass and thick roots that had taken over the stairwell, and to the mouth of the cave. Intricate carvings and patterns of obsidian and lapis lazuli covered the granite blocks that used to be an archway of the pyramid's entrance, though there was no way to discern what they depicted all those centuries ago.

The sound of our hooves echoed along the dark, empty corridor, bouncing off the cracked walls and damp ceiling. The place seemed empty and abandoned and harmless, even if somewhat haunting. Nothing moved in the pyramid, save for the dust, and the bats and the spiders have long since made their home of its walls.

“So there are traps, right?” I stepped into the corridor, listening to the echo of my voice ring and bounce around the hall. The sound chased away, for an instant, the heavy silence of the stone halls, before it once again claimed back its reign.

Green did not try to stop me. Instead, she stomped her rear hoof on some invisible little knob in the floor, and before I could even blink, there was an arrow not an inch from my eye - grasped firmly in the crook of her front leg.

“First rule:” she broke the shaft of the arrow on the floor, “situational awareness at all times is your only defense. If you’re not aware - you are worse than useless.”

I shuddered. If she had not caught the arrow, the adventure would have ended for me way too early. Worse yet, I now looked like an incompetent foal, for the boasting I did in the city. I had to do better.

As usual, she did not wait for my reaction and trotted on. Together we walked along the narrow tunnel following the strange twists and turns of the single path through the ancient building. The holes in the crumbling walls provided us the light in long, narrow bands of sunshine, with the motes of ancient dust dancing in the air that followed darker shadows like black and white stripes on a zebra’s coat.

The traps were easy to avoid — if not to see — at first. I followed Green, trying to copy her path. She didn’t care to give me any hints or any warning, but I could see her exaggerate her movement a little - a hoof raised a few inches higher than she had to move over the tripwire, an intentionally wide step over the pressure plate I might have missed, a head bowed lower than it should beneath the hidden blade.

There was an easy rhythm to it — a light stripe, a black stripe, step sideways around a spiked pit, duck under the trigger for a blade that would take your head off if you missed it, occasional twists and turn of the singular path through the pyramid, marking the traps for those who followed us. It was easy to get lulled by the false sense of security. Nothing would happen to me as long as I repeated Green’s movements, and kept my eyes peeled open. Situational awareness was the key.

Suddenly, Green stopped. Instead of the next stripe of trap-covered stone, there was a hole in the ground. Too neat to be a result of time or neglect — it was more like a wide pit, cutting straight across the corridor. She looked back as if to check that I was still in one piece. The fact that I was, apparently merited a snort of approval or perhaps satisfaction.

I puffed my chest a little, feeling somewhat redeemed for the earlier fiasco and eyed the pit carefully, measuring the distance. It was just a tiny bit wider than a comfortable jumping length for me. Well, maybe, quite a bit more than that.

It was not a pit — more like a moat. I could even see some water still inside far below complete with silvery scales and sharp teeth of the piranhas swimming far below, and I wondered briefly what have those fishes been eating these aeons.

“How are we—”

She jumped over it in a single stride, without a running start, her strength carrying her easily over the obstacle.

I wished desperately at that moment that I had earth pony magic. Or pegasus wings. Or at least didn't cut the gym class in school quite so much.

But then again, I didn't just spend the gym time frolicking about. I spent it mastering my magic (and swindling classmates for some bits, but that wasn’t quite as pertinent to the situation).

I stretched my legs, feeling silly and self-conscious dragging out the time under Green's sarcastic gaze. Finally with a marely scream of bravery that turned out way too high pitched, I broke into a gallop, gathering momentum, and at the last point, before the stone under my hooves would run out, I released in a single pulse, down my horn, along my bones and into a pulse off my hooves, almost like an earth pony would, launching me into the air.

"Boom!" I shouted, out, giddy with the rush of the jump, almost falling over on another side, my knees screaming furies at me for the rough landing.

That did not earn me another approving snort, however. She just looked at me with her favorite expression of lazy amusement and punched some nigh-invisible switch on the side of the wall. A hidden stone mechanisms groaned and cracked, and slowly, a bridge extended, crossing the moat with a wide, though not entirely OSHA-compliant stone bridge.

"Oh don't pout, little princess," she laughed at what must've been a hilarious expression on my muzzle. "If you couldn't make the jump, you were better off on the other side."

A heap of metallic junk, piled across the passageway behind her, glowed with azure light, pulling together and connecting. Metal joined to metal, joint connected to joint, until two full suits of ancient pegasus armour, complete with spears stood by each wall, facing Green with the empty visors of their helmets.

Before she could take another step, they moved, sharp and precise, shaking the cobwebs and the dust off their ancient black bronze. Their hooves straightened to their sides, crossing the spears to bar our way.

"We are the last of the Southern Guard." Their voices were like the call of the bugle, loud and resonant, befit the metallic constructs they were. "By the decree of the Night, the entry is forbidden."

“Cute.” Green turned to face them fully, unfazed by the sudden display of magic. Suddenly, she slipped underneath their spears with a single liquid motion, faster than the eye could track her, turning up between them. Her shoulder threw one suit of armor into the wall, her hind-hooves bucked the other one, crumpling the metal like rice paper, both constructs dispatched within the span of one breath.

The helmet of the destroyed suit rolled on the floor, metal rattling loudly against the stone, before she stomped on it, flattening it against the ground.

As if in response, the same metallic voices rose from every room and corridor ahead.

"We are the last of the Southern Guard." Metal clicks rolled down the hall, more and more suits of armour shining with the soft blue magics and coming to life, grabbing rusted swords in the visors of their plumeless helmets and spears in the crooks of their bronze leggings. "By the decree of the Night, entry is forbidden."

They marched at us along the hall, dozen-strong and their short spears took to the air, filling the corridor with sharp metal.

Green grinned, and howled a savage challenge, jumping forward in a low, сreeping jump under the pila and rammed into the nearest bunch of suits with a joyous crash that made my teeth rattle.

"Keep up, princess," she shouted, as she trampled one of the guardians down.

I grinned, and took my time, guiding my horn through the motions, leaving behind the thin green lines of calligraphy shimmering in the air, and whispered the secret name of the Southern Wind.

A wind blast, aided by the tiny measure of strength greater than my own rolled across the hall, throwing aside their projectiles. It bent round Green, almost ruffling her mane and grabbed the sentries on her sides in a whirlwind, slamming them against the back wall in a mess of twisted limbs and weapons. Their spellwork sparkled with the last burst of short-circuiting magic, and they fell apart.

"And the unicorn," I declared, "picks up the spare!"

Her last opponents dispatched, Green leapt forward. There, at the base of the tunnel, the shallow descent turned sharply into a narrow ladder.

She landed hard and heavy, immediately dislodging the first armored sentry. Her deft kick crumpled the armored collar of the second, and the flick of her tail tangled the legs of the third, dropping the armor down the stairs with clang and sparkles of magic. A moment's duel dispatched the fourth.

Magic at the ready, I watched and advanced behind her.

Every movement she made was quick and efficient, every limb and part of her body a lethal weapon. She trampled them with her front hooves, bashed them into walls with her lean shoulders, tripped them with her tail and blinded them with flicks of her mane she used as a fencer would use a cloak.

With a key-thought, I joined the fray, releasing a spell, short and sharp over her shoulder, zapping the next sentry, before his pilum would take into the air. It fell apart, and my spell punched a hole through the next one as well.

Together we ploughed through the opposition, sowing the ladder liberally with the metal scraps until we burst into the room above. Immediately I had to jump for cover before a flurry of darts would turn me into a close facsimile of a hedgehog.

I hid behind a giant statue of some beast or creature, catching my breath for a second, before I peeked out cautiously, ignoring the flying steel and scraps, and zinged the nearest armoured sentry with a basic magic blast, watching the backscatter of my magic off its azure aura.

The thing that animated it was old spellwork, ancient, barely coherent pre-structures, more grown like wild magic than constructed by a spellcaster. It was also more than that — the shambling, inefficient spells were held together by something even older and deeper than unicorn arts. Something reminiscent of the soldiers turned to puppets under the midsummer snow on the riverbank, where the air was so crisp with winter chill it burned my lungs...

"Through Blood and through Law all that beneath me shall serve..." I muttered, not entirely sure why.

Green threw me a strangest little look from across half the room.

“Focus, little princess!” she shouted, retreating finally under the coordinated attack of almost a dozen sentries. “You think too much. First rule is concentrate on what you’re doing right now. Sort out everything else later.”

Ugh. I hated when she was right. I got back into the swing of the battle, blasting the nearest suit into bits, but I still couldn’t help but ask. “I thought the first rule was awareness?”

“First rule:” she raised her voice over the crash of two suits of armour she bashed into each other, “The numbering of the rules depends on the context!” she dove off the pedestal into the closest armour suit elbow-first, scattering it into a fountain of scraps.

“That—” I melted another two with a spell, dodging the bolts with a roll across the floor, “seems horribly inconsistent!” I finished a roll between two giant statues, waiting out the next salvo.

“Life’s messy, princess!” she shouted, diving for her own cover. “Can’t fit it into a neat list.”

Her rear hooves pushed against the wall, as she set her shoulder into the giant statue that served as her cover. “Now push!”

I pushed my own statue with all the magic I had, and soon both giant stone sculptures fell with a thunderous rumble, squishing the remaining defenders of this hall.

“High-hooves!” I raised my own hoof towards Green Glow “Oh come on! Don’t leave me hanging!” I shouted towards her back, as she ignored me. “...I thought we really bonded there…” I muttered dejectedly, trotting after her.

"Yeah,” somepony said from behind, making me jump with surprise, “she doesn't do 'bonding.'”

It was a pegasus — a small, greyish-brown mare, who has somehow managed to sneak past Ahuizotl and his coterie and landed on the fallen statue behind me. She wore a many-pocketed shirt, an old, banged-up pith helmet, tilted to a side, on top of her unruly mop of salt-and-pepper mane, and a many-pouched utility belt. As I looked at her, magic at the ready, trying to decide whether she was a friend or a foe, she studied me in turn, turning her head to the side like a curious pigeon.

"You're new. Haven't seen you around before," she concluded. "Trust me, kid, get out while you can. Leave the ruin-delving to the professionals."

"She's with me," Green called out from the end of corridor calmly. “Everypony’s gotta start somewhere.”

She made a step back towards us, and the pegasus flared her wings in response, ready to take off. Corners of her lips inflected slightly with a shadow of a smug little grin, secure in her ability fly away at any second. Green stopped, acknowledging the fact.

A pas-de-deux of opponents way too familiar with each other; the necessary steps of a mutual greeting.

"Hey, Green. Fancy seeing you here. New job?"

"Hello." Green nodded politely and shifted forward slightly. A tiny little slide, as if she hadn't moved her hooves at all, just readjusted her weight for comfort. "Just a temp thing. You know how it is."

A dozen more such little slides, creeping to the pegasus just like a cat creeping up to a canary, and she'd be ready to pounce on the newcomer. I could see the pegasus' eyes flicker down to Green’s hooves, measuring the distance between the two of them. Whoever that little mare was, she was good.

"At least you're consistent. The blue boss and the redhead teen — robbing graves and cradles, eh?"

I could feel my ears tingle and my cheeks blush, and the magic I summoned turned into a spell. I had no need to creep up to the stupid featherhead with her stupid insinuations — I could blast her from where I was standing just fine.

The spell shot out from the tip of my horn, but she was already in the air, letting my flames lick uselessly at the rubble.

She pushed off my head, almost making me fall face-first on the ground, and with a single flap of her wings disappeared in the rafters above the hall.

"Too slow, kiddo. See ya at the finish line."

I rubbed my horn, sore from her push, and stared at the rafters where the pegasus had disappeared, trying to process what had just happened.

"Who was tha—"

"DARING DO!" Ahuizotl never let me finish my question when he burst through the door, his fangs bared and his minions brandishing their weapons in a brilliant display of perfect futility.

"A day late and two bits short, Zoti," Green snorted. "She's already gone. Nice entrance though."

“Wait.” It finally dawned on me who the strange little pegasus was. “That was Daring Do? The Daring Do? She’s real?!” I may have squealed a little in my excitement, trotting on the spot like a foal. Pegasi love the tales of Daring Do — the intrepid adventurer, treasure-hunter, and savior of colts in distress, each tale of her exploits more unlikely than the next. To see her not just in the flesh but in action - that was a fanfilly’s dream come true, and I was certainly a fan… once, at least.

“Of course she exists,” Ahuizotl scoffed, ignoring Green’s remark, while his minions put back their useless weapons. “There has always been one, for hundreds of years. A title passed from mother to daughter, mentor to student. ‘One chosen in every generation, to protect the buried treasures, to keep the sleeping monsters asleep, to fight against the rising dark,’” he quoted mockingly, his temper flaring with every word. “To be an incessant, annoying pest, a perpetual thorn in my side! Like a bad coin, no matter how many times you put her down, a new one will rise to foil me again and again. But not this time! You hear me? Not this time, Daring Do, I swear by the Deeps and the Blood, I will not be denied again!”

He stepped forward, raising his fist to threaten the long-gone pegasus, but as he did, a stone plate clicked, giving way underneath his paw, and the both of us could only watch with somewhat horrified fascination as a giant slab of stone swung like a pendulum, smashing into him with a dull, wet thud.

He flew off his paws, tumbling tail over teakettle — an expression oddly appropriate to the moment — all the way down the stairs, and into the moat we just crossed. A splash down below indicated that he fell into the water and several annoyed gurgling yips of pain — that the piranhas inside were pretty hungry.

Green poked me with her hoof “This is where you mock,” she said to me, grinning.

“Huh? Wouldn’t that be unprofessional?” I asked with the corner of my mouth, trying my hardest not to laugh at my employer, like a good little henchmare.

“No-no-no, this is totally professional. Good mockery is what separates professionals from groupies. Watch and learn.”

She trotted to the moat and leaned in, pulling up our boss, wet and miserable, piranhas still clamped onto his spiky fur.

“Good dive there, Wonderbolt,” she knocked the vicious fishies off him with her hooves. “Ten for effort, zero for style.”

I giggled, despite my best efforts. The sheer fuming misery of the wet dog-creature, while he stood there patiently waiting to get rid of the piranhas, was just too much.

He shook like a wet dog, splashing the both of us with the droplets of stale water, his bristling spikes becoming soft fur again. He glared at the both of us, almost causing the second burst of giggles out of me.

This one I chose to swallow, wiping the grin off my face.

"Go, ponies." He grumbled. "Daring Do must not take our prize."

Stifling last laughter of our shared joke, we got.

***

Three halls later huddled behind an upturned stone throne, I wasn't laughing anymore.

The pyramid seemed endless - deadly corridors interleaved with once opulent halls, all of them infected with the nigh-infinite numbers of identical bronze suits, incessantly repeating their mantra.

"We are the last of the Southern Guard..."

I peeked out of my cover, careful not to step on the spikes protruding from the floor and blasted it to bits.

"By decree of the Night, the entry is forbidden."

I leaned back and cozied closer to the statue of an onyx-black jackal statue with a flail in his mouth. I wasn't tired - not quite yet, but the prolonged fight was starting to get to me. Unlike Green, I had to pace myself. So while I readied another spell, I took a moment to restore my breath, listening to the clanging of armors that Green bashed apart further down the hall, and looked around the room.

It was a museum of sorts or a gallery: in alcoves and pedestals statues stood, dogs and wolves of every shape and size, some unrecognizable, others partly whole.

An onyx-black jackal statue, flail in his mouth watched us from underneath his upturned stone throne. A giant front-half-of-the wolf trampled the sun underneath its paws. Stony timberwolves, a pack of them, leashed to something long since lost to time, looked like a second's slack in their bronze collars would release them to rip the observer to shreds.

There were more guards here than any that we've seen so far, whole piles of bone-filled suits in heaps around the hall.

There was writing on the wall, too. I looked at the letters, half-erased by time, trying to decipher the writing

Thánatos oudèn diaphérei...

Letters of the old pegasi script resolved slowly into meaningful words.

"We are the last..."

"Duty beyond death"

"Nopony is coming."

"Release us!" An iron suit snuck up on me as I was too consumed by reading, reaching wildly towards my saddlebags. "Mark-bearer!"

I shrieked with surprise, rearing and battering at the armour with my hooves, before bashing it apart with a raw magic blast.

"Release us!" it repeated, as its azure aura faded. "We are the last..."

I didn't have time to listen, shutting out the strange words, as more suits were flowing out of yet another side door, raising their pila in the air. I weaved magic, faster than I ever managed to do in any classroom or test, and jumped out of cover and shot it at the furthest armour, and then I legged it across the hall, as my magic did its work.

The armour I hit shone with the green light of my magic. Its neighbour tried to throw a spear at me, but it veered off course, hitting the ensorceled armour instead. Then the armour itself slipped, and the whole group of them slid along the floor towards each other, as like called to like and metal pulled to metal.

Within an instant, loose weapons and metal debris lifted off the ground in a maelstrom centred at the target of my spell, and half-dozen armours stuck together in a giant ball of bent bronze and tangled limbs. Their magic sparked and shorted out.

I dodged under the statue of a she-wolf, grey with time and red with ochre and slid on the wet floor toward the cover of the broken fountain. A moment after I ducked, another pilum crashed into the stone, shattering one of the statue's eyes. Somehow, that felt appropriate

Ignoring the cold water, I pushed closer for the protection of the stone and looked at Ahuizotl.

Not the Elder himself - his statue, the biggest of all the statues in the room. It sat on his throne at the end of the room. It was mostly intact, though only half the statue was still covered with the lazuli that once made it blue, the other -- dirty-beige with time and dust. He looked down at me from good twenty steps above, the discoloration making him look grim and fierce-looking.

I choked, my jaw slackening with surprise and unfairness of the sight — Daring Do was sitting on Ahuizotl's shoulder, like on her favorite perch, without a care in the world. The featherbrain took the easy way out, simply flying over the battle just as we trudged through, risking our hides with every step. She didn't even so much as glance our way, working instead on opening some unseen latch or ventilation shaft behind the statue, just as Green was finishing up the last suits.

Well, there'd be no more shortcuts for her. I aimed my horn at the hero and put a spell together. Just a little something to ruffle that arrogant pegasus's feathers, and get her down and dirty with us, flightless equines.

"Robbing cradles! Hah!” I may have been only sixteen years old, but I was old enough to teach this old bird a lesson. I stepped forward to get the angle just right and…

Something clicked beneath my hooves.

Oh Ice and Night—-

A hidden spring under the floor shot out, propelling me into the air. The world tumbled and turned, my stomach tried to escape through my mouth, and I barely had the time to curl into a ball when the maw of Ahuizotl's statue swallowed me whole.

I smacked against the roof of its mouth, the crash beating the breath out of me, making me choke and cough, and then I fell and rolled down, bumping against every uneven stone and twist and turn of the statue's hollow interior, until there was no more "down" to fall.

It was dark and cold and smelled faintly of wet stone and mildew. I summoned light at the tip of my horn and looked around the tiny room, while I stretched my bruised limbs and cleaned off the spider webs clinging to my coat.

The tunnel through which I came — or rather, fell — was closed. Even if I could’ve reached the trapdoor from Ahuizotl statue’s throat and make the climb up, the passage shut behind me, capped by a lid that refused to budge when I prodded it with magic.

What would Daring Do do, when stuck in a trap like this?

Daring Do would not be working for the bad guys, a traitorous voice whispered in the back of my head. Trying to get at Daring Do is why you're in this mess in the first place.

I growled at myself and tried to concentrate. Every trap, unless immediately lethal, must have an exit - no point of making it so, unless there was a way out.

There was a soft slithering, and something tickled my hoof. I jerked it away reflexively and looked down. Soft, smooth sand was pouring from the hole that opened in the wall. Instinctively, I plugged it with my magic. More holes opened, above and to the sides, more than I could close at the same time. Soon the whole room would drown in it, suffocating me. I retreated my magic and tried to think faster, ignoring the new problem.

Encroaching doom was just a deadline. I could do deadlines. Never mind the horrible suffocating death, disappointing Celestia with missed coursework was a way stronger motivator.

I concentrated on looking for the exit, pouring more power into the light-spell, and with a bit of luck, and a lot of grasping around, I found it - a tiny slit in the masonry, too narrow to even stick a blade through, but still outlining unmistakably a door. And for a locked door, there must be a key.

Knowing that it was easy to find the little knobs with Coltec pictograms at even intervals around the top of the room, the paint on them bleached with age but still unmistakable. It was a combination lock, and the writings were a hint. That made it easy — Daring Do would be out of a trap like this in ten seconds flat.

Tentatively, I pushed one, then another. Something clicked deep in the wall and both of them pushed back, returning to their original position.

You're no Daring Do.

I shook my head and pressed my ear against the wall, listening to the soft clicks of the mechanism as I pushed the tumblers slowly, one by one, wishing that I had spent less time on History of Moral Philosophy and more sneaking out and learning cool escapology tricks from the older Lulamoon.

You're no hero.

I missed a trigger, and the half-assembled combination fell apart, all the pushed knobs returning to their positions. I gritted my teeth and stretched my magic — pushing the sand away and trying to operate the stubborn triggers, rusty with age, while combating my own unwarranted panic and doubts.

You will die here!

I tried again, quicker now, as the sand crept up to my cutie mark and my horn scraped against the ceiling of the trap. Panic and haste were poor help for a task that required patience, and with the hated click, the lock reset again. I bit my lip and started again.

You're the bad guy's henchpony, and that's what always happens to bad guy’s minions in the stories.

The lock reset again, and the sand was now almost to my chest and I screamed, drowning out the stupid voice in my head. My magic lashed out, completely out of control, bashing against the wall like a trapped bird. I crashed around the statue blindly, my half-formed spells fueled by fear and fury melting stone and crushing bricks, once, and twice, and the third time, ignoring the scraps and scattering stone that hit my body and my face. Something in the ancient masonry finally gave and I nearly fell out of the trap, right in front of Green, but it was too late; the fear was already rising like a black wave, drowning out sense and reason, making my muscles tense and cramp.

No. No, no, no, not now, please! I fought against the nascent shake and begged every fate and power that it wouldn’t be now, not in front of Green. What would she think about me? She’d think me weak, worthless. I couldn’t—

I turned away, hoping that water in the pool would help me keep ahold of myself. That was a mistake — blood and the water, the merest thought of it and the flashback hit me like a brick to the head. I reeled, dropping to my haunches, drowning in the sudden wave of the stark, raving fear that seized my heart in a vice-like cold grip.

Red and white circling each other, never mixing, on a ground that was so overflowing with slaughter, it would not drink any more.

I felt a hoof on my barrel, a tiny feeling of warmth and steadiness radiating from it.

It was Green Glow, by my side, looking at me with a concerned look, almost as if she actually cared. I gritted my teeth and strained trying to get my shaking under control.

I strained, trying to keep the overcharged spell under control, but the ice was already creeping up on it, making the chains of my magic brittle and frail. Freed, he descended on us like lightning, like madness with steel and with magic.

"Breathe, little princess." Her hoof found my chest, guiding my breathing with light pushes. "Slow, deep breaths. In and out.”

His emerald eyes pierced me even from across the battlefield with their sheer intensity, His frame full of heavy, world-rending power. Reality rippled...

Coarse and sharp, her voice helped, guiding me out of the shake. Hyperventilation turned into normal breathing, as I now returned to the present, and the ringing terror retreated back to the recesses of my mind.

I took a deep breath, letting the taste of stale air and dust take me away from the memory of the crisp winter chill on the riverbank.

In and out.

Green was already leaving when I finally stood up.

“Breath is the least appreciated of all the things in the world. None sing hymns to it, praising the good air, breathed by Princess and beggar, master and dog alike, but none can do without it. Learn to breathe, pumpkin.”

Hesitating to follow her just yet, I thought back to one of the first shakes I got. Not a flashback — just a memory of when I just came back to Canterlot:

It happened at the Wonderbolts performance. I got to sit with Celestia, in her little private booth — one of the little gifts she tried to distract me from my past adventure with, before... before she didn't.

Something in the crowd has caught my eye, and suddenly the blue sky and the snow became huge and menacing, panic rose like a wave, and I was shaking and screaming. Celestia held me... but not quite like this. I remembered it as clear as day — her wing covering me like a huge down blanket, to hold me against her side... but not quite touching my skin, a barest hair's breath between her and me, as if I would stain that immaculate whiteness of her wings.

As if I was something dirty.Something disgusting.

She never understood what was going on with me, she never said anything but empty words to me when I thought my sanity was slipping and nightmares clawed my mind, ripping it apart. She could never fix me and make it like it was before.

This was different. Green didn't see me as sick or broken. Somehow the indifferent, dismissive advice made me feel better than anything Celestia tried to tell me.

When I caught up with her, she gave me one last once-over and smacked me lightly on the back. "Come on. Plenty of target practice in the next hall."

So there were — another bunch of metal armors trying to bar our way. Traps too — cleverer ones, better concealed and more deadly. But with Daring Do out of sight, I could finally concentrate on the task at hoof, finding my rhythm and my place along Green Glow's side.

With every magical blast and every tripwire severed and trigger mechanism broken, I felt my confidence returning, until finally there were none. No more traps and moats and guards to bar our way, no more twisting corridors and statues. only the one last archway with a broken door, and behind it a hall, dead centre of the pyramid.

This was it — the final chamber, the sanctum sanctorum of the complex. It was wide and high, dozens of pillars stretching towards the ceiling and the golden light of the roughly punctured roof made their shadows deep and stark. The walls once adorned with patterns and frescoes, now bore nothing more than the signs of a titanic struggle, scorch marks and craters, scrapes, and scratches, and stains of blood long since turned to dust.

A battle had been fought here, a long, long time ago. A desperate last stand of defenders fighting with the frenzy of cornered rats.

The centre of the chamber was occupied by a shallow pool of water, unnaturally still and dark. Nothing grew in it; nothing moved its waters, not even the tiniest of shimmers arose from the draft when we opened the crumbling stone doors of the hall.

From the middle of the pool, rising seamlessly from the water, there was a small altar of caesious steel. I could feel that once it was the heart of the whole pyramid, the keystone, and nexus of the power that it contained. Now it was dead, its magic extinguished by the knife stabbed straight into its centre, piercing deep into the steel.

Ahuizotl appeared behind us, finally catching up. Soon as his gaze touched the altar and the knife, his whole body swayed forward, Elder drew to the altar almost against his will. Blind to anything but his prize, he pushed the minions aside without any care, almost stepping on anypony not quick enough to get from underneath him in time. His paws reached for the knife, getting cut by the blade. Finally, with a grunt of effort turning to a cry of pain, he pried the knife from the steel, holding it stubbornly in his forepaw, despite the pain and the blood dripping bright and red against the obsidian-black metal of the Nightblade.

"The knife that stabbed my heart will now be the instrument to restore it!" he declared, a smug self-aggrandizement addressed to no one in particular. "You're too late, Daring Do!"

He threw the knife to Green, dropping back to all fours.

"Fashionably late!" Daring Do announced, appearing out of nowhere above our little crowd and snatching the knife out of the air before any one of us had a chance to move. She landed with a perfect roll, and flicked her head, stashing the knife in her harness "Why? Did you miss me?"

The henchmares, myself included, froze while Ahuizotl growled at the hero appearing at the exact wrong moment and literally snatching the victory from us. They stared at each other, for a single tense instant.

Ahuizotl barked some command or the other, and just like that the spell of Daring Do’s sudden appearance was broken, and everything exploded into the chaos of combat.

***

In my mind, I have before compared Green Glow to a leopard, to a cobra, to a pale-green thunderbolt. Yet, still she was just an earth pony, and when they brag amongst themselves, the cats and the snakes and the sheets of lightning use one ultimate comparison, albeit sparingly: “Fast as a pegasus.”

And even for a pegasus, Daring Do was fast.

With a jump and a flap of her wings, she landed in the middle of our formation, and her quick kicks threw minions aside with ease, Ahuizotl’s cats yowling with pain and fear as she easily dodged and overpowered them. Her form was excellent: calm, precise and efficient, always keeping just a fraction of an inch outside the reach of her opponents, never moving more than she had to. Compared to her, everypony else might as well have been standing still.

Still, in retrospect, I should have recognized the signs, the little tells of something being wrong: The way she favored her right wing over the left one. The light wheeze when she spat out another jaunty mockery or joke. The way she clenched her teeth when her hind-hooves connected, as if in pain. But I was young, and inexperienced, despite all that I thought at the time; and the only thing I noticed was her back unattended turned right to me. Just right for a spell that was almost ready to escape my horn. I moved, and my magic surged with a raw battle instinct…

A spell crashed into him like a battering ram, and an arrow found his neck. Red and white mixed as he fell in the snow…

A flashback split my head apart with the throbbing pain and my heart skipped a beat, ripping me out of the adrenaline rush of the combat and stopping me in my tracks, as my mind raced, realizing what I had almost done.

I couldn’t just attack her. She was the Daring Do, she was one of the good guys, like me. I turned just a fraction of an inch to the left, fire missing the pegasus by no more than a feather’s length.

She did not hesitate like I did, especially since she did not know that I was secretly on the same side as her. She slid underneath my spell an instant after it had already whizzed by, and then she was under me, shooting up like a spring, and throwing me into the wall with her back and all four of her legs. Pain burst from the back of my skull where it connected to the stone wall, setting sparkling fireworks in front of my eyes. Before I could get back, she flicked her wing and a projectile she threw exploded, sticking me to the wall with disgusting bluish goo that covered me from my hooves to the tip of my horn.

Instinctively, I pushed against the sticky goop, adding magic to my efforts, and a sharp, burning pain pierced my horn, stripping away the energy and concentration. Keratin flecks in the thaumaconductive gel shorting up the magical currents, like iron filings on a naked wire, burning me whenever I tried to cast a spell. Smart. And annoying. Still, it would not hold me long.

No more minions or cats remained standing, all of them dispatched by the hero in a span of seconds. Ahuizotl made no motion to try to catch her — she was too fast for him by far, so all that remained for him was to try to bore a hole in her skull with his gaze. He was not very successful, though not for lack of effort.

And then there was Green Glow.

She waited until the minions and the cats were dispatched, watching the combat with an indifferent expression, studying how the hero moved. Only when the last of the minions hit the dust did she engage Daring Do.

I called upon my magic again — a gentle trickle now, separating the goo from my horn, one piece of keratin after another, watching the mercenary take her stab at the hero while I worked.

They circled around each other in a half crouch, making tentative passes with their hooves and wings — feints and blocks, meant to test, not hurt.

Suddenly they touched — and the grey mare was down on the ground and Glow was flying through the air over her head, but she didn’t land with the same dull, breath-paralyzing thud that I had; she landed rolling and was back on her hooves as fast as Do was and facing her.

“You’re getting old. That almost didn’t hurt,” she jeered. They engaged again, and I thought that she was going to get thrown again. She didn’t — instead, she twisted straight in, there was a chaos of wings and hooves, and when the motion slowed down, and they separated again it was Daring Do who was keeping her wing tight to her body, covering several gashes and an ugly burn.

“Youare getting old!” There was no mock this time, just genuine surprise. “Old — and weak.”

The mare growled, “Not all of us enjoy earth pony years. But I’m plenty young to kick your flank!”

Despite her words, she was not in a hurry to re-engage, choosing once again to circle her opponent and look for a weakness or an angle.

Ripping off the last of the goo, I leapt off the wall, readying my spells. My horn still burned where the energy I was channelling touched the gel, but it no longer screwed up my magic, and I was now ready to join the fray... if only I could decide on which side.

Daring Do was unaware of my doubts. For her it was now two against one — more if you count Ahuizotl’s kitties rising from the floor with pained meowing — and she could barely handle Green Glow by herself. She retreated, trying to keep us both in her sight, not letting us surround her.

"I’ve got you now, Daring Do!" Ahuizotl was more than ready to start gloating. “Give me the knife, and I may yet let you leave.”

"Not quite yet, Ahuizotl."

Suddenly the pegasus stopped her retreat and flipped her head, catching her weird helmet-hat in her teeth, before throwing it at Green like a discus. The pith helmet with sharpened edges zipped past the dodging mercenary, bounced off my hastily raised shield and, snipping the tuft off Ahuizotl’s ear, struck a lever on the wall.

The temple rumbled and shook. And when an old temple rumbles and shakes, you just know it cannot be anything good. Cracks spread from the lever, and the stone began to crumble, raining dust on our heads.

“Sorry, ladies,” Daring Do jumped between the both of us, dodging Green’s lunge, and pushed herself off a wall, grabbing her hat in the process, and hovered in the air, ”but I gotta fly. Oh, and since that was the self-destruct lever, I do suggest you do the same.”

“DARING DO!” Ahuizotl bellowed, ripping out the altar from the pool — a solid chunk of steel the size of an adult — and chucking it towards his enemy. He hit nothing but her contrail—the pegasus evaded it with an effortless barrel roll. Instead, the spinning chunk of steel plowed clean through several columns, leaving a fountain of dust and crumbling stone zipping through the hall.

That did not help. At all. Now the temple was not just shaking — it was falling apart.

Cats and ponies ran towards the exits, a stampede of animal instincts, fear and cowardice spurring them into frenzied feats of speed that would be the envy of any Wonderbolt.

I did not move. For me everything froze for an instant, my perception hastened a hundredfold by the surge of adrenaline. I could see everything crystal-sharp, transfixed by the spreading pattern of the cracks in the ancient masonry, the first rocks falling from the roof as slow as glaciers. Weaving between them was Daring Do’s grey contrail as she escaped the destruction she had wrought, and the black glint of the Nightblade on her harness.

As if in a dream, my magic stretched towards her, and almost without my conscious decision I gripped and pulled on the knife, snatching it off not a second before the pegasus disappeared through the skylight. A pale green body crashed into me like a comet, throwing me aside. I could only stare dumbly at a giant rock that fell onto the floor where I stood barely an instant ago, shattering with a thunderous boom.

I blinked, and focused my eyes back on the green mercenary, showing her the black-bladed knife still gripped tightly in my magic.

She grinned back, “Nice work, princess!“ Even the fake title did not cover the genuine delight in her voice. “BUT WE GOTTA GO, NOW!” she shouted over the crash of another boulder, nearly throwing me towards the entrance to the hall.

We ran, the temple disintegrating around us, but before we could reach the salvation of the exit, it was already too late — one of the broken pillars fell across the door, blocking the exit.

I stared at it blankly. It was too big, and though perhaps I could break it apart or roll it away, even as I reached for my magic, another slab of the roof fell across the door, sealing our only way out with finality of a gravestone. There was no way to dismantle it before the hall would collapse.

We were as good as dead now, and the pyramid would be our tomb.

And in a Raging Ocean's Fury

The pyramid was collapsing around us, and with every second chances of being crushed only grew. Frantically, I scanned the giant room, hoping against all hope that there was another door or a latch I have missed.

Green tensed to my right, like a loaded spring. Irrationally — impossibly — my racing mind wandered to marvel at her. Her breathing level and unlabored. Her eyes calm, with not a trace of panic, her body still, with not a twitch of her muscles. She knew no fear, and the only thing you could glimpse in her form was the perfect readiness to act at first chance.

"Get ready, princess," she commanded, her steady voice cutting both through the rumbling of the breaking temple and my rising panic. "Ahuizotl will open the path. We just need time".

Time… that I could provide. I summoned my magic — as much of it as I could hold, last specks of Daring Do’s goop burning off in wisps of smoke on my horn and my green aura seeped into every crack and crevice of the hall, holding the building together with nothing but my own magic and will. The pressure of the massive weight on my horn nearly threw me off my hooves. I swayed, staying upright by no more than a miracle.

It would win us seconds. A minute at best. Gritting my teeth I hoped Ahuizotl did, in fact, have a way out of this.

He stood up again in the pool, making no attempt to run and ignoring the falling rocks like one would ignore annoying flies. Slowly, he raised his forepaws, dripping the blood from the cut into the pond and the world shuddered as the power rose. Not just a spell, not even magic - the raw, capital-P Power made manifest, making my own magic ripple and flux like a soap bubble caught in a gale. The pool responded, the water turning black and deep, stone mechanisms hidden within whirring and churning when the bottom of the well turned into a ladder leading down.

Ahuizotl dove into the water with sudden, unexpected gracefulness, not making a single splash, and the pool that before was barely up to his ankles has swallowed him whole.

I was too busy with my magic, trying to hold the structure together, my horn burning with the energy I could hardly control. Here and there the stones would still fall, despite my effort, making the floor shake and fountains of debris fly through the room with deadly speed, as I was trying to make my way to the well, feeling my way without taking eyes off the crumbling roof.

It was Green who grabbed me in her hooves pulling me through the room while dodging the deadly bits of the stone and any obstacles on the ruined floor. I only managed to draw a large breath before the both of us took the plunge into the well - not a second before the giant stone column smashed into the well, sealing the exit and leaving all of us in night-total darkness, only barely lit by the rare lights from above.

The chill water braced me, burning against my skin like fire, and then abated just as quickly. I tried to get my bearings in the cold and the darkness of the water, holding my breath as long as I could, the pressure in my chest growing and growing, as I struggled to figure out what to do. My lungs burned with a cruel fire; diaphragm ached to draw anything, anything at all into my lungs, and still there was no way but down, no escape, only cold and darkness and death.

Just when I’ve finally thought my head and chest would split wide open, Green Glow hit me under the ribs, a light jab so quick and light I barely felt it, forcing the air out of my lungs. I panicked and tried to inhale the water around us — only to discover that I could. The cool, soothing liquid filled my lungs, causing no discomfort. I breathed. In and out, water nourishing my lungs and extinguishing the pain of asphyxiation just as if it were air.

Ahuizotl did not turn to our commotion as he made his first steps down on the ladder.

“I may be a shadow of what I once was, deposed and dethroned.” Under water, his voice became deeper, reverberating. More powerful. “Still, I am the Lord of things Drowned and Drowning, Prince of the Deeps, little pony mine. You took my coin, and you’re my creature now - you will not drown lest I will it so.”

That made me frown. I wasn’t sure I liked being anyone’s creature but Celestia’s. But then again, I didn’t like drowning or being crushed more, so I decided not to raise a point.

“Breathe, pumpkin.” Green Glow advised, the permanent mocking laughter in her eyes, before diving deeper.

I did just that, marvelling at the feeling of water filling my lungs, cold and heavy, yet entirely breathable. Then I shrugged and followed her down, the cold water refusing to buoy me up against every law of nature.

***

The stairs, roughly hewn in an infinite stone and encased in stone on every side, seemed to go on down forever, disappearing somewhere far in the darkness beneath. The way behind us closed by the massive weight of the fallen temple, we could only make our way down - a sombre procession in the greenish fog of the water, only barely lit by the turquoise glow of my magic.

We walked for hours, and soon the only thing I could concentrate on was pushing through the water, one step at a time and maintaining the steady light of my horn.

The tunnel walls around us expanded, then expanded again, and it was only after a while I have realised that we were no longer in a cave or a passage, but rather under the open sea, so deep that even far up high I could not discern the surface. Schools of fishes and sea creatures have joined and crossed our procession for a while, before disappearing and being replaced by creatures stranger and stranger as we made our way into the deeps, the power of the Elder keeping us from the cold and the pressure just as it did against lack of air.

And to this day I still remember that moment when I raised my head and my breath caught in my throat — not through Ahuizotl's power failing, but at the sight that I beheld.

Down there, where the infinite ladder had reached its end, there was a giant dome of pearly-white light. Like an enormous soap bubble stuck underwater, it shimmered with a soft white glow, glimmering rainbow playing across its translucent border, and within it, like within a snowglobe, was a city lighted by the magic crystals and schools of fluorescent fish, sprawling miles in every direction.

Another legend that I only half expected to be true, only mentioned in the rarest, oldest books I could find. The-City-Under-The-Waves. Our next destination.

The city sprawled much further than the dome, crude stone houses and coral towers marking twisty, circular streets. Well-lit by the soft shine of the schools of glowing fish and magic light of pearls and gemstones embedded in the walls of the buildings, it seemed empty — windows closed and doors were barred before we would approach, and while out of the corner of my eyes I could see vague shadows following us from afar, they scattered before you could properly see them, quick and mercurial underwater.

At the border of air and water, separated by the dome of thin pearly magic, we stopped, and Ahuizotl stretched his paw to touch it.

Water around it moved and swirled, turning black and red, circling around his fingers, as if longing for his touch, and at the same time towards it another layer of magic rose, angry buzzing of sharp white light, stinging and sparking at the point of contact, the dome suddenly at war with itself, unable to decide whether the Elder was its master or enemy.

"Come out, come out, little ponies," Ahuizotl said, without raising his voice, unthreatened by angry magic lapping at his paw. "Or I will huff, and I will puff, and I will bring your little dome down."

I don’t think anyone has actually heard him, but his threat was not without an answer — the moment he finished speaking our hosts-to-be descended from above to greet him.

There were three of them. Seaponies — clearly, their lower halves ending not with the hind-legs but with a large fish-tail with a wide fin they used to manoeuvre deftly in the water. They had no fur or coats — instead their bodies were covered by mute monotone scales of pink, blue or yellow that seemed to shine with the reflected light of the dome. With their soundless hovering in the water and their shining scales, they looked like ghosts more than creatures of flesh and blood.

Their retinue followed, coming out finally in plain sight behind and surrounding us — the guardsponies. A dozen or so, with same fish tails and same muted colours, clad in the armour of fish scales and silver, each armed with a strange lightning-bolt-shaped spear and girt with a wide belt, a horn made of a spiral seashell clipped to it.

The spears they pointed at us, and their weapons sparked with electricity, like an overcharged thunder-cloud.

I felt uneasy, sliding closer to Green — I had no idea how my spells would work underwater, and fighting a dozen seaponies that surrounded us did not seem like a good way to find out.

And then, just as suddenly as they appeared, the three main seaponies spoke.

“Corpse-giver.”

“Treasure-burier.”

“Drowner-dog.”

They spoke over each other as if competing who would speak first. Their voices were soft, almost singing, three of them overlapping and adding to each other until they’d settle in a harmony to produce an actual complete sentence in an almost unison.

“You are not welcome here, under the sea.”

"So there is still of Voice of the City. And still you remember me, little ponies." There was smug satisfaction in Ahuizotl's tone. “Then you know you have to let me in. This is my right.”

"We remember," the seaponies sighed, "Memories passed through the darkness of time."

"Well?" Ahuizotl demanded, "Am I to stand at your doors, like a beggar in wait for his pittance? My journey was long, and my servants are tired."

The seaponies glanced at each other, trying to come up with a decision.

"...Enter..."

"...Enter."

"Enter."

The pearls on their pendants glowed with soft white light and their voices reverberated in strange harmonics, the vibrato making my fur tickle and my bones hum with subtle magics. The buzz of the pearly wall grew quiet, finally accepting Ahuizotl's touch and letting his paw through.

The Elder nodded in satisfaction, and took a step forward, parting the sparkling white veil as he did. We followed — Green, then me, the shimmering aura of the dome leaving all the water outside and drying my coat instantly. Outside of water, in this bubbly of dry land, I instantly felt both heavy and light - no longer needing to push through the viscous liquid, but neither supported by it.

The seaponies did not stay behind, floating in the air, just as they did in the water, still forming a silent guard around us as the nacreous film of the dome covered them instead of just letting them through. I looked at them curiously as I trotted, trying to figure out the magic that let them float in the air just as they did in the water.

"The Mother-Pearl" the seaponies answered my unvoiced question, touching their medallions, each adorned with a single pearl in unison and looking up towards the centre of the city.

"It protects."

"It nourishes."

"It keeps us safe."

"Drowner." They scuttled ahead, abandoning me to ponder their reply and swirling around Ahuizotl instead. "What leads you to our abode?"

"I came for what is mine," he answered curtly. "I want it back."

Their voices scattered again into three overlapping sing-songs.

“The old treasure.”

“The token of magic.”

“The coin of stone.”

“Yes. You cannot deny me, fish-ponies. You owe me that — and more.”

They scurried faster in the water, fins wagging side-to-side in sudden unease. "Why would you take your gift from us, Elder? Did we displease you? Have we given offence?"

"It was not a gift, pony." Ahuizotl snapped. "It was a loan. A lien of my power, until you build your own. It is mine, and I wish it back, and I have no need to explain myself to you."

***

The stone of the city was white and pink marble, ancient, pre-princess era masonry and architecture. It rose around in weightless towers and spires gilded in intricate patterns of electrum and copper, all spirals, and waves, much like pegasi linear script. The buildings were beautiful and magical, glowing with waves of crimson heat and energy they drew out of the seabed and stored in the gently shimmering crystals in their walls.

Sealords and sealadies, the high nobility of the underwater city, powerful enough to warrant their bit of pearl-magics floated through the air, while craftsmares and guildstallions, the sigils of their crafts on their collars, floated through the channels. Occasionally they would stop and stare at our unusual procession, before being ushered quietly along by the guards or the glance from our guides; the menacing electric sparks of their spears hurrying those that still tried to linger.

Some of the streets and walls of the city were now turned into channels instead, belting the city in concentric circles and thread by radial rivers flowing from some unseen origin in the centre. Eels swam in them, not quite like their surface relatives — eyeless, dark creatures, used to the eternal twilight of the underwater city. Sparks of electricity zapped in long, branching arcs between them when they swam next to each other, making the water bubble and the air smell sharply of epsom and ozone.

There was a pattern to this city, a purpose. It did not grow as the cities of ponies usually do — a house or a smithy or a tavern at a time, its growth was not slow and haphazard, a building added here, a thoroughfare rerouted there, one structure torn down to make way for another. Unlike the crude buildings of sandstone and granite caves under water, every building here was planned and considered, changed and adapted over time and came together, seamlessly blending the pink coral and the ancient white marble into a singular machine of thaumarchitecture. The whole city was a monolithic whole, from the smallest of fountains to the highest spire of gold rising in the center of the city to touch the zenith of the pearly dome.

The building that we were presented with was not high by the city’s standards, but sturdy and wide. The columns and enfilades looked menacing, the doors were wide enough to handle crowds, and thick columns held up the flat roof above the entrance. It looked official and it smelled of dust and mould — in short, it was nothing like a house or hotel I would expect. The seapony trio guessed my thoughts, answering again before I asked.

"Our hospitality is not an oft-practised art. Rarely a traveller comes to the shelter of our city. This is but a place of memories. From the time..."

"Of light."

"Of stars."

"Of air."

"It is the best we can give."

Surprisingly, that actually explained it - the building was a museum. It must have been more than a thousand years old, maintained by the seaponies since before the city was lost to the depths.

The servants were already swimming to and fro, carrying the trays of food and drink, bedsheets and blankets, silks and candelabra and every other amenity conceivable.

"Our talk is not done, seaponies—" Ahuizotl warned.

"Long was your road Elder,” the seaponies interrupted him, “and tired are your servants. Be our guest. Drink our wine, eat our bread. Rest for the day.”

“I’m good.” Green said to no one in particular “Take your time.”

I tried to follow suit, and stand a bit more upright and look a little less like I felt. I don’t think I was very successful.

”Please, Drowner, give us time for council." the seaponies asked. "Let us honour you, tomorrow at the turning of the clock."

“A banquet.”

“A celebration.”

“A feast.”

"Then we shall talk and the debt will be settled."

“Tomorrow.” Ahuizotl conceded, and waved his paw releasing both us and the seaponies from his side, and retreated to claim his room.

I went to follow, but before I could, the sea-pony three have barred my way, swimming around me in circles, almost touching me with their finned forehooves and tails. I stopped, and threw a glance at my companions, unsure what's going on. Green Glow was there — somewhat unobtrusively leaning against the jamb of the door and watching the seaponies with wary suspicion. I relaxed a bit, knowing that she had my back.

“You bear his mark on you. His hunger in your blood.” they sing-sang suddenly, in their melodic voices.

I had no idea what that meant.

“The foal-napper.”

“The monster-maker.”

“The Mage.”

That hardly clarified things.

“We weep for your fate, little unicorn. And we weep for the world should you reach the end of the road he would mean for you.”

Ominous did not even begin to describe it, but I had a feeling that if I tried to get an answer, I’d only end up more confused. While I tried to figure out something to say to that, they scattered, up and away, leaving me to once again scamper after Green, who was already walking away.

I caught up with her just by the door to the bedrooms, and before she disappeared into the room of her own, she nodded to me.

“Nice work today, princess. You did good.”

And that passing, indifferent praise has almost made the whole of that crazy day worth it.

***

I was dead on my hooves when we entered the town, but now I couldn’t sleep. Turning and tossing on my bed, I yearned for respite, yet every time I would close my eyes, memories and doubts would assail me like hungry ghosts. What was I doing here? What would I do if we lost? What was even worse — what would I do if we won? Was I even on the right side?

The shakes were lurking underneath my skin, and I could feel another spasm just around the corner. If I closed my eyes, if I let the maelstrom of doubts and thoughts drag me to the bottom of the memory, dredging up the horrors of what was and what could have been…

Breathe

I tried to breathe right, just as Green had shown me — deep abdominal inhalations, thinking of every breath I took, but I could not maintain it forever. The drowsiness would overtake me, and I’d lose my concentration, and then I’d start the next circle of self-flagellating questions that I knew had no answer.

Something pulled me out of the bed, and I shrieked and jumped up, ready to shoot magic in any direction… but it was just Green, who has somehow barged into my room.

She gave me another of her looks, the type that made me feel self-conscious and defensive.

“Get outta bed, princess. We’re going for a night out on a town, and you’re buying”

“Shouldn’t we be sleeping?” I ventured, “There’s a lot happening tomorrow.”

“Oh please,” she scoffed dismissively, “I could hear you brood from the next room. You’re not getting any sleep tonight, and I’m heading out either way.”

I shrugged, trying to look cool, however belated my efforts may have been. “Sure, I’ll go.”

***

We moved down the streets in a brisk trot, past the towers and the channels, Green leading me with some kind of supernatural homing instinct towards the most decrepit and darkened part of the town. Past the shining towers of pink coral and white marble, past the stone houses lighted by the magical gems, to the wall of the dome, where the hair-thin film of the pearly white light separated us from the Deeps, eager to reclaim what was theirs.

I stopped there, appreciating the sheer scale of the magic needed to hold the sea at bay. Beyond this hair-thin pearly wall, I could almost feel the pressure of miles and miles of water above us, hungry to reclaim what belonged to it, only contained by the power that was once Ahuizotl's to command.

Back in the Canterlot castle, you cannot help but feel like a foal compared to the immortal alicorn Princess. But Celestia is kind and gentle, keeping her power well-hidden, and it is easy to forget that she is not just a pony. That she is not mere flesh and blood and magic.

Here, against a wall that covered a city against the whole mass of the ocean, I have realized for the first time how truly small I was — I was not a foal in the land of adults, I was but a mote of dust in the world were titans roamed. I tried to breathe, but the air felt heavy and thick, and I felt weak in the knees...

"Come on,” Green’s voice ripped me out of my reverie before another shake could claim me. “This side is all tourist-traps and high-brow frou-frou stuff. The real deal is underwater."

"Are you sure we can go in without Ahuizotl?" I glanced sideways at her, only to discover that she was not there, but instead has stepped just behind me. “With that pressure, we’d be squished in seconds.”

"I know one way to check..."

Before the sense of her words had dawned on me, I felt a buck to my hindquarters, pushing me through the pearly wall head-first into the water.

Instantly braced by the coldness of the sea, I squealed from the sudden freeze, releasing a dozen tiny bubbles of air and flailing around like a total spaz, but, other than the humiliation of her little prank, I suffered no damage - the power the Elder has given me still held.

Green Glow followed me, ignoring my glare.

"Lighten up, pumpkin. Ahuizotl did not take away his power or his coin — when he does, you'll know.”

Following Green with long, loping strides in the semi-weightlessness of the underwater slums, I finally understood the method to her navigation, the pattern that seemed to dominate the city, despite the underwater architecture of it. For all it's strangeness, it was not that much different from the Baltimare harbour I spent my time in not so long ago.

The city grew darker as we progressed further into the underwater parts of it, leaving the shine of the pearly dome behind. The water was murkier, diffusing the increasingly rare magic light, and the buildings were no longer white with marble and electrum, but absorbed the light instead with the dirty-grey coral and black granite, casting long shadows with the angular, broken shapes of the roughly crafted houses.

Before long, apparently finding the thing she’d been looking for, Green stopped and pushed on some door, I would not even notice was there, and strolled in, confident and relaxed, as if she spent her every evening finding nigh-invisible holes in the walls of hidden underwater cities.

I followed her — what else could I’ve done?

And the seapony tavern looked the same as any cheap place I'd ever been to.

Granted, it was in an undersea grotto, and not in the conventional building, and instead of chairs, it had hammocks strewn haphazardly between low tables. But it still had all the tell-tale signs of a dirty tavern: The smells of salt mixed with the aromas of badly cooked non-food and the acidic undertone of cheap alcohol, the patrons that gave us evaluating glances with a corner of their eyes - the almost reflexive appraisal of whether we were prey to hustle and bully or predators to avoid, and the servile-yet-slimy proprietor, floating behind a roughshod counter.

A haven of normalcy in a city of aliens, a bit of comfort. I felt tension I didn’t know I had started to release me.

"You're buying, pumpkin," Green reminded me, choosing a table and a hammock of her own. "Hope you can afford it."

I rolled my eyes. Yeah, I could afford the drinks.

In every world I've been to, every race and every creed accepts gold as the means of payment: such is the power of the shiny over the mortal minds. Even if the seaponies were not very likely to accept Celestia’s paiza, I still had plenty of bits I gambled up before leaving Baltimare. Certainly enough for a night out on the town.

The City Under The Waves was no different than any other place in that regard - the barmaid was by our table even before my gold had touched its stony surface, eyeing the metal greedily despite the unfamiliar mint. In return for several coins - a rip-off, I’m sure - she issued us two strange implements, full of warm, bubbling liquid. They looked like some weird cross between the Saddle Arabian hookah and alchemist's worm-pipe made of crudely baked clay and verdigris-covered brass.

Fiddling in my hammock, I took a careful drag from the pipe. Oxygenated water, sweet taste of some fruit, not unlike wild strawberries, and alcohol. It didn't kick the same way hard cider did, but instead, the taste tickled at my throat,making me feel relaxed and the walls of the cave wobble around me.

I giggled and went for another pull.

Green settled in the hammock next to me, taking her own pipe-drink, and gave me one of her looks. "So spill, little princess."

"Huh?"

"Why are you here? What gets a nice little filly to go out and join the Big Blue's little merry band of misfits?"

"Same as others, I guess," I tried to deflect the question, hiding behind my own hookah.

"Horseapples." She shrugged off my non-answer with a wave of her hoof. "Those brain-dead little critters would follow any whiff of power. Don't kid yourself, pumpkin, you're nothing like them."

"What about you, then?"

"Gotta keep busy." She shrugged. "A power must serve a goal, and this is as good as any other. But you're stalling, little princess." She leaned closer to me, and I couldn't help but stare into her eyes, the burning emeralds of pure green flame, my lips and throat suddenly dry, despite being underwater. I needed another drink - badly. Luckily that was in ready supply. "Tell me."

"I... I want something. Something nopony else can give me," I said, finally. "Something old, and powerful. It's the only thing that can fix me up."

"You mean your little shaking?"

I nodded, unwilling to say any more.

"Just one last score, and you're done? Go back to whatever prissy little castle you came out of and be a nice little filly?"

I would've nodded again, if not for the dripping sarcasm in her voice.

She took her own pipe to her lips, and let the awkward pause drag out.

"And, tell me then, little princess..." she asked finally, "what will you do at nights?”

It was not what she said. It was how she said it. Her level, deliberate, voice; the subtle inflection in her tone, that thing, that glint of the mad, insatiable hunger I saw in the bottom of her eyes — it hit me right upside the head, and I remembered.

The nights... creeping through the woods, sharpened steel sliding through the cloth and leather that covered it, spells humming like freshly made lightning, muscles taut and nerves stretched. Running in mad dashes and desperate sprints, heart racing like it wants to escape my ribs, thump-de-thump-de-thump pulsing in the ears, insane rhythm of a mad drummer. Pure undiluted joy, a high like a wave, like a tsunami that drowns you, scrapes and bruises, tired muscles and stretched ligaments, pain like pleasure, pleasure so sharp it could just as well be pain, blood on your flanks in red and yellow, yellow and red, and you laugh, because you're alive, because you have won, with steel and fire and magic and will.

What will I do that could equal those nights?...

I felt the metallic taste of copper, where I bit the stem of the pipe, crumpling the metal as I teetered on the edge of another shake.

"You don't know me..." I said finally, the warm drink and cold water holding me steady. "I'm not like that! I'm..." a good pony I wanted to say, and yet the words would not leave my muzzle.

"I've fought you, and you've fought me, little princess, and there was no place for a lie in the fight we shared. You enjoyed it."

"No, I didn't!". How could somepony normal enjoy fighting and hurting other ponies? I certainly was nothing like that. I was nothing like her.

She relented, moving back to her own hookah.

"Deny it if you wish, but we are of one blood, you and I."

I wanted to tell her that she was wrong - but all the easy words of denial felt hard and trite and empty. I said nothing, opting to hide behind my drink instead, fleeing the conversation and my own thoughts.

"Fine," Green waved her hoof, letting go of the conversation. "Why don't you ask me something for a change?" she offered.

"Really?" I looked at her suspiciously. I would never have expected her to offer something like this.

"One question." She cooled down my enthusiasm "Ask me anything, little princess."

That was so unfair! I had so many questions - about her magics, about her knowing Daring Do, about the things she did to me and for me...

"Why..." was all I managed to say before my voice broke. It was enough for her to guess my meaning.

"Why do I help you, little princess? Why do I ask you those questions, tell you the rules?" She exhaled the pipe-drink through her nostrils, the smokey water curling around her muzzle. "Maybe because you remind me of myself when I was young and stupid. Maybe because I am basically irrational. Or maybe because you have potential, and there is no greater treasure for a teacher than a good student."

“You’re a teacher?” I couldn’t help but ask. I’ve had many teachers, and not all of them taught academics, but she — she was like none I’ve seen.

She looked at me, almost insulted by my look of disbelief. "I’ve a degree in Foal Development."

“You - a teacher?” I tried to imagine her in the classroom, drawing up letters for the foals. Mind boggled.

"Yep. Fully credentialed."

"With this?" I looked down her flank at her cutie mark, the green sorcerous flames, that seemed to animate when the subtle currents of the underwater city tickled her short fur.

Almost despite myself, I reached out and touched it. Unnaturally warm even under water, it burned my hoof with the heat of her body.

She shrugged. "Burned hoof teaches best… and speaking of lessons - there is one coming up now."

Turning my head left and right I finally figured what she was talking about. A bunch of seaponies were... they weren't doing anything. Not yet. But the way they moved, the way they looked... I knew what was going to happen, and my heart beat a touch faster.

"Somebody shined a bit too much coin." She teased, though without much reproach. "And the little princess forgot to look around."

There was a table-full of them. Most of them stallions, all getting to that point where pleasantly tipsy becomes aggressively drunk. One of them - a bigger one, his scales the colour of copper, said something looking our way, and the whole table exploded with snickering laughter.

Green's answer made me giggle again into my pipe, and the stallion grew so red, I thought he would have an apoplectic fit on the spot. He floated up from his hammock, and the whole bunch of them drifted towards us.

I ran quickly through my mental arsenal, lining up the spells for the fight. My usual choice of fire or wind was obviously out, but there were a few spells I was just itching to try out underwater—

"Do you want to have at it, pumpkin?" Green asked as if offering to share a dish. "It is your fault after all."

"I.. no!" No, I did not. It was not what I wanted, not what I was. I shook my head forcing myself to extinguish the spells that I already half-assembled, squashing angry, sharp thoughts in my mind like bugs.

"Suit yourself." She jumped out of her hammock, landing softly in front of the tan seastallion, and the cloud of seaponies fell apart, surrounding her. They had the numbers and were in their own element. Swimming around Green in circles, like sharks around their prey, they probably thought themselves scary.

Only the copper-scaled stallion floated in one place, hovering over Green.

“You want to repeat that, little mare?” he tried to stare down Green Glow

“Don’t… don’t hurt them too much,” I asked her weakly. Despite myself, I could not help but feel the anticipation of the inevitable fight tying sweet knots in my belly.

“Don’t worry, princess,” she scoffed, “I’ll be downright gentle...”

Something glinted in the stallions forehoof, while she was turned to me. A thin steel needle — a weapon meant to slip easily in the water, and before I could raise my voice in warning, it found its way between Green’s ribs, burrowing into her side. A small cloud of blood smoked from the wound, colouring the water red.

She moved. Not a flinch of pain or surprise, but a subtle flex of her abs, trapping the knife, the thick muscles like fibres of a wooden statue. She looked back at the stallion that tried to cut her, with a slow, heavy gaze, and flicked her ear in irritation.

And only then, when the dull incomprehension in his eyes gave way to fear, she began to move.

Over time, I would hear a lot of comparisons for fighting. Some would liken it to ballet, others - to speed chess. Morons. Real, life-or-death fighting is nothing like an art or a game. It’s nasty and brutish, and more often than not it’s over before anyone has time to process what is going on.

What she did though, was as close to poetry in motion as I’ve ever seen, when she moved slowly under water, pushing through it with brute strength. It was like a dream of somepony fighting, a beautiful nightmare you don’t want to wake up from. She powered through their haphazard strikes and panicked defences like they weren’t even there, her long legs coiling around the attackers, always hypnotizingly-slow under water, always just faster than them, just in the right place to grab and to twist and to crush.

Strength. Endurance. Grace.

The magic of the earth ponies, more potent than the highest sorceries of Canterlot.

I wanted to join her. I wanted to run away. Instead, I took another drag from my pipe, letting the tingling, itchy sensation settle deep in my chest, and watched until it was over.

Giving the last look to the floating bodies of the unlucky stallions, she stretched - the familiar languid motion, like a muscular wave from the snout to the tips of her hooves, dumping the excess energy of the combat into the ground. I could almost feel the pulse of the energy as it dissipated, and Green was once again as calm and nonchalant as she was before, switching instantly from the predatory intensity of combat to relaxation of the girls’ night out.

She threw a coin on the counter - old gold, one of Ahuizotl's coins, in a wide, lazy arc of glinting metal in the silence of the tavern.

"Are you alright?" I asked. Even knowing her unnatural vitality, I could not help but worry about the stab she took because I distracted her.

She glanced down at the no longer bleeding mark. "I'm fine. It's just a scrape". She stretched again, testing out her body. "The flesh shall serve the will. Come on, pumpkin. We have a pub crawl, which means you gotta crawl!"

And so we crawled. Pub to pub, watering hole to watering hole, all ramshod and rickety, grimy and dodgy, and it was glorious.

We pinned the tailfins on the seaponies - a game much more fun when you're tipsy - and she taught me to move without seeing, whispering advice into my ears, and the warm water of her breath tickled my coat. We tried drinks, exotic and impossible in the surface world - some weird and amazing, some that were awful and probably would make me go blind if I inhaled any more.

And on the way back Green bought me a snow-cone — a little gesture of affection, strange for the usually abrasive mare. It tasted like no fruit I've ever tried, sweet, tangy and tart, and I ate it while we walked back to our rooms.

“Want to join me?” she asked, opening the door to her room. “I don’t have any coffee, but I did stash some Griffinstonian brew.”

“No, I’m beat…” I answered before the full implications of her offer hit my alcohol-addled, sleep-deprived brain, “...oh.”

She raised a single eyebrow, and I gulped, my gaze trailing on her cutie mark perhaps a touch longer than was strictly necessary. “Err. Uhm. No, I… err, yeah, totally beat, ehheh. Rain check?”

She laughed her deep velvety laugh, and turned away, swishing her tail side-to-side just wide enough to make me regret my decision, before disappearing into her quarters.

“If you change your mind, little princess, my door is always open.”

I stared dumbly at her half-closed door, my mind finally catching up with my mouth.

Stupid…

Why did I say no? For all that she scared me and pushed me and made me think those thoughts I wanted to lock away and never think, still I liked her. Not just liked - I liked her liked her.

Stupid!

I made my way into my room and bed - my cold, empty bed.

Stupid.

If only I would’ve said what I've wanted…

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Her taut muscles, pressing into my body…

Stupid.

...her black lips, feverishly hot…

"Oh, I'll be downright gentle, little princess..."

I closed my eyes.

Stu…

Sleep has claimed me, as soon as my head had touched the pillow, and though I would not remember what I dreamt of, it was definitely not a nightmare.

***

Seated on a terrace of the central palace, high above the city, we had the perfect position to see the whole city respond to the first note sung by the Voice of the City. The same three seaponies, pink, and yellow, and blue, hanging in the air, shining with the power of their pearly magic, they sang a single note, three voices as one.

The sealadies and sealords invited to the dinner followed, adding their voices to the song, then the servants and the stewards in their liveries, and the song grew and spilled ever onwards.

Beneath, in the streets and channels of the city, everypony who heard the call stopped what they were doing, like Saddle Arabians responding to the call of the mu'addhin calling the loyal to the midday rest. But instead of resting, the seaponies who heard the call floated up in the air, sparkling with the auras of the Mother-Pearl and added their voices to the song, passing the call further on, and turning a single note into a thousand-voiced symphony. Horns of the guardsponies joined to the melody, and the wind, subtle and circular rose throughout the city, moving the stale air and ringing the tinkly bells hanging off every house and above every channel.

The music they made was an unearthly, fractal melody that folded into itself with infinite voltas and reprises, a wordless tune turning into a song in a language I did not quite know, and yet could understand.

It spoke of the memory preserved through the darkness of the time, of loss, and of the love of the seaponies to that city of theirs. Love that was above their love for the stars, and the air and the sun, the love that endured for a thousand years and would endure forever, even after the stars would fall from the sky, even when the air would be exhausted, even after the sun itself would burn out and be extinguished.

The city shone in response to their song, love of the city to its ponies made manifest. Towers and gems and channels released the magic they stored in shimmering mists. From every corner it rose, strands of pure energy in every colour of the rainbow, gathering into the centre of the city, where beneath us, hidden in the depth of the palace like a treasure in the folds of the lotus, the Mother-Pearl slept.

As the mists disappeared into the palace beneath us, so did the seapony song grow to a close, the same way it started. Silent grew the wind and the bells. Horns stopped their calls. The seapony auras extinguished as they lowered into the channels of the city, and only one, endless note remained, still held by three voices becoming one.

Then, silence reigned.

In that silence a spark was born, a pulse of magic like reverse lightning rising from below along the golden spire, in a single rolling wave of such immense power, that it made my horn tingle, and the sparks of static crack along my coat. The white-golden wave of it climbed to the top and touched the dome that kept us from the ocean.

It wobbled, the whole structure contracting and expanding as if taking one gigantic breath. The top of it opened in ripples to let out a bubble of air, and let the water in instead. It fell with a thunderous, deafening roar, a brilliant waterfall in every color of the rainbow, along the spire spilling into the terrace-like reservoirs that made up the palace and rushing further down along the channels of the city, filling them again with water, powering the seapony machines, turning their waterwheels and feeding their steam engines as it went ever down.

But I no longer cared, because the seapony servants, released from the song, had finally brought in the food. I've had ample sleep after last night's diversion, my hangover was over and now I was ravenously hungry.

Dozens of tiny platters were brought by a cavalcade of servant ponies and thrown across the table — dishes of seaweed, plankton and krill grown in the water and darkness, the strange fruit of the sea, unknown oin the surface world, the fishes I could not even try to name, and like the rarest of delicacies — a dozen red apples on a golden platter in the center of the table, eyed hungrily by every seapony in the room.

The Sunken City spared no expense on welcoming the Elder

The Voice sat down, their nacreous auras dulled to the normal shine of the protective field and nodded, signalling the start of the meal. The company — me included — fell to with gusto, the servants weaving in and out to keep the tables filled with food as fast as it was consumed.

Unlike most of us, the seapony trio picked at their platters daintily and Ahuizotl not at all, too busy conversing with each other. The Elder’s impatience shone through in every gesture of arrogant demand, while the Voice kept their muzzles as still as masks.

"You eat fish, little princess?" Green distracted me from my vicious attack on the nearest plate. She herself didn't follow my suit, picking only seaweed and other plants out of her dish.

"Yeah." I dunked the nearest slice of fish into some sort of black jelly-like sauce and dug in. It was deliciously salty with just the right amount of sour. "My mum loves all sort of exotic foods and travels a lot, so we're always eating Neighpanese or Mustangolian when she's home. Love the stuff. You gonna eat that?"

She pushed the plate towards me without a word.

"Here." I threw her an apple in return — that seemed the thing to do after yesterday’s fiasco. "An apple for the teacher.”

"How sweet." her tone was neutral, but I could sense her amusement. ”Might just have to keep you after school.”

"This is some good stuff." I attacked the new dish to cover the nascent blush of embarrassment. I hoped to see any hint of distaste on her muzzle out of the corner of the eye as I bit into the flesh of another undersea creature, but she gave me no such satisfaction. "I should totally ask for a recipe — I'm pretty sure she never tried anything like thi—"

"Give me what's mine, you little shrimp! What I've once given, I can also take away."

Ahuizotl’s roar cut our chatter short, his fist slamming into the table and making silverware shake and jump up.

"No, you cannot," The seaponies sang, unperturbed by the Elder lashing out.

“You are diminished."

"... broken."

"... but a shadow of what you were."

"Without the coin, you don't have the strength. Else you would not need it in the first place"

Ahuizotl growled, baring his teeth, but did not contest the notion. Then, suddenly, he smiled.

"True, I do not have the strength. But you swore to me once, when you came grovelling for my power to save your pathetic little city, and those oaths still ring true. It would not take my full might to call upon those words."

It was now sea-ponies time to stay silent.

"What was it that you said to me then, when my power was still great, and my brothers still roamed the earth?"

He stretched his forepaw over the table as if dowsing for the very roots of the city.

"'By the foundation of the City,' your mothers swore to repay your debt..."

The earth convulsed.

"'By the hearth and the mortar,' your fathers gave your oath to me..."

The buildings groaned and shook, plates cracking and silverware falling off the tables.

"'By the walls and the halls'..."

Ponies screamed behind the halls, and the pearly dome outside bent and wobbled.

I watched Ahuizotl summoning the Deep magic, the kind I did not know even existed in Equestria, and it was as if I saw him for the first time. Now, beneath the veneer of old greed and jealousy and hatred, behind the cracked facade of the kingdomless king, you could almost guess the power he has been once. A cunning magician and a fierce foe, magnanimous to his allies and terrifying in his vengeance. An almost rival to my Princess.

The seaponies folded like so much wet seaweed.

"Enough."

"Stop."

"Please."

"We honour our oath, Elder. Great was your gift and your favour, and great is our debt, but there is another to whom we owe just as much."

“Who would dare to claim that which is mine!?”

“Nightwatcher.”

“Mantle-Bearer—”

"DARING DO!" Ahuizotl’s roar interrupted the third seapony, when said pegasus flew up on the terrace.

"Looking to make the Voice into a full barbershop quartet?" Daring Do quipped, landing on the floor. "They could use a good baritone, if you ask me."

I looked at her grimly, as she joined our table. Daring Do, who began to stuff her face immediately, as if without a care in the world, did not follow us here for idle amusement. She was surely aiming to foil our plans, to stop Ahuizotl again. Stop me.

The images of our last fight replayed in my mind, and I wondered if, when the time would come, I'd be able to do what I had to.

“She also lays claim to the treasure you seek, and she also has a right to it,” the seaponies concluded, ignoring the hero’s little quip and Elder’s interruption alike.

"What possible claim—” I could see Ahuizotl’s paw dig into the heavy goblet he held, as he battled his temper. He was almost successful, keeping only barest of hints of rage in his voice. “—could she have that surpasses mine, ponies?"

"She has given our treasure back to us."

“Our protection.”

"Our magic."

"The Mother-Pearl."

Everypony touched their pearls with their forehooves, looking down, where beneath us the Mother-Pearl was hidden.

"When it was stolen, she has found it. Returned it back to us."

“YOU WHAT?” I lost my voice for a second at the absurdity of what I’ve just heard, shouting out of turn and jumping up to the pegasus, hanging over the table and getting right in her smug, grey, nonchalant stupid face. “You had the Treasure of the Sea in your hoof, the key to every underwater magic EVER, the artefact of impossible power and the best you could do is throw it in a lake?! Do you have any idea what magical advancements could be gleaned from that thing? What could be done with it!?”

She pushed me away with her hoof and shrugged. “It was not mine. It was theirs.”

I had no words. This was beyond idiotic, beyond treachery even. To have such treasure and share with no one—!

“Do not war, guests of the sea. Tonight we ask for truce," the seaponies chimed from the sidelines.

I sat back, still seething, unable to let go of the thought of what I could’ve done with an artefact of such power. That righteous, self-absorbed… chicken! Next time I would not go so easy on her, if only in revenge for all the scientific advancements not made because of her “generosity”.

"A promise was made."

"A reward was promised,"

"An oath was sworn."

The seaponies continued, once I was done with my outburst.

"Any one thing the hero demands would be granted."

"And I want the coin, Zoti." The fabled adventuress stuck out her tongue at Ahuizotl. "Nyah."

"As you see, Drowner, we must needs to…

"...meditate."

"...consider."

"...take counsel—"

"Ponder all you wish, ponies," Ahuizotl said, in a low, heavy tone, his paw mangling the bronze of his glass as if it were wet clay. "Meditate to your little hearts’ content, but do it quickly, for I have been promised an answer today. And choose wisely, lest you think you can cheat me out of what is mine with no consequence."

He reclined back in his chair, his final words leaving his threat hanging in the air, and making seaponies look down upon their plates in silence.

I too have returned to my plate, but the exotic foods did not seem as enticing any more, and as the anger of my outburst abated, the cold feeling of fear replaced the barely sated hunger in my belly.

"Eat, pumpkin." Green poked my side with her hoof under the table when I failed to notice the plate she moved towards me. "You'll need your strength."

I followed her advice, though now the food now tasted bland and there was no more joy to be found in teasing her with my choice of dishes. I picked slowly at the greens and the fishes, more playing with the food than eating in the oppressive silence of the room until...

"Such is our decree."

"Decision."

"Verdict."

The three seaponies rose from their seats to announce.

"Two have laid their claim. Both have the right and none can we deny. Thus we open our treasury to you. Take that which you desire most, and so let your desires be sated and your claims satisfied.

"One thing you'll take."

"... desire you'll see fulfilled."

"... dream you'll have come true."

"And nothing more, or you'll be forfeit."

"We want the same thing, so why would I chance for what is rightfully mine?" Ahuizotl shrugged nonplussed. "I have no time for petty games."

Finally, Daring Do stopped stuffing her face and leaned back away from the table, patting her belly with her wing. She burped loudly in satisfaction, the uncouth lout.

"Heard at least one of you has a taste for gambling." She winked at me. "How about a round of double or nothing?"

Ahuizotl steepled his fingers and raised his eyebrows, inviting the hero to go on.

"I get your coin and it's mine to do as I want. The debt of the City is cleared, and you leave these ponies alone."

The Elder snorted in derision. "And if I win? What do I get then? Other than what belongs to me already." A wave of a bitten apple in his tail-paw underscored his sentiment.

"Me."

Everypony stared. I сhoked, my frantic coughing resonating in the sudden silence like a badly tuned flugelhorn.

"Any trap, any trial. Your choice. Like good old times, eh?"

Ahuizotl reclined back in his seat, pondering.

"I do love my death traps,” he admitted. The tips of his claws touched slightly as he mused. "And the reward is most worthy."

The crunch of the apple he bit echoed through the terrace, as everypony waited for his decision.

"So be it then," He finally declared, reclining in his seat and picking up his misshapen glass to salute to Daring Do. "Let the City be witness to our deal."

I let out a breath I did not know I was holding. A fair contest was way better than a fight.

"So be it," the seaponies echoed Ahuizotl's words. "Both of you we shall hold to your deal."

"So, how are we doing this?" Daring Do asked, all business-like. Waiting until last possible moment, she snatched the last apple right from under the Elder’s paw and tossed it to one of seaponies at the table.

"Tomorrow, while the water flows, the entrance is open," the seaponies declared. "As it was promised, any one thing will be yours for the taking. But there are the protections even we can't disable easily."

"Only the few may pass"

“Only the Voice of the City sings inside"

"Only we are allowed"

"The first challenge shall be the Drowner's to pass. The second - Nightwatcher’s. If one should fail, the fallen shall be forfeited and the other may try. Should both fail, our obligation will be done.”

I looked at the Elder. That was not what was promised initially — there was no talk of challenges and guardians, but the Elder just rolled his eyes and waved his forepaw to allow it. The principal agreement has been reached and there was no sense in pushing the seaponies any further.

Especially, I guessed, since he would not have to do anything himself.

“Tomorrow then.” He threw the mangled glass onto the table and stood up. Green followed suit.

“Tomorrow.” Daring Do fluttered from her own seat as well.

The seaponies rose wordlessly from their seats, and the servants opened the doors for us. The dinner was done, the show was over and the answer seaponies promised Ahuizotl has been given.

***

“Come on, little princess, time to go. The seaponies are about to sing.”

She pulled the pillow from under me, dumping me half-awake on the floor.

"Green!" I shot up. My neck, bent out of shape while I slept popped and cracked, shooting a lance of pain along my spine. "I wanted to talk to you..." I tried to collect my thoughts muddled by sleep. "About, you know. That thing. The other night?"

I wanted to catch up with her, yesterday, after the dinner, but she slipped away right after the meal and wasn't anywhere I could find.

Unwilling to go out by myself and afraid to go out bother the Elder with the question, I spent the day stalking around the museum studying the ancient carvings and statues, until I fell asleep in an armchair by the door — an idea that now bit me in the back with a vengeance, as every movement of made my spine crack and pop.

“Not now, pumpkin. Don’t want to be late.”

“But I—”

Under her glare I withered, my thoughts falling apart like a badly stacked house of cards.

“Go.” She pushed me towards the bathroom. “Five minutes.”

A quick wash and panicked scrambling to get my cloak and saddlebags, my mane wrestled into a semblance of shape and my neck popped straight, I was ready and willing to follow her in under three.

We followed - without talking - the shimmering auras of magic flowing above every street to the palace. The seaponies sang. The crystals shimmered. The magic flowed, making my horn tingle and itch. It was as beautiful as the first time I’ve heard it, but I could not help but wonder if those who lived in the city eventually grew tired even of this ethereal beauty.

Ahuizotl sat wrapped in his cloak on some sort of monstrous seat meant only for him and waited. Deep in his thoughts, his tail-paw played idly with his golden necklace while he watched the plain bit of wall with unfocused eyes, peering somewhere deep beyond and below the stone with the same glance that seaponies had when you mentioned the Mother-Pearl.

It was there, I guessed. Some sort of treasury or vault beneath the palace, protected by the traps and guardians that we were to overcome. The Mother-Pearl would be there. So would the coin, and I could not even venture a guess what other artifacts and wonders.

Once again the song ended, and the soundless discharge of magic ran along the spire and touched the dome, making my ears pop with the colossal magnitude of power involved. The water rushed along the waterways of the palace in rainbow waterfalls.

The seaponies descended from their air, settling around us on the roofs and balconies. They looked like the stars falling from the dim twilight sky, shrouded as they were in their glimmering magic auras.

The Voice of the City were the last to join us, surrounding us and the Elder.

“The water flows, Drowner,” they said in their musical unison. “The first gate is yours.”

A gate? I saw no—

“Open.”

“Open”

The three seaponies sang, their voices taking the familiar peculiar overtones. Some invisible mechanism groaned and shook within the wall, fed by the seapony magics and the water flowing through it.

A gate slowly opened in what I thought was a seamless stone wall.

I couldn't quite figure out what was inside at first. It looked like a tangle - scales and canines, slithering and twisting like a knot of snakes, each as big as the quarray eel. A reptilian body, sleek and small, shining dull colours of copper and brass, interlaid with steel chains that tied it to something within its den. Tiny legs, that seemed alien on the creature’s frame, but sharp and deadly, glistening with green ichor….

“A hydra!” Ahuizotl noted with amused surprise.

An old one too, each of its dozen necks as wide as the tree trunk, each maw big enough to gobble a grown pony in a single bite. A dangerous creature — single-minded, almost impossible to cause any lasting harm to, poisonous to the last blood cell, and nearly as vicious as it was dumb.

“I remember, in the days past,” Ahuizotl continued to no one in particular, “It was just a minotaur with an axe. You’ve stepped up, little ponies.”

He stretched his hand to stop Green before she jumped at the challenge and stood up, his cloak dropping behind him.

“But if you think this is an obstacle for me, you are sorely mistaken.”

He walked towards the hydra, his words growing louder and angrier with every step.

“You think I am a has-been. A broken creature, a shadow of the past. Nothing but few old debts and promises, a usurer, withering over lists of ancient favours long since gone stale, a beggar with his paw outstretched. But I am Ahuizotl the Drowner, Prince of the Deeps, little ponies, and it is past time you remembered what I am.”

He stopped, halfway into the arena, waiting for the beast, and rolled his head, his joints clicking, ancient gold glinting and shining in the rare light.

The hydra roared and charged, its tiny legs carrying its cluster of heads with surprising speed.

Ahuizotl lifted his eyes to stare at the creature, and power, slow, thick, and tangible rose around him like a tidal wave.

The beast shivered and slowed down. A twitch ran down its scales, a wave of seizing muscles bulging out its skin. It stumbled as if forgetting which way its legs move, waving all the necks in chaotic tangles.

Slowly, like a centuries-old tree, it fell on the ground by the Elder's feet with a great thunderous crack of its skull against the stone.

There, under his unrelenting gaze it rasped and spluttered, coughing up splashes of water, twisting and scraping at the earth, and then with a few last agonizing convulsions, it finally grew still.

Ahuizotl turned away from it, slowly. His eyes glazed across Daring Do, still full with the pressure of the power he had summoned. Her skin shone with an eldritch blue light in response — a lining of runes I couldn't recognize underneath her grey coat, and she did not so much as sniffle, for all the Elder's might.

They stared at each other for a second before he released his power with an irritated growl.

"Don't worry, little fishies." The sight of seaponies pale under their scales when he looked at them has improved his disposition somewhat. "I have not broken your little toy. The creature will survive — and it will remember me. As should you."

“So we will, Drowner.” The seaponies’ muzzles were bloodless, their voices — quiet and even their preternatural harmony almost faltered for a second.

“The water flows, Nightwatcher.” They turned to Daring Do. “The second gate is yours.”

It was the sealords and sealadies — the onesclosest to us, their chokers and earrings shining with gold and gemstones — who had to sing this time, a twelve-fold harmony of voices, resonating with the magic gems inside.

The gate pushed outwards, opening up the wall of the castle and lighting up crystals beyond the hydra’s den, revealing a corridor below, wide and long and full of metal.

Just as the lights of the crystals turned on, it groaned with the tension of metal on metal and began to move. Giant cogwheels, pendulums, and springs moving like an inside of a clock some crazy watchmaker lined with sharpened steel and jagged glass. Axe-like pendulums swung in every direction, spears pistoned across the hall, and every tile of floors, walls, and even ceiling was lined with a blade, spike or sharpened needles of steel or crystalline glass, all rotating and shifting. It was not just a random bunch of blades - there was a pattern to it, just like a clockwork or a puzzle box, islands of temporary safety, still in the deadly chaos.

The whole room, at least as large as regulation hoofball field, was one huge whirling deathtrap.

Even Daring Do whistled with respect at the sight and looked at it almost wistfully.

We moved closer, taking our places to observe - again Ahuizotl in the centre, the servants moving his chair as he walked, Green and me by his side, and the seaponies according to their rank and status all around us. The elevation of the corridor allowed us to see deep into it, to watch every move Daring Do would make.

At first, she was confident. Almost lazy. She'd stand on the temporary safe spot, an instant of calm in the sea of blades and spears and watch the swinging pendulums and spring-powered scythes with her head turned sideways, counting and studying. Then there would be a simple step, or a weightless jump, steel swishing so close to her coat she could've used to shave the tuft off her muzzle.

She was dragging out the time, waiting for the water to run out, and the seapony machines and contraptions to stop along it. The door would then close and the Elder would have to waste another day, waiting for the seaponies to sing again. That, however, was before she had missed her mark.

She did not miscalculate, she did not slip — she just hesitated, at the last instant before the jump, the slightest give of her rear-left leg.

I can only imagine what she was thinking, in that fleeting moment when she knew that she would land on the edge of the whirling buzz saw instead of the safety of the firm stone, but she made her decision instantly, whether right or wrong. Her wing unfurled, adding a single flap to get her to safety. A single flap, a single moment her wings were open, and the swinging pendulums clipped her.

Just barely. The five-ton weight only touched the last inches of her alulas, as she twisted her body into muscle-rending corkscrew between two traps, but it was enough to send her into a spin and take her of course. From that point there was no more lazy precision, no careful calculation, only raw, desperate speed and nigh-impossible agility as she jumped, tumbled and spun, slipping and regaining her footing, jeopardy to jeopardy, danger to danger, navigating the labyrinth with nothing but pure reflex and nigh-blind luck.

She made it through.

I sighed with relief.

Bruised, battered, bleeding from dozens of cuts and abrasions, Daring Do was alive, pushing with the last of her strength on the bar that held the door open.

Silence was deafening.

All could hear the gnashing of Elder's teeth before he reluctantly clasped his paws in silent applause. And as everypony stomped on the ground, cheering the hero's hard-won victory, I could not hear the falling water anymore.

The last trial — for us, and for Daring Do — would have to wait another day.

It took all of the seaponies now, both the Voice and the nobles to sing the note that opened the path to the final gate. The clockwork trap moved around us, folding onto itself and retreating into the walls, revealing the third gate beyond.

Unlike the steel and copper of the traps, or seamless white masonry of the palace, the third gate was rather crude - no more than a dolmen of barely cut stones, adorned with nothing but uneven writing burned into the granite:

Treasures unequaled within me lie and everything you ever wanted is here.

Pleasure destroys the best in mare; Truth destroys the worst.
If you have goal above happiness, then enter, otherwise let rest.

“The Labyrinth.”

“The Treasury.”

“The Heart of the City.”

The seaponies not-quite-explained.

“Any one thing you may take. She who gets to the coin first shall be the one take it.”

“So, Ahuizotl, how are you in a foot race?” Daring Do finished bandaging her cuts and bruises and was back to being her annoying cocky self, trying to get a raise out of the Elder. She mock-flapped her wings. “I’ll give you a head start.”

“The little princess will do it,” Green said before the Elder could answer. Her hoof poked my side, so as to leave no doubts as to who shall be Ahuizotl’s champion in the last trial.

“A unicorn racing the pegasus?” I protested, “Isn’t that a little unfair?”

“It is not the fastest who comes first,” the seaponies answered. “She who has…”

“...the strength...”

“...the will...”

“...the desire...”

“..shall be the first to reach her prize.”

I stretched my hoof towards the gate, and a spark of power shocked me like static.

“Tomorrow,” the seaponies said. “When the water flows.”

***

I stayed at the mouth of the labyrinth long after everyone has left, feeling the draft of the strange power that came from it, and trying to divine the meaning behind the strange warning on the gate.

“You think too much, little princess.” Green appeared out of nowhere behind me, as was her habit. “That’s your problem.”

I glared. It was not very effective.

“Come with me, pumpkin. I’ll show you a secret.”

“What secret?” A promise of secrets was definitely a distraction I could use.

“Now if I told you,” She said, sounding awfully smug. “It wouldn’t be a secret, now would it?”

I snorted and followed her. The creepy arch and the creepier message could wait until tomorrow.

Midst Angry Waves and Darkness Vague

"Here we are," Green announced with satisfaction.

I looked around, trying to figure out what the promised secret was. The place didn't look like much - a part of seapony city just like any other, a small building squatted in between two tall towers. No water wheels, no engines, barely any magical crystals to give us light.

“What are we doing here?” I finally asked, somewhat annoyed.

“Sitting here, thinking about the scary future, and big mean Daring Do ain’t gonna do you a lick of good. But the first rule of fighting someone — there is always a weakness, pumpkin. A chink in the armour.“ She slipped underneath me, yanking me up on her back, like giving a piggyback ride to a little filly so that I could see inside through the thin gap in the shutters, “You just gotta know where to look"

It was a room - a small and cramped apartment, made smaller by the furniture rearranged into barricades and obstacles for any who try to reach the mess of blankets, pillows and sleeping bags in the centre twisted into a pegasi-style nest.

Daring Do was there. She looked… tired. Not the incarnation of speed and grace and self-assured cockiness I was expecting to see, not a hero of legend. Her movements were slow, almost arthritic, as she tried not to bother the bandaged fresh wounds and the burns of her scrap with Green.

On the single non-upturned table of the room, a statue stood - a tiny idol, maybe a few hooves high. An ugly little thing in the image of a pony, roughly cut from porous stone and adorned with green jade.

She touched her forehead to the statue, grunting with the pain of the effort, and whispered strange, whistling words to the idol like a lover whispering sweet nothings to her beau. It animated, the shine of green and purple magic running over the mare's body, making the tattoos and symbols underneath her coat visible when they burned before winking out.

For a few seconds she stood immovable, as if trying to delay what came next, fighting against a burning, gnawing, inescapable need, before she unpacked an automatic injector from one of the pouches of her belt and tested the needle with her hoof, making sure that there were no air bubbles in the solution.

A touch of the injector to the artery along her neck was like an afterthought, hidden by her mane and the hiss of the mechanism so quiet I probably imagined rather than heard it.

Slowly her expression relaxed, and she finally curled in a ball down in her little nest of pillows and blankets, falling asleep.

I staggered back, dropping off Green’s back awkwardly. She was using... morphine? Ace? Something else? — it didn’t matter. It was mind-boggling... and it made sense. That’s what Green wanted to show me: We only see our heroes in their shining moments when they save the day. They - they get to live with the consequences. How many fights did Daring Do have? How many times has she saved the world?

How many bones did she have broken and never properly healed? How many ligaments torn, how many scars, infections, and weather-pains? If this adventure was any indication, it was a wonder she could still move at all, not that she needed painkillers to sleep.

"Why did you show this to me?" I asked, hoarse with the revelation.

"You're a quick learner, pumpkin.” She mussed my hair, before settling her hoof to poke me in the forehead. “But you're still a little princess, with your prissy little princessy thoughts in your pretty little head. Against Daring Do, you'll need an edge." She nodded towards the home of the hero behind us. "That will be it."

She was… not wrong. Again. With my magic, I could probably beat Daring Do in a straight fight or even a fair race. Maybe. With her wounded and hurting and tired I had a chance — if I could actually muster the resolve to fight the hero with my full strength. In the battle of wills and desire, confused and conflicted as I was, I’d need all the help I could get.

"Why me, then?" I asked out of sheer contrariness. "You do it then, or Ahuizotl, if I am such a— " I made the air quotes with my hooves “— ‘princess’”.

She shrugged "Big Blue has the impulse control and focus of a three-year-old. And mystical quests are not in my job description. That leaves you."

“Fine.” It was a futile argument anyways. She was right… she always was, no matter how much it annoyed me.

I considered the problem, rummaging through the magics and sorceries I knew, fitting them like a puzzle with a new piece, and then I nodded, almost entirely sure. The very idea made me throw up inside my mouth, and that magic was not the sort they'd teach you in Celestia's school, but it would work. It would let me win, and that was all that mattered.

“But that’s not the magics I can just cast off the tip of my horn. I’d need some things… not all of them common… or legal, at least not in Equestria.”

“Alright.”

“Alright?!” I ran after her - again. “You know where to find I don’t even know what yet, in the middle of the city you’ve never been to? At night?”

She shrugged as if it were self-evident.

“How?!”

She looked at me as she trotted.

“There is always just one city, pumpkin. No matter who built it, no matter where and when the pattern is always the same - a city is a city is a city. Appearances may be different, but the function remains the same.” She shrugged. “Besides, what do you think I was doing yesterday?”

“...Oh.”

***

Whatever reconnaissance Green had done yesterday, it still took us quite a while before we found any substantial leads. It took a lot of sifting through the shadiest corners of the city, a lot of very insistent asking and almost all of my coin. It did not help that I was not entirely sure what was it we were looking for — there were many things that could work, but most were rare and secret, much more so in a hidden City cut off from the rest of the world.

Without that, we would never find the place, no matter what Green may have been saying about all cities being the same. I, for one, could've walked through that little alley a hundred times and be none the wiser. Even the street itself was pretty hard to find — a dead-ended offshoot between the buildings so narrow a loaded pony wouldn't be able to pass between the walls; and, at one point, just before you'd reach the place, the cancerous growth of the coral building across made you kneel to pass until your belly almost touched the seabed.

We passed down the narrow passageway, winding, slippery. By the light of cracked gemstone, we found the latch through which we made our passage to the long, high room, the water within thick and heavy with the sweet and musky scent of ethane. The inside was filled with the layers and layers of mats and hammocks, like a giant drunken spider's nest, and the sweet poison waxed and waned through, seeping through the jagged cracks in the floor in transparent shimmers.

The hall was lighted with a sparse magic light, dulled and distorted in the bent bronze mirrors that hung at odd angles across from the gems, reflecting the quivering disks of light, giving the whole place a strange, angled geometry that made it feel vast and cramped at the same time.

Through the gloom one could dimly catch a glimpse of bodies lying in strange fantastic poses, twitching and spasming, forelegs bent and heads snapped up on twisted necks, chins pointing upwards. Here and there the water would be disturbed when they suddenly coiled and arched, raising waves with their tails. Most of them were silent, but some muttered to themselves and others joined together, almost singing or chanting in strange, pitch-changing voices — meaningless gibberish language, paroxysms of glossolalia brought with the spasms.

“You take me to the nicest places,” I deadpanned.

Green just snorted, picking up an addict with her hooves. It protested weakly, pawing at her hoof. “We’re in the right place at least. Look.”

I moved closer, forcing the seapony’s eyelids open and peering into the unseeing eyes of her little catch. We were in the right place alright — the unmistakable net of ink-black capillaries on the jaundiced sclera, the stiff, anaemic movements and the subtle, sweet stench of subcutaneous rot proved both my worst expectations and my best hopes at once.

This establishment did not just offer little games with the Delfilly prophecy-gas. The ponies here weren’t just chasing the colourful dreams and visions that beckoned with false meanings. These symptoms were a product of something far more serious and sinister. Something that we came here for, and something I really, really did not want to find.

I was not even supposed to know about things like this - it was definitely not in the curriculum my Princess has assigned me. But I was always curious sort, and in the same research that has led me to Ahuizotl and his quest, I've had to comb through much of the lore forgotten and forbidden in the shining Canterlot, and this was one of the worst of all of them, a bastard legacy of the Frozen North, ended up in the depth of the sea through ways unknown.

The darkest of the dark magics.

All it took was one moment of weakness, a single chink in the armour of the mind for the shard of the Black Gem to set its roots into the pony spirit. It would enhance their high, prolong and bring them almost more pleasure than they could endure… and it would keep them coming back for the next fix and the next, and the next, all the while binding their spirits and their will with darkness. Those in thrall of this magic would waste away - their minds turning dull, their bodies rotting from inside out and their spirits only desiring sweet oblivion of the drug-induced visions spiked with the magic of the black gemstone.

It was a perfect weapon, suited right for the very weakness I saw in Daring Do. She’d have no chance against it.

I breathed in deep to say something, the sweet fumes of the poisonous gas clawing at my throat, and I felt the familiar cramp and vertigo of the flashback as I saw my reflection in the yellow eyes of the seapony and his reflection in the reflection of my eyes, an abyss of infinite recursions…

...stood in the shadow of the school on the bank of a river, and the flame of my power the rising sun, coloured the land blood-red underneath my feet.

"Through blood and through law, all that beneath me shall serve!"

I said thought, and they rose from their knees, toy soldiers devoid of anything but their owners will.

Stupid, prissy, princess-y thoughts and doubts. This was no time to second-guess myself. I knew I had to win this, that I could not take any risk of defeat.

“Yeah, that’s the place.” My voice strained with the effort to seem normal. It sounded hollow and muted as if it was somewhere far off. “But the thing we’re looking for will be hidden…”

I tried to move, slow and jerky, muscles spasming and cramping out of tune. I breathed in deep, feeling the sweet fumes of the poisonous gas claw at my throat...

The fire crept down my neck from the crown The ice crept up my limb from the staff turning my body red when the wings ripped out of my back in a shower of blood. turning my eyes and mane snow white.
A purple girl silly orange pony stood in my way, digging her legs into the ground.

I stepped over the crack, as we made our way through the hall, dodging the addict-filled hammocks. My muscles cramped with the shake, and I almost fell, but Green did not seem to notice. I breathed in deep, feeling the sweet fumes of the poisonous gas claw at my throat.

Those amethyst emerald eyes pierced me even from across the courtyard battlefield with their sheer intensity. Reality rippled, and a power, world-rending and heavy filled the air.

I shook my head chasing away the vision, and breathed in deep, feeling the clear, cold water bring me back to reality. We made it across, to the ladder that lead away from the hall, and now our way was barred by the bouncer who did not seem to be inclined to let us through.

"... and this is a bad neighbourhood,” he grinned, with what I’m sure he thought was a menacing expression. “Why, there was a fight, just the other day..." The realization slowly dawned as he talked and he gulped, looking at us with sudden fear, "With the outsiders. Many ponies got hurt."

"Anyone crippled?" I asked, mildly concerned.

"No... they're all going to recover".

"Professional work, I'd say." Green looked him directly in the eyes.

He could add two and two together... and he did not like the result.

"Well?" She hurried him along.

He hesitated for another fifteen seconds, and I thought him a very brave pony for it.

"Downstairs.” He passed Green the key and floated aside ”Purple Room.”

"Stay out, little princess," she said, stopping in the archway so that I couldn't follow her in. "Somepony comes by - you keep them here." Ignoring my feeble protestations, she turned the lock and slipped into the corridor behind it. "And stay out." The door clicked right in my face.

I sat on my haunches, back to the door, fuming. Being demoted to lookout did not sit well with me. I was an adult pony, I have proved myself in our expedition and I could handle whatever it is she was going to do.

"... So," I said, as the sound of steps behind the door became indistinguishable. "Busy day?"

The seapony clerk glanced sideways at me.

"... not really."

Silence dragged.

“Do you, like get tips for—” my next question was suddenly interrupted by a scream, sudden and unexpected rang from underneath — a cry of pain. It wasn’t loud, coming from afar, muffled by the door, but it was unmistakable - that was not the sound of the fight. This scream, the long, ululating, throat-ripping scream, it was a sign of something gone horribly wrong. Maybe Green...

I shook my head. I could not imagine Green screaming like that, no matter what the cause.

"It can't be her, can it?" I asked my involuntary companion. He shrugged unhelpfully.

I paced along the door, listening intently for any trace of sound. Seconds dragged by, each more unbearable than the next. And then again - a scream, primal and rippling.

Enough.

I couldn’t just sit in the time-out corner when something was clearly not going to plan. I needed to act.

Somnos I whispered, releasing the spell I had prepared before the evening started. It unfurled, a thin latticework of a sleeping spell enveloping the pony. I adjusted him in the seat a bit and pried the door open.

The tunnel turned, and turned again, leading me to below the main hall, where the source of the poison gas was. On each flight the seaponies floated lifelessly in the air, choked out or knocked out — by Green Glow, I assumed.

It ended in a cul-de-sac, with multiple coloured doors, all open wide and empty, save for a single purple door.I crept slowly along the wall, listening and watching for the merest sign of Green, spells buzzing at the tip of my horn, and slowly I peeped inside the Purple Room.

This room was not empty as the others were, crammed full of seaponies, hovering in the air. Nopony moved, so Green must've been knocked out or surrendered, and she needed my help... I forced myself to breathe, ignore everything and plan.

Six of them. Armed - knives and short spears, tipped with sharpened coral shards. All standing immobile around something in the centre of the room, obscuring my view save for a single glimpse of the pale green coat. They were big and strong. Raw, unpolished strength, untrained and unstretched, their own muscle would be their disadvantage, making them slow and clumsy.

With no magic and only crude weapons, I knew I could take them, even underwater, even in close quarters. I jumped in, spells at the ready, battle cry at my lips, and they turned to me, sharp bronze unsheathed and shining in the glow of the fluorescent crystals, too slow, too uncoordinated, too easy...

A scream - a third one, even more full of horrid, desperate pain, raked across our eardrums. Our nascent scrap forgotten, all of us turned to its source.

Green was standing in the middle of the ransacked room, over a mound of something blue, black and scaly, smoking slightly with dissipating reddish mist.

"Please..." it said, in a raspy, hoarse whisper, and slowly it dawned on me that this misshapen combination of scales and fins, looking more like a pile of rags than a creature, was a pony, a broken, bleeding, but still living thing.

"Tut-tut," Green tutted at us, like a teacher scolding rambunctious schoolfoals, as she gripped the extremity of the pony under her hooves almost gently. "Don't interrupt, or I'll have to hurt this little seapony more."

My opponents hesitated, unsure what to do. I froze too, uneasy about what was going on. Fighting was one thing, but this — this was cold-blooded torture. It was so very wrong...and yet I found myself unable to intervene or even look away.

"Please," it repeated, clearly not for the first time. "Please, please, please..." a monotone, mindless chant of fear and submission, gaining urgency and fervour as it felt Green’s grasp close on his limb. It begged and sobbed, no longer a sapient being, but instead a scared animal, a bundle of bleeding nerves, only able to say one thing, one unending, unstopping, droning supplication to the cruel, unheeding fate.

Somepony moved, perhaps shifting his position, perhaps even shuddering with the same fear and revulsion that I had felt, but it was enough. Green switched her grip and pulled, bones and joints lurching underneath the scales, bulging out his skin. A disturbing sight, accompanied by an equally unnerving squealing screech of pain.

Everypony froze again, afraid to even breathe, not to set off another shift of Green's hooves.

"Please..."

She leaned over her victim. "Give it to me," she said, with the exaggerated patience of somepony who has already repeated herself too many times. "Give me what I want, little pony, or there will be more pain for you.”

Finally, the chant stopped, and it drew a breath with a sob, resounding in the silence of the room. Still defiant, despite the fear and the pain.

In my mind I took up his chant where it stopped, cursing and begging it to please talk before Green would have to do something else. Something truly horrible.

"You have many bones," she said, and her calm, bored tone entirely diverted from the grisly details of what she did made the whole thing surreal.

"The humerus..." She did something with the foreleg she held, promoting another set of screams.

"The radius..."

It shivered and shook, but still kept its mouth shut.

"The ulna...", she continued, her forelegs sliding along the now misshapen and oddly angled extremity. "I will break them, little seapony. I will break them so that the shards will protrude into the nerves. I shall shatter them in such a way that no doctor, no magic will ever be able to repair it. Do you understand?"

Besides my will, I imagined the thing she described — a compound open fracture, a mess of broken bone and torn muscles, and I nearly threw up.

Whether it was that businesslike, distracted tone, the threat that carried the credibility of absolute, inevitable fact, or the silent pressure of our horrified gazes, it broke the seapony.

“I’ll talk-” He muttered, barely audible. “I’ll tell you where it is. Please...”

She broke his foreleg anyway. The sharp crack and jagged bone piercing through the skin. A scream cutting across my eardrums like the sound of nails on the chalkboard.

“Why did you do that?!” I shouted, finally snapping, from the cold and above all -- pointless violence of my partner, trying to push her away from him. She wouldn’t budge, too heavy with her own magic.

She turned to me instead, quick as a whip and smashed her forehead into my face. Sudden, blinding pain turned my vision black, and before I could do anything, the next blow to my chest threw me on the ground and kept me there.

I tried to move, and her hoof that pinned me down took aflame, steam boiling in a thick plume around her leg, turning a bruise into a burn. I screamed and twisted, as she held me fast.

“Do not. Ever. Question me in front of others.” She said calmly. “Understand?”

“Yes! Yes! I understand!” I screamed. I would’ve said anything to stop the pain, “Please!”

She moved her hoof down to burn a fresh patch of skin, dialling the pain from agony to merely torturous as she did.

“Shh, easy, pumpkin.” Her lips touched my ear, her gentle tone clashing with her actions. “Listen carefully and don’t interrupt.”

I bit my lip, fighting back sobs and cries of pain, and tried to ignore the sickeningly sweet smell of my own coat and skin burning filling my nose. Pain, finding no release, filled my mind and crashed against the insides of my skull like a battering ram, becoming more unbearable by the second. It was my turn to pick up the chant of supplication now in my head, repetitive nigh-meaningless word bashing against the insides of my skull, urging me to prostrate myself before the thing that held me with fire and pain, to please, please, pleasepleaseplease, anything--

“First rule of life: An unprovoked, disproportional aggression scares ponies. If you do it to them, as I am doing it to you now...” she twisted her hoof, and my vision exploded with white-hot pain, as my body arched, almost snapping my spine in a futile effort to escape the burning hoof on my chest. Somewhere far I could hear a scream, only dimly aware that it was my own.

She relented for a second, leaving the place for her words to sink in, as her hoof kept frying off my coat inches at a time.

“...they remember feeling helpless. Feeling powerless to stop you. Feeling that you can do anything to them, at any time without reason or provocation and that nopony could stop you if you chose to do it again. That gives you power over them.”

She nibbled my ear - a pinprick of sensation against the vast canopy of pain that was my mind.

“Do you understand why I did it now?”.

I nodded, and suddenly the pain… it wasn’t gone, but her hoof was off the burned line all across my barrel, and what remained of the pain was like a breeze compared to what was done to me a second ago.

I panted, regaining my breath, but I was not in any rush to stand up.

Green Glow was already back to her hostage, ignoring me completely, her back turned to me, and for a second I imagined that I could stab her in the back. A spell, a knife even, the one with the night-black blade, still stowed in my saddlebag - vengeance for what she just did to me. But even as I thought of that, I felt it within me: Fear. Helplessness. The knowledge that somepony next to me could at any moment turn into an unhinged, cold-blooded, torturing psychopath turned my knees to jelly and made my magic retreat into the depths of my mind.

She may have been insane, but she was right - after what happened I no more could’ve attacked her than I could’ve cut off my own leg. Any thought of revenge drowned in an icy sea of fear before I could even fully think it.

***

I don't remember how I got back to our quarters, save that the seaponies made no motion to stop her, scattering away from Green's presence, when she stole their little treasure or when she walked away dragging me with her back to our rooms.

I hid in my room for most of the day, trying to lie down so that my burned chest would not hurt quite as much. But even through the haze of the numbing spells, I could feel the constant buzz of the pain and even worse than the pain was the fear that made me shudder and tighten into a ball every time I’d spot a shadow under the door.

I fell in and out of the troubled short naps, filled with the same cold fear and numb pain that filled my waking hours until I woke up to the presence by my side, and if I did not scream with fear, it was only because the terror has frozen my throat shut.

She was there, by the side of my bed. In my room. Right next to me. I scooched away frantically, summoning my magics to defend myself, to run away, to do something before…

“Easy, Princess.” She lifted both her hooves in the air, as she sat down, “I am here to help.” She nodded towards a small jar of some sweet-smelling salve she left by my side.

“I-I am fine,” I struggled the words out of my mouth, hoping it would placate her so she would go away.
“You’re not,” she said, any hints of warmness gone from her voice. “Get over here.”

I could not argue with her. Not after today. Obediently, I got from underneath my blanket and trotted up to her so that she could reach my burn mark -- the one she herself had left on my barrel.

Her salve-covered hoof traced along the mark, bringing coolness to the burning wound, and despite myself, I shivered with pleasure as I felt her earth pony magic flow into me, easing my pain.

She laid me gently on the floor, as she kept working over the scorch mark, and I moaned a little from the sheer relief her hooves brought me.

“I won’t say I’m sorry, pumpkin. You were stupid, and you broke my play, so I had to double-up. Otherwise, we’d have to fight all those ponies, and that would’ve been inefficient.”

She dabbed her hoof in the jar again and returned to flooding my naked nerves with her magic. “First rule - you back my play or you back away. I will do the same for you. Then we can work together. Ok?”

“Y-yes.” I nodded, avoiding her eyes. At that time I would’ve agreed if she said that moon was made of cheese and that Celestia was a stallion, lest her gentle ministrations turn into another abject lesson… but she also made sense. We were few and we had to back each other up, otherwise, we would fail in our mission - or worse. “I understand. I’m sorry.”

“Never apologize, little princess. Makes you look weak, and in this line of work that is something you can’t afford.” She sighed. “Do better.”

I fell asleep, my head on her lap, her hoof still tracing my burn with a gentle flow of her magic.

***

When I woke up, she was gone, and I was alone tucked in my cot.

I stayed in my bed for a while, listening to the seapony song, and the rushing of the water it summoned - the sounds that woke me. It was the time. Soon the treasury would be opened, and I would go in and bring out the coin of stone, the token of Ahuizotl’s power.

I did not want to leave this room. Beyond the doors, a monster lurked, green fur and green flames, pain and fear, the mere thought of her making me want to curl into a ball. But then again — I wasn't safe from her here either. She could come in at any time and it was not a monster that could be held at bay by a night light or hiding under a blanket.

Why would she do that to me? I touched gingerly the burn mark on my chest. It didn’t quite hurt anymore, already getting better with the power of her healing salve and her magic, but the mark was there and so was the memory. I liked her. I trusted her and she…

I shut my eyes, trying to push away the memory of blinding pain and burning flesh.

It was my own fault. I clutched to this thought like a drowning mare grasping for a straw. She didn't really want to hurt me, she said so herself. It was my own fault that I screwed up, that I put the both of us in danger, so shehad to do it. That was the only explanation that made sense. If I wouldn't screw up anymore, not like with the temple, not like with the stupid seapony gang in the pub, not like yesterday, if I just did better like she said, everything would be fine.

I dropped off my bed. I couldn’t dawdle, couldn’t wait for her to go get me and have to take care of me again. Grabbing my cloak and my bags I double-checked everything to make sure I didn't make any mistakes.

I would do better this time.

The Black Gem, on a simple iron chain, Green left for me, shone softly on the nightstand, its putrid magics dormant for a time. It fit snugly behind the pin of my cloak, and I could feel the pulse of its rotten power against my throat.

I would not make her fix things for me again. Fix meagain.

I trotted out.

They already waited for me, Ahuizotl's tail-paw swishing impatiently.

"Are you ready, pony mine?"

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

"Let me see,"Green trotted to me and checked me over, testing the fit of my harness, fixing some tiny flaws and tightening the buckles with her teeth, until she was satisfied with the inspection. For one insane moment, it reminded me of my mom checking my dress for my first day of school.

It took all of my willpower not to scream.

"All right, pumpkin, you can do this. You get fifteen minutes head-start, then Daring Do goes in after you. Remember - breathe, focus, and if the push comes to shove, you have the Gem." Her hoof pushed gently on the still-tender skin of my chest "Don't let me down."

I nodded, and trotted to the entrance, reading the warning again. The letters have not changed from the previous time I read them and the warning was no more clear, but the power within, that I could feel with the surface of my skin, like a cold mist. That and the ominous warning at the doors -- it gave me pause. I got used to acting with somepony to back me up, but now I’d be going in alone, and it scared me.

Then another fear came, a memory of a flame and a scream, reminding that I had no choice in the matter. Sharp and painful, like a lash, it washed everything else away, and under the unyielding emerald gaze that I just knew was watching my every move, I took a breath and stepped into the darkness.

The treasury of the sunken city defied description or imagination.

Along the labyrinthine sequence of twisting corridors cut in the stone, rooms were strewn, seemingly without logic or sequence, each hall filled with more treasures than the next:

Riches almost beyond compare, perhaps equal to the royal treasury of Сanterlot - piles upon piles of gold and gems, moonsilver and orichalcum, jade and pearls the size of my head. Stones, ingots and coins covered the floors in mounds and hoards, uncounted and perhaps uncountable in their plenty.

Libraries, where stone tablets with knowledge ancient and arcane were stacked so high, the tops of the shelves disappeared into the darkness. The legendary knowledge of the sunken city, history preserved that has been lost to Equestria for centuries, new spells and new magics altogether hidden within.

Creatures that the surface language had no names for imprisoned in magic gems, promising power and service for their freedom, their blood-lust and might radiating off their prisons...

The magic I felt at the entrance permeated the labyrinth. It rolled with a green mist smelling faintly of peppermint and mangoes, messing with my mind and making me unable to distinguish between what was real, and what -- merely clever mirages and traps of the treasury, tempting me to break off my path; to go for this bit of magic, or this book or that gem. Everything seemed a little bit off as if in a dream, rooms swirling and flowing into each other as I passed them by.

At first, I did not particularly care for the temptation of the treasury: I had no use for gold or treasures, no matter how exotic or opulent. Knowledge could not avail me, else I would have long since found my solace in the library of Canterlot. Creatures imprisoned were of no interest - if seaponies could capture them, of what use could those be failures to me?

Even when something did catch my eye — a description of magics unknown in Equestria, a book of history lost to time everywhere but under the waves, my chest would ache, with dull, pulling throb — a reminder of the price of failure.

If only that were the greatest temptation of the labyrinth. If only that was all that the city had to offer…. but the deeper I got, the harder the magics of the place hit me, seeking out my heart's desires, and presenting them to me at every twist and every turn, as if trying to persuade me to leave my quest.

Mirrors, endless mirrors like doorways where I walked. Clear and mercurial, they were almost invisible - and what they reflected was not what was now, but what once had been.

"You have a very special gift, little pony.“ Princess Celestia smiled at me. “Unicorns with your abilities don't come up every century. Would you like to be my personal student?"

That was the promise behind the thin silver film of the mirror — to turn back the tides of time. A single step to take me back to when I was happy, to when I was free. To when Celestia looked at me and saw not something broken...but I was not a child, not anymore. Though my heart ached, I trotted on.

"Hello, little sun", the white mare, svelte and delicate and strong like only Saddle Arabians are, said. "Come back to me."

The heat of the desert sun, the sweetness of the date wine, the touch that once held me fast against the cold of the night in the desert - all that was but a step away. Forget the coin, the knife, and the name, cross the thin line that separated what is and what could have been... but I was not a love-struck filly, not anymore. Everything ends, and this sun has long since set for me. Though my heart bled, I walked forward.

Were those mirrors a lie?

Not all of them.

There was a magic to this corridor, so concentrated it made my horn tingle with the energies and my head spin. All the power of the City-Under-The-Waves, all that the seaponies have hoarded for over a millennium, growing it the depth of the sea and mining it from the seabed, every single little drop of it was here. It was power enough to bend the space and time and more than enough to change the fate of a single unicorn.

"You can do your caribou voodoo all you want,” I said, waving a freshly opened bottle of cider, “But there is just no way to cross-dimensional borders without a pre-existing sympathetic connection. That was conclusively proven by Clover the Clever!”

Salt-licks and cider all around, young and happy we were talking multiverse theory. No horn to call me to another world, no war, no death. Just me and my friends...but my chest burned with a sharp reminder, and I knew that I was not a friend. Not with nightmares and blood in my dreams, not with pain and fire on my mind. Though each step was as if upon a naked blade, I forced my way on.

Were those mirrors real?

Not all of them.

It would have been easy to trap the greedy and the hasty within an illusion, their dreams becoming their prison until their bodies rot away in the green mists of the treasury, never to be seen again. So much easier than to rip and twist the very fabric of the world inside out to make such wish come true. Perhaps that was what the warning at the doors had meant - truth or happiness, one cannot have them both.

I bumped him in the hip with a shoulder, and he bumped me back, the faintest trace of a smile on his lips. All was well in the world.

I slowed down, trying to catch the rays of the sun with my muzzle, and stood there for a few seconds, just enjoying the peace and quiet while it lasted. Birds were singing their chirpy accolades, and the summer was getting into its right, bringing warmth to the forest.

The world hung in perfect balance...

I put my hoof against the mirror sheen, and it rippled like water.

Was this mirror a lie?

It did not matter.

One step and I'd be taken back. Away from the doubts that threatened to rip me apart. Away from Ahuizotl and Green Glow and Daring Do. Away from the heroes and the villains, back into the war where you knew who your ally and your enemy was, where all that gave me nightmares and dreams filled with shameful, unbearable longing awaited.

Where he would still be alive, not pierced by my spell and a red-tailed arrow to his throat, bleeding slowly onto the snow.

I closed my eyes, but it didn't help - my memory filled the blanks, unfolding the inevitable chain of events, and I could not stop imagining it:

The fight and the argument. My stupid, selfish, hasty decision. The spells and arrows in the night and the blood-trailed retreat. The flashes of white and steel in the darkness of the cave. His eyes and mane turning white.. the flames coiling about him...my spell smashing into his defences like a battering ram...the red-tailed arrow in his throat...the light fading in his eyes...

Again and again, start to finish, an unbreakable chain of cause and effect. The chain the mirror promised to break and undo.

It was then that I understood, completely, to the roots of my soul - to make the next step, I would have to let my friend die again. I lifted my hoof….and I put it back down, staring at the mirror. That was just too much, too painful, too cruel a thing to demand. Torn between fear and desire, I froze, unable to look away, until I heard the sound of hoofsteps behind me.

***

I did not turn to look at Daring Do when she has finally caught up with me. I was too busy trying to hold my own mind together as it was ripped by an impossible decision that I had to make. Quietly she trotted up to me, and tentatively her wing touched my shoulder in a gesture of sudden comfort.

We sat in silence for a while, watching the mirror.

I wonder what desire did she see come true in the silver sheen of the magic veil, what failures re-written, what pains undone?

"Go home, little filly," she had finally said, gently. "You don't belong here."

I hesitated, feeling the warmth of her wing. Brave, kind Daring Do. There was little condescension in her tone - she honestly wanted what was best for me, even though I was on her enemy's side.

But she couldn't fix me, make me clean and good again. She could not make me forget the dreams of iron and blood, the nightmares of fire and magic and other worlds. Nopony in Equestria could. I had to get better. I had to be better - there was no other choice for me.

My horn lit up with a subtle light, seeping into the Black Gem on my neck, and lighting her with the dirty-black light.

No other spell would immediately incapacitate her - her own pegasus magic could protect her even if she could not dodge it in time. But this was a weapon uniquely suited against her.

I could see it seep into the chink she herself made in her armour, feel the call of the black magic sing its poisoned song to the leftover drugs in her blood, stretch and connect to the chemicals still bound to the neurons of her brain. The power that could hold a thousand in its thrall all focused on the single pony.

She stumbled on her hooves, feeling the sudden numbness of the drug hit her like a freighter train.

"Don't!" She fumbled for her tricks and tools, trying to do something, to move away. The true hero to the last, she tried to reason with me, a second’s hesitation negating whatever was left of her speed.

I was not a hero. I hit her again, pouring more power into the gemstone.

"I’m sorry-" I started... and then I stopped myself. Apologizing was a sign of weakness, and I was growing tired of being a weak little filly.

***

When I finally stumbled out of the labyrinth, I was swaying like a drunkard, half-blind with exhaustion.

Green appeared out of nowhere by my side, holding me up.

I spat out the coin I still held in my mouth. It landed slowly by Ahuizotl's feet without making a sound, raising a little cloud of sand, quickly dispersed in the water.

"Nice work, little princess," Green Glow whispered to me almost tenderly and finally the horrid tempest of emotions that’s been gripping me started to calm down. Too tired and numb to be afraid, I let myself lean more against her, burying my muzzle in her mane. She was warm and steady, a perfect counterpoint for the shakes and shivers that were still running through my body.

Green was beginning to take me away from the labyrinth when Daring Do appeared.

I strained to see what would happen with the hero, and Green stopped, letting me see what my magic and my treachery have done.

"Will you go back on your word, seaponies?" Ahuizotl asked, and though he did not raise his voice there was once again the steel in his tone, the power and the darkness of the depths he commanded.

"By our word we are bound, Elder." The seaponies answered, their voices as clear and beautiful as ever. “As you will, so shall it be.”

"You are late, Nightwatcher." They turned to Daring Do and the guards surrounded the hero. "Thus you're forfeit. Your fate is Drowner's to decide."

I wondered briefly if there was any expression on their muzzles as they condemned the saviour of their city to Ahuizotl's decision.

"This shall be a spectacle for the ages," Ahuizotl declared almost regally. "My enemy merits no less."

"But Drowner..." The seaponies tried to protest. "The time—"

"Don't worry, ponies.” He interrupted them with a wave of his paw.” I shall stay the deeps while we are guests of your city. Now, for the Daring Do, I will need a hundred male puffer-fish, three dozen sharks, an immaculate black pearl..."

Daring Do did not protest or fight when they took her away. I wished that she would. That, however pointless it may be, she'd try to run away, to escape. But she was bound by her word, as all of us were.

It was too late for any of us to change anything. The lot has been cast, and none could change the outcome. Not the seaponies, now chaining the once saviour of their city. Not the hero, who gave her word. Not me, following Green obediently to the darkness of my room.

I looked at the tiny sparks of the seapony guards, carrying the hero to a dungeon until they disappeared into the tower.

It was too late.

***

Green let me rest while she packed our things and supplies, but not before making sure I was covered by every blanket she could scour, and giving me her flask.

Whatever was inside, it smelled like rubbing alcohol and tasted like boiling acid. The first sip made me splutter and cough like a child trying cider for the first time, setting my throat and stomach aflame. The drink must have had enough ethanol in it to kill a horse — literally. Even if Green may have somehow been able to process it with her earth pony resilience, it must have meant a sure death for me.

I took another long drink, relishing the horrid, burning taste.

Surprisingly, I did not die. Instead, the fire in my belly it has started seemed to calm my shakes and shivers, taking the edge off.

I wanted to stay in the room, in the safety and warmth of the blankets, drinking the peaty, burning drink until I’d fall asleep or die of alcohol poisoning. Maybe Green would stay away and leave me alone or maybe she would come in to check up on me - I was no longer sure which of those I wanted and which I was afraid of.

But I couldn't. Somewhere there, in the beautiful white tower - I knew which one, I could find it in this underwater city - somewhere there Daring Do was chained and tied, and waiting for her doom. Doom that I have summoned through black magic and cheating.

It was not a question of me being a good pony - that notion was already dispelled when I watched a pony tortured and did not intervene, when I summoned forbidden magics against a hero who only wanted to help me. But there was something in me that demanded to fix it, the last bit of silly, princess-y thoughts in my head, and if ignored it, if I did not leave this room, if I let the fear make me stay, curled up and powerless before the mere thought of Green being outside, I would be stuck here forever. No matter where I’d go, no matter what I’d do, I’d forever stay the hurt little girl, curled under the blanket in the tiny room, afraid of the monster outside.

My limbs refused to listen when I tried to stand up and my chest flashed with a memory of the pain. I breathed it away and forced my muscles and my mind to obey the will, beating down the brewing shake before it could cripple me. With an almost desperate effort, my magic reached to open the door, revealing Green right there, almost on my porch.

She was lying idly, a hoof-file in her mouth and a journal in front of her. Arcane Monthly with Royal Astronomer Night Light smiling off the page. I froze mid-step, my thoughts lost and scattered like a school of frightened fish as soon as I saw her.

“Err… I was… I just...” I tried to stammer out a good excuse, my throat suddenly dry.

“Don’t care, pumpkin.” She cut off my jumbled explanation with a wave of her hoof, “First rule of life - never explain yourself.”

I nodded nervously and tried to trot away before she could change her mind.

“Princess,” Green Glow sighed, and pushed her journal aside, fixing me in place with her emerald gaze. “Let me give you a piece of advice.”

To hear the usually mocking and indifferent mercenary so serious gave me pause, so I trotted over to her and sat on the ground by her side.

“You think life is complicated. There are good choices and bad choices, what you want and what others expect of you and what you want to see yourself as. The things you tell yourself and others, truth and lies, but it’s not that hard.” She leaned in to look me in the eyes, so close, I could almost feel her breath on my muzzle, sweet and a little bit minty. Fear and… something else rose from within me, as I sat there, transfixed by her gaze.

“You figure out what you want, and then you find a way to take it. Want. Take. Have; and then move on. That’s all there is to life.”

Before I would find the words to reply, she released me with a wave of her hoof, returning back to her hoof-polishing and reading.

Slowly I breathed again, making the first step away, into the eternal shine of the City-Under-Waves. Nothing happened. No voice to call me back, no touch of her green forelegs to drag me back

I took another tentative step, and then another.

Why did Green let me go? She must’ve known, there was no way she didn’t know, what I intended to do. And yet she seemed content to just sit there with her journal and fiddling with her hooves, without a single care in the world, even though I knew without a doubt, just as I was sure that she knew, that a single word from her, a single glance, and I would not even dare to leave my room.

I longed for another drink of Green Glow's sweet poison, to chase away the ice in my guts and add to the buzz in my head to push away the thoughts.

Focus, little princess. Concentrate on what you're doing right now. Sort everything else later.

I shuddered when I almost heard her hoarse voice in the back of my mind, but she was right. I pushed my doubts and fears away, and ran faster, navigating my way back to the underwater dungeons. Steps turned into a trot, then into a full gallop, when I forced my body to move past exhaustion, hoping that the pain of protesting muscles would distract me from the doubts and fears.

Awareness. If you’re not aware, you’re worse than useless.

It was raining, for the first time in the City-under-The-Waves. The pearly dome slowly letting the deeps to seep through in the tiny, mist-like drops. The water ran in the streets, overflowing from the channels of the city, almost fetlock-deep now, and rising by the hour. The chaos of the seaponies, frantically swimming to and fro, in the attempts to salvage what could be salvaged, to hide from the waves all that could be hidden, to silence the forges and extinguish the fires, was a perfect cover for a lone unicorn to slip by unnoticed.

Breathe, pumpkin.

My every nerve stretched thin I crept through the coral tower, hiding in the shadows at the slightest noise. It was not hard to find it, nor to evade the nominal guard of the seaponies, even if not quite as perfunctory as their Canterlot counterparts or to find my way into dungeons. A memory of the silent raid of another castle in another world came to me unbidden, but I pushed it away.

A sleep-spell took care of the last few guards, and by the door of the cell, I hesitated.

Breathe. In and out.

My magic wavered when I picked the lock. It took me a few tries before I finally pried it open, and so before Daring Do I stood once more.

There was not much of a cell, behind the stone doors. A circular room lit brightly by a few crystals, with nothing in it bar a pony-sized stone slab of a table. Daring Do was tied to it by her hooves with wide stretches of seaweed used as restraints.

She raised her head to the sound of the doors opening and looked at me coldly.

Did she hate me? Was she disappointed? Was she scared? I'll never know.

“We’re on the same side,” I said quietly, “I’ve got it covered, and I need you to stay away.”

I slipped her a knife. Not the one I stole from her, the one with the black blade, just a regular, blunted brass blade pilfered off the table on my way. If even a fraction of the tales of Daring Do's daring escapes were true, it would suffice.

Her eyes widened in surprise, but she said nothing.

“Please. Just don’t. Don’t follow, don’t try to stop us. Please”. I was rambling now, in hushed whispers. I was afraid… so very, very afraid. Of somepony noticing me. Of Green Glow changing her mind and following me here. Of my mission failing after all I’ve done. But most of all I was afraid that she wouldn’t listen, and then we’d have to fight her again, and then….

I stopped my train of thought.

Breathe.

Still, she said nothing, her lips pursed tight and in her eyes an indomitable stubbornness, more fit to an earth pony than a pegasus. Maybe - just maybe - I saw the tiniest of nods. Or, perhaps, it was just wishful thinking.

There were no more words to say, no more time to spare. I gave the hero one last, begging look, and snuck out of the cell.

Through the flooded city, water now reaching to my flanks, shying away from the dying gem-light and grieving seaponies, silent as a shadow, when, ready to make the last turn to the old museum, I found the Ahuizotl, waiting outside with Green Glow.

The Elder turned to me, and the coin of stone hanging off his collar shone for an instant from under his cloak, I felt a glimpse of its power like a hoof file across the naked bone of my horn.
"Can we go now?" he whined impatiently.

"Yeah," Green said, giving me an evaluating look. “Little princess is done with her business.” It wasn’t so much a question as a statement of fact, and I could not but be grateful I had no need to disagree.

She tossed my saddlebags, already packed, towards me.

I nodded and put them on, feeling the reassuring slosh of her flask inside.

And then I trotted after her and the Elder, knowing that I did all that I could have done.

***

Ahuizotl guided us through the back alleys and forgotten eddies of side channels and water covering the streets and spilling from the overflowing fountains retreated before the Elders to give us the way.

"They shall follow us, ponies mine," he said, while we trotted after him. "The seaponies do not expect me to miss the last trial of Daring Do. Once they realize that we have slipped their city, there will be a chase."

I did not ask what he meant, or how he knew. I have heard the seaponies' song, and I knew that they would pay any price to get the Elder's coin back. Within the borders of the city, we were safe - they offered us their wine and shared with us their bread, and as guests we were safe. But once we crossed the border and went outside, all the bets would be off, and It would be good if we had some distance on our side once that happened.

The seaponies were not as trusting as Ahuizotl would want us to believe, and even with all the bustle of waterproofing and protecting their city from the flood, with all the busywork the Elder has tasked them with, they still spared the guards to the exits of the city, to catch our escape.

There were two of them, floating silently right at the edge of the air and water, clad in mails, girt with the belts with their seashell-horns and armed with eel-shaped spears. Spears they pointed at us when they saw us approach, the tips of their eel-like spears sparkling with the electric charge.

"Drowner—" one of them started, but never had a chance to finish. Without breaking his stride Ahuizotl's snaked out his hand, grabbing him by the tail, and bashing him against the earth, like a fisherman breaking a fish against the rock. The other guard reached for the horn on his belt to call alarm, but Green was already on him, her forelimbs dragging him down and drowning him in the coils of a sleeper hold.

"There will be a chase," Ahuizotl repeated, as I cast the sleeping-spell upon the ponies so that they do not wake and raise alarm until we are gone. "We will not be able to fight them underwater—"

"Not much of a plan, then," Green noted.
.
“And even if we beat it, there will be another.” Ignoring the snide remark, the Elder reached for the pearly wall. The coin on his collar pulsed with thick, heavy power, and his claw parted the angry white magics, like a paper veil.

"And that’s supposed to make it better?" Green gathered me in, tight against her side, and followed him through. The heat of her body and the familiarity made the cold burn of the water much easier to bear.

"If you do your job, littlepony mine" Elder’s irritation erupted in his voice, once again deeper and stronger under water. "I shall open us a path. There, the little shrimp will never reach and there our business shall be concluded."

***

The ladder the Elder had led us to was different from the one we came in. It was steeper for one, the rough-hewn stairs higher and shorter, and it, while it did point back westwards, it lead not to the closed well of the pyramid we'd left behind, but further south, away from Equestria.

From the height of the first flight of stairs, I turned to give the city under the waves one last look. It wasn’t shining anymore - without the coin, the Deeps have reclaimed what was rightfully theirs, water on both sides of the nacreous veil making it dull and feeble in the underwater murk.

There’d be no more pearly-white shine of the air-dome. No more apples grown for the seaponies in the secret gardens under the sea, no more songs of the horns and the tinkly hanging-bells twirled by the circling air. No more rainbow-lighted waterfalls reflecting every colour of the gem-light.

From this far out, the city now looked not as the pearl of the sea, but like a ghost-town, dark and menacing, the rare lights of the bioluminescent fish barely seen from this distance.

I turned back and kept trotting. There was a long way ahead.

And in the Desert Whirlwind's Hurry

I turned a hard left, dodging a bolt of electricity from above, my hooves skidding along the polished stone in a fountain of sparks, and ran into an archway, trying to put something between me and the pursuers.

My lungs burned with exhaustion, making me pant and gasp for air, but the fear and the adrenaline pushed me to run faster, staining my muscles in our mad dash through the ruins.

The seaponies have caught up to us when we were almost out of the water, and I could already feel the sweet air on my coat. At first they appeared as merely sparkly dots down below, in the dark waters. But they gained on us quickly, until they resolved into seapony guard, clad in their armors and covered in protection of mother-pearl magics.

Their spears sparked with lightnings, swift in the saline seawater and the horns they had rung with a bone-rattling sound, making the stone ladder shake and tremble, the shockwave of their sound nearly throwing me off the ladder. I couldn’t fight them under water without access to wind and flame or even just good visibility. Even when I managed a few spells, slowing the seaponies down, entangling one in a net of a sleeping spell or encased a few of them in ice, protected by the shimmering auras of the mother-pearl magic they recovered and soon rejoined the pursuit again.

So we ran, even Ahuizotl switching from his leisurely gait into a low, сrouching canter. The maddeningly long marathon, at the top of our speed, all the way up the ladder, through an unfamiliar beach, where glass and soot mixed with sand making it sharp and black, into the nearby ruins, while the seaponies kept dogging us, flying in the air and appearing from underneath, floating through the tunnels that riddled the damned place, propelled and protected by the magic of their Mother-Pearl.

There was a scream somewhere above and beyond, where I didn’t dare to get distracted to look, a sound of hooves connecting with scales, and a second later Green Glow dropped by my side with the liquid grace of a panther.

“Focus, little princess. Breathe.”

She kept up with my pace with an almost insulting ease, and while I was panting, her own breathing was unlabored and deep, her mane barely tousled.

Another blast of seapony horns shook the earth, almost throwing me off my feet. I raised a shielding spell, feeling the push of the air compressed by the soundwaves ram against it.

Darkness misted in my eyes, the exhaustion taking its toll on my body.

Green disappeared again, running up some ruined ramp to find herself another victim, while I concentrated on following the blue flag of Ahuizotl's tail-paw far ahead.

We turned left, then right, weaving and bobbing under the cover of the ruins, the turns blurring together in my mind when suddenly there was nowhere to run any more.

The street ended up in the river, half-dried up, yet too deep to wade, too wide to leap. The bridge that crossed it once has long since crumbled and fell apart.

Ahuizotl lead us into the dead end.

The seaponies caught up to us again, and another group rose from their ambush in the river, surrounding us like a swarm of angry bees. The hum of the collective charge on their eel-like spears made the hairs of my mane and coat up stand on their ends.

Ahuizotl — I corrected myself, trying desperately to catch my breath — lead us into an ambush.

It was a perfect place for a trap - an old plaza of the ancient city, on one side - the once narrow and winding streets turned into impassable mountains of angular rubble and broken bricks by the ruins of houses, on the other - a half-dried river with a broken bridge, on all sides - the angry seaponies. There was nowhere to go.

I turned my shield into a dome, trying to hold off the attacks for another few seconds, but before I could, a seapony barrelled through the half-formed spell. His spear struck the Elder, ramming the golden point deep into his shoulder and drawing blood.

Ahuizotl screamed, an indignant cry of pain and surprise, and his tail-paw grabbed the offending seapony by the throat, ripping him off and slamming him into the ground with a bone-crushing force.

The Elder’s power rose, sending wobbles across my spell, and the nacreous protection around the seapony burst like a soap bubble.

“Hold the shield, pony mine.” Elder’s suddenly booming voice covered the crackling of seapony lightnings against my shield.

The seapony thrashed and writhed in the Elder’s paws, no longer able to breathe the air without the protection of his magic. Ahuizotl’s blood trickled down his arm, colouring his fur purple and smearing on the seapony muzzle.

“Hold…”

Green moved somewhere in front of us, beyond my shield, jumping from sea-pony to sea-pony, beating them out of the air, but even she was getting pushed back, blasts of eel-spears and sea-horns seeking ever closer to her.

"Hold…”

“Any time now,” I growled, struggling against a coordinated barrage of at least a dozen seaponies, my horn nearly cracking with the vibrations passed down from my shield.

The stallion pinned by Ahuizotl gave his last shudder and went limp, his eyes rolling into his skull, and it opened it’s muzzle in the final attempt at breathing before Ahuizotl covered it between with blue lips and inhaled, stealing last breath of the seaponpony’s life.

He raised his head off his victim and then he exhaled: a long, silent breath.

Death

My shield dissipated into nothingness and where the Elder’s breath touched anything living, it died. The grass turned black and fell apart into the cloud of ash, bush turned to dried-up twigs, birds fell out of the sky, and I knew with perfect clarity that were I to sift through the soil, I would not find a bacterium or a virus that had survived the Elder’s curse.

Ponies’ magic protected them, but still, they shrivelled, their skin clinging to the brittle bones as if they were starved, their eyes turning milky-white with cataracts, their pearly magic auras blown off their frames. Those who were far enough scattered, the rest fell like puppets with their strings cut off, and Green, appearing suddenly by the Elder’s side, poked the closest one with her hoof.

“Still alive,” she noted, “you’re losing your touch, Big Blue.”

"Kill them!" Ahuizotl half-screeched half-whined, ignoring Green’s comment, as he threw the ragdoll-limp body of a seapony away and clutched at his wound, thin trickle of blood spilling between his claws. “Kill them all!”

I felt the grin spread my lips, fierce, burning excitement in my chest. No more water to restrain my might, no more doubts to make me hold my spells, no truce, no mystical test or complicated rules. This was all I needed - an opponent I could fight, a simple and fair combat, a permission and command to cut loose and forget the consequences.

For the first time in days, I felt no fear. My body sang with adrenaline, as I called upon the name of a Southern Wind, letting go of every control and precaution, feeling it rise in its full strength. Not a paltry breeze I could conjure with my own magics, but a full might of anemos - the very essence of the desert summers’ storm.

A hot tornado of dust and sand circled round me, and somepony screamed, as I stood unmoving in the eye of the hurricane, pumping more and more power into the air around. Every fear, every pain, doubt and little humiliation of days past I’ve poured into the spell until the storm itself took aflame. A typhoon of skin-cutting winds and fire and me in the centre of it, crushing and breaking anypony to stand before me against the rocks, burning and scraping their scales off with but a thought. I rode the wave of magic like a high, laughing at the destruction wrought by my horn and buildings groaned where I stepped, scoured clean of the overgrowth, stones wrenched out of masonry by my the might I have summoned.

A squad of pegasi could have stopped me, perhaps, binding the storm. The earth-ponies could conceivably withstand the power that melted the stone and burned the air. The sea-ponies, with their borrowed magics and pitiful weapons, far from their Mother Pearl had no chance. The rare discharges of their spears could not penetrate the walls of air and fire, the sound of their horns was drowned in the howl of the storm, and all they could do was retreat away as I pushed on, dropping the crushing power left and right like a flaming war-hammer.

"Sloppy." A hoof lowered onto my barrel, and Green Glow's voice ripped me out of spellcasting rush. "Wasteful."

Shivers and goosebumps spread as my skin tried to crawl away from her touch while my legs refused to move.

"The First rule is сontrol, little princess. Never let yourself lose it. Do what needs doing and nothing more - there are no points for effort or style."

Panic, stark and clear, like lightning along my spine. My every instinct shouted for me to run, to escape, to hide, and spurred by my fear, my magic twisted inside out and joined together like a pattern in a kaleidoscope into something that I’ve never seen before, and through my horn I slithered into my own spell.

I looked at my body from outside, an orange little pony somewhere far below. I was now not flesh and blood but a creature of emerald flames and wind, one with the storm. Beneath my paws, tiny things screamed and scattered. I growled, the howl of the wind becoming my voice and pounced.

“Control”, I could still hear Green Glow’s whispering into my pony-ears, “Control and awareness, little princess.”

It was almost too easy. Those who stood their ground and tried to fight I threw aside with easy swats of my hoof turned to gusts of wind, those who ran I spurred with the heat of the emerald flame. I moved between the houses and ruins, invisible until I chose to strike, invulnerable to spear and horn alike, my only trace - the screams of wounded and broken creatures in my wake.

And then I poured down, underneath the stone and the streets, lighting tunnels and underground streams with emerald flames, stalking from cave to cave, hall to hall, finding tiny, fragile little things and breaking them against the walls with but a swing of my translucent paws.

And then there were none, and I rose, expanding, pouring through the soft earth and cavernous stone until I stood back up. Like a titaness, earth melting across my form, as high as the tallest buildings. I turned back to Green Glow, lighting up my form with bands of green magic and roared, flame and wind as my voice.

“Who’s little now?”

She grinned unafraid, and there was a sharp sting and a fall, and then I was just me, with my ears still ringing from a smack she gave me upside my head.

‘Watch your back, pumpkin. Always watch your back.”

It took me a few tries to stand up, before I scampered after her, stumbling over my clumsy flesh-and-blood legs.

“Did… did I do good?” I hated my stutter and the icy fear that returned to grip me again as I spoke to her almost as much as I hated my eagerness to please that psychopath. Yet her power, her hold over me I could not deny.

She smiled, turning away. “Adequate. There’s room for improvement, but I am in no mood for a lecture now,” she flicked her tail playfully, “but I can give you a very thorough tongue-lashing if you want.”

Goosebumps and shivers, like a thousand ants along my back.

***

I stayed behind on a shore and scooped the scattered the battered seaponies up, to drop them into the river, expecting any second a comment from Green Glow, or worse yet, a repetition of her practical lesson.

I could imagine it with perfect detail, the fear almost making me lose control of my magic: She'd be behind me - perhaps right at that moment, moving so fast I would have no chance of even seeing it, her hooves taking with tangible, hungry green flames. There'd be the smell - the sickly, sweet smell of my skin burning and a scream ripping my throat apart, and another gentle lesson whispered in my ears...

She did nothing. With the last indifferent look at the seaponies, coming to in the water, she turned away and left me - as always - to follow with her.

I caught up with her at a ford of a river, upstream from the broken bridge. Both Green and the Elder were drinking - the Elder taking the water in his tail-paw, the mercenary simply lapping at the shallow water. After a short deliberation, I joined her.

The water tasted salty and the sand the river lifted off the riverbed scraped on my teeth, and yet, of all the drinks I drunk, this was sweetest by far. And when my lips had touched the water, I felt it deep within — the Elder’s gift, a small measure of his power, hidden deep in my chest like a stone sleeping on the riverbed. Until Ahuizotl would take away his coin and his gift, I would never drown, lest he’d will me to.

We drank and we rested. And then we walked before the seaponies would send another chase. For the first time, I could take my time to look around, appreciating the giant labyrinthine ruins around us. Burned and shattered buildings were strewn as far as the eye could see, half consumed by the melted stone streets and crumbling dried-up channels. A corpse of a city so vast that it could’ve rivalled Manehattan.

Nopony moved between the half-molten mudbrick houses; not even dogs or stray cats appeared in the streets. To add to the uncanny scene, the air was still, empty of birdsong.

At the centre of the city was a pyramid, not unlike the one we've been to before. The same moats, though long since dried, the same twists and turns, same statues, but everything was larger, more grand, more menacing. Still alive with the lingering magics that permeated every stone and every step.

“There was a city here once, little pony,” the Elder said unbidden, suddenly lost in his thoughts. His voice sounded hollow and distant as he scooped up a pawful of ash from the streets with his tail, letting the weightless dust seep through his fingers. “A city so great and magnificent, none could equal it, a jewel in the crown of a kingdom. Creatures lived here in peace and prosperity. The earth-ponies built their towers and houses, the diamond dogs guarded them, rams kept our archives and history, while I oversaw it and knew it was good - a heaven in the tides of chaos that would drown the world.

“Every one of them - a link in a circle of life, bound together forever. Life bloomed there, in all its visceral beauty, and when they died, they knew it was not in vain and that their lives and their deaths served a higher purpose.

“And then They came. The Princesses turned the Day into fire and the Night into nightmare. The pegasi set the heavens themselves against us, and the Mage wielded powers that were never meant to be taken by mortals...

“And so our city fell, taken from me. Its towers and ziggurats cracked and broken, its streets turned to cinder and ash. If the chaos itself had yielded to their might, how could we stand?

“How could we stand…” he repeated as wind snatched the last motes of ash from his hand.

I knew of the things he spoke of, and I imagined the battle as he talked. Celestia, making light in the sky, brighter than any fire, shining the foes and enmities away, while Starswirl and the unicorn wizards took apart the defensive enchantment of the city. The pegasi raining thunders from above and the legions of the Guard moving in row by row, all clad in shining gold and black brass, pushing the defenders back.

And from my books, I knew of the things he did not speak of as well - the frantic work of the arimaspi warlocks, their knives rising and falling to rip out the fresh hearts of their sacrifices to power their spells and curses, the drains on the pyramids overflowing with blood. The diamond dogs turned to berserking monsters, mutated beyond pain and sanity on Ahuizotl’s commands, pony slaves murdered and raised as ghouls or zombies to fight for their masters… the death-magics, сenturies old, still emanated from these ruins with aura so horrid with fear and suffering it made my temples throb with pain.

I kept my knowledge to myself and left the old creature to his grief.

The doors of the temple responded to Ahuizotl’s touch, and there were no guards or traps within. We walked alone and uncontested through the heavy stone halls were the very air felt ancient, and the carvings on the walls spoke to me as I walked by. Black whispers slithered into my ears, promising, begging, offering - if only I would read the dark spells; if only I would set them free with a drop of life’s blood; if only I would animate them with my magic…

I listened, but gave them no hold over me, letting the dark knowledge settle into my brain. Too horrible a power to ever use… yet too great a temptation to simply set aside.

And in the end of the corridor - the same center, same black heart of the pyramid, though instead of altar and a fountain it had mirror of obsidian, large enough for Ahuizotl to reflect in it fully, making his reflection a darker, larger creature, his inequine frame and features twisted and made even more alien.

He touched the surface of the mirror, and I saw a tremor run across his body, a small sigh of... satisfaction? Pleasure? Excitement?

It was his place of power, the whole building, the whole city even, built around him and for him.

Once again Ahuizotl’s power called, deep and heavy, and once again the ancient tools responded, recognizing their once master. Darkness flooded the mirror, and the reflections disappeared, giving instead a place to a wide, black space, vast and obscured by the swirling mists.

And in the blackness behind the obsidian mirror, something moved. Maws, as big as a grown pony, eyes full of madness and hunger, teeth sharper than swords, all bound in chains and collars of grey steel, straining at creaking as it lurched towards the light.

It was Cerberus. The guardian of the Tartarus, the spotted dog of the Underworld -- and I was now thinking in threes, like those seaponies.

It was annoying.

"Easy there, little brother," Ahuizotl's hand reached into the mirror, petting the horror inside. “Your time will come yet -- perhaps sooner than we thought."

"Or perhaps not!"

Ice and Nightmares!

The raspy, jaunty voice rang from above, and even without turning I knew it was her. Despite all my begging, despite her wounds, despite any sense and reason, still doggedly loyal to her failed, misguided cause, Daring Do has followed us here. Anger, hot like a nova flared inside me. I would not go easy on her, not anymore. Any grace I had for my hero was out.

“Take her!” Ahuizotl barked a short and unnecessary order, before turning back to the portal. “I have to work.”

My magic lit up, preparing for the fight.

Daring Do somersaulted from her perch, dashing directly towards the mirror, and steel and wings filled the small room, clanging and blazing everywhere. No jokes, no mocking, no quarter asked for or given - all words we could have had, had been expended before, and so we fought in vicious silence only broken by the noise of combat, leaving it to our respective grit and skills to determine the result.

And hers were found lacking. They never could really be enough, me and Green acting as one, the flame of her hooves shadowed and followed by my magic. One old pegasus had no chance and was quickly dealt with and soon downed and chained.

"All is ready." There was sombre satisfaction in Ahuizotl's voice as he stepped away from the portal. Behind him, the obsidian mirror shimmered, like a painting of black on black, and within it a ship made of dead mares’ hooves and horns waiting for us to board. "None shall stop us now."

“You’ll never get away with it, Ahuizotl!” Daring Do tested her wings against the chains. The old iron held, making her efforts as futile as her threats.

“But I already have,” he grinned smugly. “This time I come out victorious, Daring Do.”

He laughed - an honest-to-Celestia evil laugh. It’d look silly in any other circumstance, but there, in the temple that reeked with death and power, where his laughter echoed and boomed as if a whole chorus of shades and shadows laughed along with him, it made every hair of my coat stand on its end.

“As to you, brave hero - whatever shall we do with you?” He circled round the bound hero, gloating again, his tail-paw swishing side-to-side. “There were many implements for dealing with such as you in my city in its day. A pit of ten thousand paper cuts? A death of splintered wooden floors? A sacrifice of snakes-and-spiders perhaps?”

I gritted my teeth. Yeah, that was a great idea - to put her into another trap, another binding. Let her escape and screw things up for all of us again. I have tried to help her, I have tried to talk to her out of it, and now I have had enough. If some get to die when they should not have, why should others get to live when they don’t deserve it?

To that question, I knew the answer already: Sometimes it is most cruel to be kind to those who are not worth it.

“Just finish her.” I spat out. The sanctimonious attitude, the corny one-liners were starting to really get to me. “You’ll never get away with it?” really? Who even talks like that?

“Heh. Straight to business, no foreplay,” Green Glow grinned. Her forehooves blazed alight with the familiar green fire, and the stone beneath her started to glow with the intense heat. “That’s something I like in a girl.”

I winced, but it was too late to take my words back.

***

Sunset took a pause of her story and mused for a second.

“I am good with lies. I love my little falsehoods and misdirections and rarely do I regret them. But in lying one cannot lose sight of reality, because a liar who believes his own lies is just a madman.

“I would want to believe that it was the death-magics of the place that pushed me to this decision. That it was my headache at their horrible pressure, inebriation or the influence of the Elder at his seat of power… but that is simply not the truth. Even if born of alcohol and anger, it was my decision and mine alone. In the final account, I have meant what I said and said what I meant.”

“But she got out, right?” Rainbow Dash asked helplessly. “Right?”

“Darling, tell me you didn’t…”

Sunset looked away.

***

Daring Do twisted harder in her bindings, while I reached for the flask and took another swig of whatever poison Glow brought with us. The second time the drink went smoother than the first, if not by much.

“At least give me a fight,” she asked, finally resigning to her fate. “A pegasus’ death.”

“And what’s to stop you from just flying away, enemy mine? I was not born yesterday, you know.”

“I give you my word,” she said simply.

Ahuizotl’s eyes widened in surprise. He nodded - everypony knew of the hero’s honesty. Daring Do never lied and never broke her word.

“You must promise too,” she demanded, “I want a chance, and I want a clean, honourable death if I fail.”

“Of course, of course,” he waved his tail-paw-thing vaguely “Cross my heart, and everything.”

“No. Swear to me, all of you. The Old way.”

Both he and the mercenary grew silent, suddenly sobered by the demand.

“I swear.” Green Glow finally said first, eager to get to the core of the issue. “By the Earth and the Forest.”

Ahuizotl was more reluctant, but he could not deny his arch-nemesis’ final request.

“I swear. By the Water’s Deep and the Heart’s Blood.”

They were looking at me now, and I panicked. I had no idea what was going on, or what to say. The words they said, the witnesses they’ve summoned were not a thing of history books and old scrolls.

“I swear…” and then I suddenly knew it like I’ve always known it, since before I was born. Words as ancient as the ponykind, forever stamped into our very nature, the thing that defines us as a tribe no less than cutie mark defines us as ourselves.

“...by the Fire and Magic.”

The world has changed around us imperceptibly, as the words were said and witnessed, and could not be now unsaid.

Glow pushed me gently with her head towards Daring Do, and it was only then that I understood that it would be my magic that would end the hero’s life. It was only fair - I have suggested it after all, but somehow I did not see it coming. I was not ready for this; I couldn’t… but the ancient ritual of the duel was already pulling onto me, and I couldn’t step out. Not with the burning emerald eyes of my companion watching me, not after the words that I’ve said, the oath that I swore.

I gulped, and we walked.

Three steps each.

Seven steps in total between us and not a hoof more. The duel-distance. Length enough for unicorn to cast a spell before pegasus would hit her, length enough for pegasus to dodge before earth pony pins her to the ground, enough for the earth pony to reach the unicorn before she wears him down with her spellwork. The distance where all three tribes are equal and only their prowess and their magic stand between them and death, measured in hundreds of duels, in thousands of battles in times of Old.

Pivot and turn. A whoosh of magic, a flare of wings. A short, barking command.

Some ponies are fast. I've seen Green move with more speed and grace than anyone I knew. But she was an earth pony, and no earth pony can be as fast as a pegasus.

Even then, some pegasi are faster than others. Daring Do was fast - she moved faster than my eyes could track her, her wings diving into her belt for her explosives and throwing knives before the sound of Ahuizotl's command had echoed back from the walls.

But no flesh and blood can be faster than the speed of thought, and magic is weaved just as quickly. I was ready - spurred by the last-second surge of adrenaline, the green energy erupted from my horn forming a shield an instant before the sharp metal has filled the space.

The little king stepped forward into the attack, and grabbed, pivoted and turned adding the strength of his opponent to his move…

My spell swept the knives and the throwing-stars out of the air, and I pushed more power into the shield and pushed it forward, adding my power to the speed of her attack. She crashed into the shield at an awkward angle, and there was a crack when her left hind hoof shattered, and she screamed. My magic fell on her like a hammer from above, crushing and pinning her to the ground.

And it screamed, and it screamed, and it screamed, claws scraping against the metal of the blade that pinned it to the floor, flesh sliced apart by its thrashing getting reknit to be sliced again and again….

I hesitated, and she twisted out of my magic, standing up. Barely.

“Even If I fail—” She spat out the teeth I cracked “Others shall rise in my trail.”

Breathe.

"His sword moved in an elaborate double-feint, twisting around the White Sword as if alive, and left a long nick along the Prince’s shoulder, drawing blood..."

I weaved the Scourge of Shahab from dust and gravel, snipping it to her side, seeking to distract and trip her in its coils.

She rolled and jumped, losing half an ear instead of half her head, moving left and right, zigging and zagging, almost weaving her body around the coils of the spell with near-perfect precision.

"He stopped to touch it, looking at his red-stained limb as if unable to believe that he was killed. He made a step towards me. Then another. And then he fell, blood finally flowing freely from his wound. "

I faltered, my spell falling apart, and her hoof nearly found my throat. Our eyes met for a second, her muzzle so close to mine I could see and count every hair on her muzzle in that instant, and there was nothing in her eyes. No fear. No anger. No regret. Nothing but tired, detached resignation…. I pushed her off me at the last panicked second, her remaining hooves skidding along the stones in an effort to remain standing.

Breathe.

The archer kept moving, shooting arrow after arrow with impossible speed and precision. Thin needles of death filled the air, searching hungrily for the flesh to pierce, and it took all my speed and skill to deflect or grab them with my magic.

Fear and anger rising within me like a suffocating cloud, I lashed out blindly, grabbing loose bricks and stones, and lobbed them at the pegasus as she took to the air.

They exploded against the walls and the ceiling with thunderous rumble, filling the air with shrapnel, and getting ever closer to Daring Do, who had to pile one trick upon another to stay just ahead, and still inexorably retreating towards the corner where she’d have nowhere to dodge anymore.

I could not even spare a glance at how he was faring. The second I would get distracted, the thin needles of death that filled the air would find their target, biting into his unprotected back...

I choked, my spell suddenly flaring up, and the last of my projectiles went wide, overshooting Daring Do by a mile, and bouncing back to my hooves. Both of us stared at it dumbly for a second, as we regained our breath.

It wasn’t working. Like a blank-flanked foal trying her spells for the first time, I was splattering my magic in every direction, bludgeoning away at the old mare with nothing but raw power and dumb luck. Sloppy. Wasteful. I should’ve known better.

Breathe. In and out.

I was stronger, I was unhurt, I was more powerful. And I had magic to spare. She was old, she was wounded, she was out of tricks and utterly outclassed.

It was all over for her. All but one heroic last stand. In her hearts of hearts she knew it, and that made her every move slower and heavier, even more than her age or her wounds.

And then something clicked, my perspective shifted, and suddenly past and present overlaid in my mind’s eye making everything focused and clear. I screamed a spell in a language I did not know, black and green magic woven together in a construct elegant and deadly with the power of Winter and Night.

She tried to dodge, but the spell was faster, breaking her wing in a cloud of splintered bone and feathers.

With my newfound cold clarity, and sudden second breath I moved and weaved my magic with perfected precision. Her counterattack tangled and lost in the thin lattice of my spellwork, and I cried another curse, fouler and blacker than the first. It caught her mid-leap from an unexpected angle, cutting into her left foreleg she tried to shield herself with so much force it ripped off her skin like rind off an overripe fruit. Pops and cracks rang out through the stone hall of the temple, and she left a long bloody trail as she rolled along the floor, scraping her skin and twisting the broken limbs.

Another, third and final curse, vilest and most potent of them all, and a green flash circled round, with a flicker and a flourish. Before she could fully stand up it smashed into Daring Do like a wave and then, just like that she was down on her knees, two of her legs broken, her left wing - an ugly frozen mess, half as long as it used to be. I held her by the throat with sharp, deadly spell, my horn echoing with the beat of her pulse. One last move, one final bit of magic and it would be done.

I froze.

I had to finish it. I had to. There was no other way. We had almost everything now, so close to the prize I could feel it within the grasp of my hooves.

I couldn’t finish it. I could not kill another. Not in cold blood, not one of the good ponies, not a real hero.

Fear and the sharp, burning need collided and battled within me, threatening to rip my mind apart.

“Do it.” Her face was one giant swollen bruise dripping with blood, but even through the broken teeth, you could make out her words. “Do it!”

Want. Take. Have.

Something snapped deep inside, all my desires and my fears collapsing into a single point, and the wave of my will surged through the spell. There was a flash of green light, a single wet, squelching crunch, and a legend of my fillyhood, the unstoppable, implacable Daring Do was no more.

All I saw now was just a body of an old pegasus, maimed and crumpled on the floor, bleeding slowly onto the stones. And I’ve learned another lesson, a lesson I would not have learned under the kind Princess of the Sun. I learned that power matters. You can be kind and honest, loyal and generous, but none of this is worth anything unless you have the means to use it. The powerful matter, whether good or bad… others do not.

And in the Breeze that Brings the Plague

Author's Note

I really should not have to say it, but just in case, I think I need to be perfectly clear on something.

This is a work of fiction, presented from the point of view of an unreliable narrator, who, as it should be clear from the context, is in need of some serious therapy.
In the real world, however, emotional abuse is NOT OK. Physical abuse is NOT OK. Having rough sex with a sixteen-year-old... may be ok, depending on your age and local laws, but definitely not in a form and ways presented further.

If you find that you're afraid of a person you're intimate with, if you find that you blame yourself for something they did or especially they did to you, THAT IS NOT NORMAL. That, and I really should not have to say it, is NOT GOOD FOR YOU.
Don't do something like that to others, and if it is done to you - get out and seek help.

And in the Breeze that Brings the Plague

I came to her cabin that night, when the winds were stilled and the air was hot and stale, and we rutted like animals in the darkness. It was a mechanical, lifeless affair, born of my desperation and surrender that left me drenched with sweat and more miserable than I was before, as something within me tightened and died in an empty, crying release. But that night, when I fell asleep pressed into her hard barrel, no nightmares came.

She beat me to a bloody pulp next day.

In the darkness of our journey, she remade me, breaking me apart and putting me back together. The poison of her words and the salve of her magic, the pain and the pleasure, my pleading for her to stop and my moaning for her to please, please, never stop became one and the same and even I could no longer tell them apart.

And then, when my body was exhausted from the sparring and rutting, when my horn burned and my nose bled from magical exhaustion, we would talk, and she would teach me of the things forgotten and lost but to the select few, of the things as old as the earth and as true as the sky, things that existed for ponykind since before Equestria.

Five rivers we crossed in the dimness of the Underworld where time has no meaning and space is an illusion, and while we did, she taught me, repeating the old lessons I already knew and giving me the knowledge I could not have imagined before.

When we crossed the river of regrets, I learned to be ruthless and have no mercy, towards others or myself. To always move forward and to accept the truths of the past - for to look back with regret was to lose sight of the present. Success or failure, once the end is achieved, and the sun has set - you have what is there to be had, and then you learn your lesson and move on.

She spilled the waters of the river of woes across my barrel between her kisses, and as they slid across my sweat-drenched body lighting every nerve on fire she taught me the ancient art of exquisite pain. Of accepting it and inflicting it, with purpose and precision would’ve made my heart chill with terror, had it not grown numb already.

The flesh would serve, and nothing could be allowed to stop you when you take that which your heart desires, not even your own weakness. Only cold will and the science and art of destroying anything that would stand in your way.

Over the river of fire we sparred, shadows in the suffocating heat, and she taught me the of the power of passion. Of how our passions give strength, the strength gives victory, and through victories chains others would put on us can be broken. To live is to want, desire or hatred smouldering underneath your skin, to be stoked to a raging firestorm at the slightest provocation.

It was then that my fear was melted away by the flames of the Underworld, when I took a sip of its spicy fire, drinking it like water and it did not burn me, for my anger and desire glowed hotter than even the fires of Tartarus.

We drank the bitter drops of river of lost memory in our wine - a sure death to any who did not take all the precautions and follow all the rites, and she told me in whispers about the magics of the earth ponies, the kind that are passed from earth pony master to student, not taught in schools or written in scrolls - of the hidden paths of the earth and the herbs of the forest, of potions and decoctions subtle in use and abhorrent in effect.

When the greatest river, the river of ancient oaths moved our vessel slowly, she told me of the power of promises given and sworn oaths broken, of the rules that’ve been kept since the time began and from time before that - and not much of that lore, for it is not the truth that is known to many, even if they tread the Old Ways as long as she.

***

"That's horrible…” Fluttershy started, “...what that awful...pony did...”

"Don't say that!", Sunset cut her off fiercely, "Don't you dare say that! Cruel, vicious and psychotic, she was still my teacher, second greatest I've ever had. When I was weak, she has made me strong. When I was lost, she has shown me the path. When I was at war with myself, she has given me peace.“

"But darling, she clearly used your vulnerable state… abused you even…”

“No!” Sunset leaned back, unclenching her fists. She closed her eyes, breathing away the sudden outburst, and repeated, calmer now: “No.”

“I came to her - of my own free will, and she took me in and healed me. For the briefest time, she was my everything… and then she let me be free. For that alone, I owe her more than I’ll ever be able to express.”

***

When I stepped off the dark ferry of the Underworld to see Celestia's Sun again, I was not the same broken little filly that I was when I began my adventure. With pain, I was reforged. With rage, I was recast. From the waters of Tartarus I rose again, more powerful than before. But more than that, I felt... lighter. Focused by my new lessons, unburdened by pointless guilt and second-guessing, empty of the useless fear, I was like an arrow let loose towards the target.

The target that now was tantalizingly close to us, with none to stand in our way.

The secret passage opened by Ahuizotl has led us to the heart of Equestria, a castle, ancient and forgotten not a stone's throw away from Canterlot, hidden in the Everfree forest, where monster roam and magics, unpredictable and deadly, grow overnight like wild grass.

The others were already there, Ahuizotl's retinue finding him without error, feeling their master like you feel where your heart is without testing for the pulse. Parts, reunited again with their whole.

Secure against pursuit, we spent almost a day resting and preparing. Objects were placed at focal points of the diagrams, runes, and sigils inscribed in the stones and fed with blood and magic, rubble and dirt cleared away, lest even a single mote of dust interrupt the great work of magic once it would begin.

And then came a moment when the preparation was done. The coin was placed, and the feather was unwrapped, and the knife was hidden until it was to be drawn. Everypony took their places and held their breaths.

Ahuizotl stood in the centre of the hall, under the hole in the roof of the castle, against a richly decorated mirror through which we came. He took a bit of common white chalk in his paw like a director's wand, and on the stone floor, he inscribed a simple circle around himself.

“I summon you…”

The drums began to roll -- a heavy rhythm, insidious and syncopated, as the Elder spake, his power, drawn from the pulsing coin on his chest infused into every word:

“...by the knife from under hill, by the claw of the rat and the wing of the bat..”

A horrid sense of deja vu gripped me, as I looked at the arch of the mirror and the simple chalk circle drawn on the broken stones, where, surrounded by his minions, stood Ahuizotl chanting the spell. I pushed it aside with practised ease.

“...by the coin of stone, by the feather of light and the blood that was life…”

An endless litany of names and attributes, items of power and anchors long forgotten filled the air of the old castle. Layers and layers of words built upon each other in a tower of magic that could reach to the sky and rend the heavens themselves asunder, as the chanting and the drums have arrived at their crescendo.

“...by the name, the name that’s been lost…”

All light lost strength, and the moon appeared in the sky, rising towards the noonday sun. Every sound died, waiting for the last word, and nothing moved. A barest of whispers from Ahuizotl’s lips rang louder than thunder in the perfect silence that kept the world frozen.

“...Luna.”

Flames exploded around us, in columns of pitch-black fire. The sky turned black and the moon eclipsed the sun, as in the middle of the chalk circle, moonlight reflected by the mirror and the darkness of the sudden night began to coalesce into something living.

She was black, like an abyss between the stars, clad in the armour of starmetal and moonsilver. So dark was her coat that my eyes refused to even acknowledge her as a presence, rather than just the absence of light - it was as if not just the rays of the quickly dying sun were absorbed by her coat, but the reality itself bleaked and grew less real as it approached the Lady of Air and Darkness, Mistress of Nightmares, Regent over things that Are Not and Have Never Been.

She opened her eyes, and the abyss looked back at me.

I met her gaze and stepped forward as Ahuizotl lowered his paws. My horn lit and sparkled with the spell I held at the ready and the green chains of my magic whipped up from the stones of the palace, wrapping and binding the Princess, tying her to the floor.

I too have made my preparations, and they too have not been in vain - the diagrams I've etched into the floor with her sister’s feather and power, overflowed with binding and holding magics, making stones melt and сry with the energies it contained. Every line, every focal gem, and inscription measured to the last second of arc - a textbook picture of precision and efficiency, the apex of the High Equestrian Wizardry.

Even then, with all my preparations and all the art and all the science, I could not, of course, hold her. Not the Princess in her full power -- I might as well have tried to bind a hurricane.

My spell wasn’t meant to do that. All it did, was for a single second before her magic rose to throw off my spell, hold her in one place, biding her power and locking her slitted inequine eyes with mine.

That’s when Green Glow stabbed her in the back.

The green mercenary fell from her position, silent like a bat, and the Blade of the Night slipped into the nape of Princess’ neck. It pierced the moonsilver and the Nightmare alike as Green dragged the blade along the Nightmare’s spine.

Nightmare Moon’s cry broke every unshattered window of the castle. Stone cracked and ears bled as she thrashed in pain and effort, magic shooting in every direction, but still the mercenary held fast, dragging the knife along her barrel, and with blood and shreds of skin, the Nightmare peeled of the Nightmare Moon like a rind off an orange, releasing the true Princess inside.

Before Nightmare Moon had a chance to deal with the mercenary, Ahuizotl stepped forward, grabbing her by the neck and clasping the nightmare shroud.

"Mine!" He roared, like a dragon in the throes of his greed, "Mine!"

The muscles on his back bulged in ugly twisted angles as if someone stuffed boulders under his skin, his immense strength and suffocating power ripping the Nightmare off the Nightmare Moon.

She screamed again, and everything exploded, the soundless blast of darkness, power, and magic, throwing both the Elder and his mercenary into opposite directions with a crushing force and streams of darkness and making me fall on my haunches.

When I dared open my eyes before me stood the Princess. Free of the Nightmare she breathed deep and spread her wings, and her power filled the wide space to its depths and its heights. Her black radiance drove out the dark.

I bowed, my knees bending by their own volition until my horn touched the ground.

“Guard us from the beast and the timberwolf, and guard us from the thief, oh Night, and so be good for us to pass.”

The words of the ancient greeting that has not been uttered for almost a thousand years fell from my mouth by themselves, prompted not by my mind by the sheer power of the Princess’ presence permeating her air.

The Princess nodded back, a reflexive tiny little bow, as she began to come to her senses.

"’Tis not yet the time preordained. How can it be, little pony, that we are not on our Moon?"

"It took a while, but I figured it out. The Black Book of Blackened Cutie Mark and the Nightmare-summoning ritual, the horn and the mirror and the story of the Mare in the Moon, the Lunar Rebellion account of the Shadow Kicker, and then you just connect the dots, grab a few things, and boom! Here you are."

If not for her heavy presence I would have been prancing around the flabbergasted princess in my joy. With all the sacrifices I’ve made, all that I’ve suffered on my way, the plan had worked.

"Thou hast freed us from our prison," the Princess said slowly, tasting the words as she said them, "But what of the Nightmare?"

"Once Ahuizotl grabbed the Nightmare, the curse your sister placed on the Nightmare Moon activated," I explained smugly. "They’ll be stuck on the Moon for the next dozen years."

"Will I now, little pony mine?"

No. Nonononono

Blood curdled in my veins as I turned to see a very much not-currently-on-the-Moon Ahuizotl, the Nightmare like a short cape on his shoulders. It grew into him and fed upon his frame, like a parasite, spreading through the thick arteries on his neck in streams of blackness, making his skin crawl and bones shift as it transformed him into something monstrous. Into something nightmarish.

"I -" he started, before another wave of transformation doubled him up. His blue spiked fur turned pitch-black, clinging to his now gaunt and skeletal frame, and his eyes turned dirty, cataract-white. "...am the Prince of the Deeps, little pony."

His canines elongated, turning yellow and lined, like ancient rotten bone, his nails turning to claws, black and sharp and deadly. "I am too big for half a curse to hold me!"

Ice and Nightmares!

Somehow that was all that came to my mind as I watched, almost enthralled, at Ahuizotl’s transformation.

“Now what shall I do with you, my little traitor...” his paw pointed at me, veins flowing with darkness and power.

“Err… no”, I ventured sheepishly, moving closer to the Princess for protection. “The contract was until we get the prize. Which we got. See?” I shoved the relevant page of the contract towards him as my defence.

“She got you there, Big Blue,” the mercenary jeered, seemingly unfazed by her recent close encounter with the castle wall. She discarded the shards of the Nightblade, broken by her fall, and grew serious for a second, giving me one of her looks. “You sure you wanna do this pumpkin? I’m still on the clock, and I am not holding back.”

Stifling last bits of my fear I nodded. No weakness. No fear. No regrets. I knew what I wanted — what I needed — to do, and even she would not stand in my way. Just as she has taught me.

"Be that as it may," Ahuizotl conceded. "I am nothing if not a magnanimous Prince. Bow to me, little pony, join me, Princess, and together we shall drown the world in darkness. Together we shall bring her to her knees!"

"I may have a quarrel with my sister," Luna's horn began to glow, aimed at the Nightmarish creature that Ahuizotl became, "but I am still a Steward of Equestria. Defend yourself, sirrah, or I shall strike you down where you stand!"

Her magic rose, slow and awkward, and still powerful beyond measure. My own spells I already held at the tip of my horn.

“As you wish.” Ahuizotl raised his black-covered forepaw, and the world shivered before his might. My magic scattered and extinguished, like a candle flame in a hurricane, and the beat of his power seeped into the very marrow of my bones, making me ill with its sickening presence. Even the Princess’ light waned and darkness, viscous like a liquid, flooded the room, robbing me of sight. Light of my horn died, unable to chase away the dark, leaving only the feeling of something ready to pounce on me, making my skin crawl and shiver. I couldn't see past my own muzzle, and yet I could feel the things moving in the darkness - vile, alien things. Blind, I tried to reassemble my shield around me and the Princess, and hoped that it would hold.

Suddenly one of the shadows leaped at me, and I felt it slipping through my hastily shield. It touched me, and fire, green and hot burned my skin like a kiss. I saw it spread all over my coat, turning it short and green, and my mane coal-black, and in the mirror that was not there a second ago I could see my eyes turning into Green Glow's.

"You are like me, pumpkin," she whispered, words like poison, "you always were."

I did not flinch from the truth and did not ignore it. I knew what I was and so I woke with a start, ripping the nightmare off with an effort of will. No sooner than I could even take a breath, another one was on me, coiling around my neck. It whispered in my ears and covered my eyes.

I could hear her pulse echo through my horn, and I froze. I had to finish it. I had to. There was no other way.

The fear and desire collided and battled within me, threatening to rip my mind apart. It was my choice, my last chance to once again be a good pony...

I did not doubt or second-guess myself. I made my choice - quick and final, like a cut of a sword. No hesitation, no second thoughts - my magic surged through the spell, and there was a flash of green light, a single wet, squelching crunch, and I woke with a start.

Another black creature slipped through my shielding magic like an eel.

The Red has touched the White, and the laughter, sharp like a winter storm rolled around the ancient cave.

Fear rose from within my mind, shivers and shakes like many times before, but I accepted the past without regrets and woke with a start...

...and left without the feather in a dark alley of Baltimare, I could only watch as Ahuizotl has drowned the world in Nightmares for thousand years, darkness and blood deeper than the ocean covering Equestria…
… and somepony else was in my place in Canterlot, a purple filly with more magic than I could ever dream of…
...and she said "Go home, little sun," and I wanted to cry…
...and I turned into a monster, power, and pain like a never-ending high of a drug when wings ripped out of my back in a shower of blood…
...and I stopped him, as easily as I would stop an unruly child, in my panic throwing him clean across the room…
...I put the fan to my lips. He smiled. He smiled, he stepped and he fell -- his head on broken wings in dust...
...and she broke me like a toy, every bone shattered, horn cracked, magic exhausted. Holding me like a baby in her hooves, coils of green round my frame, she whispered “You’re mine now, little princess. Forever.”...
… and I summoned a lightning to burn her body -- a pyre befit a pegasus warrior. And then I moved on...
...and around me sapient beings were slaughtering each other in a thousand nightmare-inducing vignettes of violence, while I was too exhausted and numb to do anything…
...and she just kept rocking on her haunches, nothing but emptiness in her eyes, like a broken little toy horse…
...and I stood hoof-deep in blood, dead bodies of friends and family littering the Canterlot palace. Once you kill, you can never really stop...
...and in her eyes there was something distant. Even through the professional pain-killing spells that hurt…

One by one they assailed me, my magic powerless to stop them, ripping into my mind with the torrent of the nightmarish, insanity-inducing visions of past and promises of doom to come. And one by one they retreated back, finding no purchase within me, leaving me to wake with a start again and again. I would not ever again succumb to the doubts and guilt of the past or to the fear of the future - I knew better than that. I was taught better than that.

And yet, even while they could not defeat me and drag me down into madness, still there were too many of them, and in my struggles, paralyzed by the nightmares, I felt like an ant on the side of the mountain climbing against an avalanche, and the more I fought against them, the more nightmares came.

"BEGONE, FOUL CREATURES!".

The Royal Canterlot Voice cleaved my nightmare like thunder cleaves the summer night, scattering the black creatures through the room, and my senses slowly returned to reality.

Her feather touched my muzzle, gentle and soothing.

"We give thee our blessing, little pony. For thy eyes - to see in the dark. For thy flames -- to ward thee against ill dreams."

I could feel the sparkle of power arc from her wing and touch my forehead, melting into my eyes and my horn, and suddenly the darkness became transparent to my eyes, bleak shadows of the nightmares swimming in the air like black medusas.

I could see them now - and I could fight them. The shades twisted and snarled, angling at me from every side, but my magic bolstered by the Princess’ blessing could now hold and tear them. I blasted them to bits with the light of my horn and trampled them underhoof not letting them touch me and rip into my mind again. Finally, powerless but still hissing their vain threats the shades retreated to the corners of the room, and breathing -- the way I've been taught -- I turned towards Ahuizotl.

“Did you truly think the Drowner blind and dumb, little pony?" The darkness clung to him like a cloak, blurring his figure. "Did you truly think I couldn't feel her stench coming off your coat, her mark on your magic?"

I shot out a gout of flames, but it just dissipated in his black shroud, failing to even light the room.

"I knew who you were before you entered my house, little pony. 'Tis the only reason I took you - though you did prove useful enough. "

I ignored him and cast another spell -- just as useless as the first one.

"Thou always were the runt of the litter, Ahuizotl." The princess answered for me. The moonlight on the tip of her horn shone softly, lighting up her frame against the darkness. "Why wouldst thee not pick on someone thy own size?"

Instead of answering again Ahuizotl raised his forepaw, and the darkness swirled and swivelled, the remainders of the black creatures seeping into the ponies that came with him, twisting and changing them, shifting their bones and expanding their frames. "Destroy the traitor," he commanded.

The things that once shared with me their meals and gambled for their simple earnings, now monstrous and mutated, stepped out from behind Ahuizotl’s back and surrounded me slowly, seeking to separate me from Luna.

“Piano, Lemon...” I said carefully “...you don’t really want to do this. Right guys?” I smiled sheepishly, stepping back. They grinned, teeth and canines befit monsters, not ponies, blooming on their nightmarish twisted muzzles.

I did not expect them to answer - I was looking ("Awareness", a coarse voice in the back of my head reminded) and thinking. For the first time in my life, I saw the fight before it would begin, the topology of the battlespace unfolding in my mind's eye, blooming with the nebulae of probable trajectories and swirling strange attractors of tactical inevitability. I wasn't thinking, or planning - I felt the ebb of the future battle with my skin, the rush of the coming fight sweet and tickly in my chest, bubbling up and seeping into my magic.

So when Bear Claw roared, her giant maw opening much wider than pony anatomy should have allowed, I was already moving. My first spell stuck in her throat, making her cough and splutter, and half-blind she crashed into the wall, slipping on the ice I have summoned. I was already past her when I exploded the thin ice into a zillion sharp splinters, making the minions scatter, and pounced forwards.

Behind me pink and pale white flashes lighted up the rooms, where Luna engaged the Elder with her magic, weaving the moonlight into bolts and lances, but I could not spare a look, much less a spell, as I hit my opponents. Hard and fast: In close quarters, against a crowd, every strike must kill or cripple - there is no time to hit the same pony twice. But even with my newfound sixth sense, with all my magic and all my power, my body was not strong enough, not quite ready to keep up.

I slipped, and almost fell, and missed my spell — it cut her across the chest, instead of taking both her eyes. Straightening out, I threw another stallion aside, his flesh soft and wet and pliant like a slime under my magic. Too late — too slow — I stumbled, and my hooves slid on the uneven floor, and I could feel my time corridors and options shrinking, trapping me in the mesh of my opponents’ moves, viable moves I could make growing scarcer with every second.

There wasn’t any choice, and I let Wild Stab close in, and I saw his spear, now covered in black, dripping ooze, that made the stones corrode and spit black smoke where it dripped to the floor, piercing my side, even before he began his swing. I stepped to meet it, and it hit me right in my ribs, knocking out my breath with the indescribable ecstasy of agony.

I had no time for these sensations ("Focus" a whisper in the back of my head reminded me). I forced my flesh to serve, and protesting muscles to push myself further into the spear, moving deeper within his reach, while the spear raked along my bones until my horn smashed into the soft underside of Wild Stab’s skull and into his brain. A spark of expanding magic finished the deal, and I could now cut the spear off and rip it out of my barrel, and move again, not stopping, not slowing down, not letting them pin me.

They fell apart for a second, my assault shaking their resolve, pushing them away with fire and wind, and for a second, behind their black disfigured forms, I could glimpse at the Princess fighting.

Her spells were old, far behind the advancements of modern magic - slow and inefficient, overly complicated and barely controlled. Even with the Princess’ power, they would not stand a chance. Unlike me, however, she did not just rely on her spellwork.

All it took was for her to raise a hoof and the sky rushed to her aid, bursting the broken roof of the castle and raining down lightnings denser than raindrops. It ripped into Ahuizotl’s shroud like a brilliant net, arcing on his spikes and burrowing into his coat. The thunderous, deafening roar of the elements threw every one of us off our hooves.

Only Ahuizotl still stood, screaming with pain, his muzzle opening wide, soundless compared to the explosion of the Princess summoned, but you could still feel the pain and rage in his scream.

Before he could act or recover, the hail followed, summoned by a wave of Princess’ wing.
It struck like a million blades, across his back and muzzle, drawing black blood, thick and oozing like tar.

Sounds came back slowly, and I stood up, forcing my limbs to move towards the immeasurable fury of the powers fighting, to aid the Princess, but just as I have recovered, so did my enemies. A thin, spindly thing of spurs and bones barred my path. I broke both of its front legs - Piano always had the silly habit of stretching them too far, and before they all could stand up, I regained my footing, and I pressed my attack.

Ahuizotl breathed, and strained his muscles, his claws leaving long, smoking scratches in the stone, and I recognized that look that burned in his eyes, Power shimmering as he gathered it. I have seen it before: Power hurt but undefeated on the bank of the river, where dawn has colored snow blood-red. He was ready to strike back, and I had to get to the Princess before he would do it.

Darkness and blood coalesced at his forepaw when he raised it, a spinning vortex that was blacker than black, before he released it in a single wave of pure might, splattering against Princess’ magical shield. It held, though I could almost feel the strain of the spell against the impossible pressure of the Nightmares, the creaking and shifting of magical energies spurring me to move quicker, lest I be too late.

Scattering the last of the minions with a burst of my magic, I leaped towards the Princess, to shield her from the pressure of the Nighthound, to give her a second’s respite, but something grabbed me by the tail and threw me back on the floor. I rolled and jumped back up, only to see Green Glow standing in my way.

"Leaving so soon?"

The pink shield of the Princess began shrinking against the torrent of the darkness that streamed from Ahuizotl's paw, and her hooves began to slip on the floor, yielding under the pressure of Nightmare’s power.

I made myself ignore it, pushing it away to the periphery of my consciousness and fed it to my anger and thirst for victory. I could not afford a distraction.

Breathe. Whether I thought it in her voice, or she had actually said it, I neither knew nor cared.

She smiled.

“Just me and you now. Graduation time, little princess…” and in a blink of an eye she was upon me, but this time I saw it coming, and I was focused and ready.

My spell shattered three of her ribs drowning her laughter in a bloody cough. She wrenched my leg out of the socket and broke my hoof. Her hoof-strike nearly took off my jaw even as I almost boiled her blood inside her head. Hoof and flame, tooth and horn, we ripped into each other, united in a frenzy of the battle that joined us tighter than sex, until I was crushing her down under my body, a burning sword of my magic at her throat.

And then, pinned by my magic she suddenly kissed me, and I could not but lean into it, the unexpected and familiar sensation blinding me and my blood surging in my veins. Black softness and the sweet peppermint of her hungry lips, saltiness of our mixed blood, her hot, deft tongue... She twisted underneath me, both of her hind hooves throwing me off her and stood up, laughing.

"THOU WOULDST SEEK TO FREE THE POWER OF THE NIGHTMARE? GIVE IT US THEN. GIVE IT ALL TO US!" Luna’s voice bellowed, echoing with thunder.

I sneaked a look at the Princess and Ahuizotl, and if I could’ve spared a feeling, my heart would’ve frozen, because at that moment Luna’s shield dropped, pulling the shadows to her instead of fighting them. The hungry shades streamed towards her joining the Princess' caesious coat, spilling across her chest in a pool of inky-black.

Ahuizotl still struggled as he felt his power drain, and Nightmare, almost too eager to come back, abandon him in favour of his original owner. He thrashed and pulled, trying to tame the power no longer his, twisting and snarling like a maddened beast, his muscles rippling and bones cracking under his skin from the vain effort to move away and stop the torrent of life and power ripped out of him.

“You learned well, my little princess.” Green Glow wheezed, trying to get some air into her punctured lungs and spat out a glob of phlegm-stained blood. There was no mockery in her tone - only the quiet pride of a teacher for her student.

“I’ve always been a good student.” I stumbled, only staying upright by a miracle.

We stood there for a second, the world swirling and swaying around as I struggled to stay upright. Then she moved towards me, her broken foreleg dragging limply on the floor.

I took a breath and sprung my spell.

It was the best spell I could have mustered: a mess of semi-coherent energies, barely powerful enough to mash a mosquito in poor health. But it did the job. Her knees buckled and gave under her, her eyes rolled, and she crumpled on the floor.

Too late.

For all my lessons, for all that I thought was my power, I was too late.

Now I could only watch as the darkness consumed Luna, her barrel, and her hooves already back to the pitch-black colour of the Nightmare.

"Tell my sister that we will yet have our words with her." Her voice, soft and quiet, as if she whispered into my ears all across the room. "Tell my sister—" the Nightmare crept finally over her muzzle and her cutie mark, hatred and power turning her voice again to the Royal Canterlot Address, that made the bricks and the mortar shake, “THAT WE SHALL BE BACK ON THE SHORTEST NIGHT OF THE YEAR. WHEN THE STARS SHALL AID OUR ESCAPE, CELESTIA WILL FALL!!”

The beam of moonlight, bright and stark pierced the darkness and hit her, pinning her to the floor like a bug on entomologist's needle, and she turned translucent and ethereal, disappearing back to her prison.

The Elder fell to the floor in a heap, his skin — a patchwork of blue and red where the Nightmare ripped out of his veins through his skin. He looked at me, and if looks could kill, I would have been struck dead right there and then, drowned in his boundless hatred.

I gave the empty place where Princess vanished, the broken ponies, and Green’s unconscious form another look, and a laughter escaped my lips, mirthless and dead.

I had won. I had lost. It didn’t matter.

And then the pain of my injuries caught up to me and swept me down into the soothing darkness.

Epilogue

Cold. The next thing I remember was coldness, waves upon waves of it, and I was drowning in it. No pain, no fear, no anger. Just eternal, perfect cold and darkness.

And then the sun came up, and I saw my Princess. White walls of Canterlot General, the stark and tickly smell of chlorine and disinfectant, and a mild note of daffodils and sunflowers - Celestia’s scent.

“Hi.” Ignoring the beeping machinery, I waved her with my whole hoof and smiled weakly.

"How do you feel, my student?" she asked me gently.

I stretched a single sinuous motion, the tip of my horn to end of my hooves testing out my body underneath the sheets. It hurt — almost every little movement pinged back with the sharp pain of broken bones and torn muscles, muffled somewhat with pain-killing spells and medicines.

"I'm fine," I said, realizing slowly that it was — for the most part — true. The pain didn't bother me that much anymore, my limbs were all in place, my horn was uncracked, and the flesh would serve. The failure, still fresh in my mind, hurt more, but it was a thing of the past, and I knew to accept it and move on. I was fine.

...I was fine…

I was fine.

"They found you in the Everfree Forest," Celestia said, almost desperate for something to talk about. "The ponies of Ponyville. They said somepony told them you got in trouble there."

Green...

I smiled when I thought of her. She must've woken up first, with her earth pony resilience, and moved me away from Ahuizotl and his minions. Told somepony where to find me so that I don't bleed out too...I guess she really did like me, in her own strange way.

And then the question that hung in the room since the moment I opened my eyes was broached.

"How did that..." her eye slipped on my form, skipping over the wounds and the burns and the scars as if afraid to touch them with her gaze, even bandaged and covered as they were. "...happen?"

“I fell.” What else could I’ve told her? The bitter taste of failure constricted my throat, and anything else I could say would not leave my mouth. It was easier to lie.

"You fell," she repeated, incredulous. "You had a twisted foreleg, shattered hoof, a dozen fractured bones, a burned-off ear, at least three internal bleedings, and a ruptured spleen. That’s not counting blood loss, burns and wounds! All that — from a fall."

“Yes,” I said stubbornly, looking away. “It was a long fall.”

She didn’t press me for details anymore, but in her eyes there was something… distant. Even through the professional pain-killing spells that hurt.

I sighed. In that very moment, I wanted to tell her everything, to once again be that little filly who could tell her most wonderful teacher in the world anything at all…

Perhaps if I did, I’d be a different person. None of this would have happened, and I would be happier and better for it. But I remembered the coldness in her eyes, the distance at the mention of my other stories… and I found that I could not. I would rather lie and cheat, and bear the silence than have her look at me without seeing, to see her smile without warmth, to hear her say rote phrases without meaning.

She left after a while, and silence and failure stayed as my only companions in the emptiness of the white room.

Author's Note

The list of stuff that I stole from (and remember doing so)
My Little Pony (including the EQG series),
The Chronicles of Narnia (as references to previous fic of the series)
Kim Possible
Indiana Jones (I think, never watched those)
Walsingham's Hymn by Alexander Pushkin
King Solomon's Mines
The Man with the Twisted Lip
Dorian Gray (ch. 16)
The Jungle Book, The Gate of Hundred Sorrows, Gunga Din, The Smuggler's Song and other assorted bits by Rudyard Kipling
The Starship Troopers
DC Comics (especially O'Neil's run of "The Question")
Spider-Man 90s cartoon
The Line of Illusions, Night Watch & Genome, as well as probably other works by Sergei Lukyanenko.
The Gleams of Aeterna by Vera Kamsha
"The Golden Oecumene" trilogy by John C. Wright
The Sandman graphic novel, Neverwhere and other works by Neil Gaiman
The Lord of the Rings (and some of the drafts by Tolkien that never became part of that book)
The Throne of the Crescent Moon
WITCH series (the cartoon, season 2)
The Lord of Light and the Amber series by Roger Zelazni
Miracleman graphic novel
The Authority graphic novel
My Brother's Sister by Anastasia Parphenova
The Coldfire Trilogy
Pokemon games
The Other Foot by Ray Bradbury
Soon I Will Be Invincible!
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The Dresden Files book series
Guardians of the Flame.
Malazan Book of the Fallen
Star Wars (the extended lore)
The Lion's Parasites by Fracncis Carsac
The Neon Court by Kate Griffin
"Ariel" by Alexander Belyaev
"A Sculptor Makes a Self-Portrait" by The Orgy of Righteous
"Firebird's Child" by Seannan McGuire
"An Apple for the Teacher" by Bing Crossby

Some of those are used in direct references and shout-outs, some as an inspiration for phrases, scenes and ideas, fully reworked into the fiction, some as copy-pasted bits of text, all of them - entirely crucial for my writing.
If I missed anything please do not hesitate to point those out.

I hope that the derivative nature of this work did not impede your enjoyment of it significantly.