Velvet Underground

Chapters

8 - Napalm Sticks to Foals
4 - Liquid Swords
5 - Definitely Maybe
6 - Deja Vu
7 - Coldplay
9 - Attitude City
10 - Led Zeppelin
11 - Breathless
12 - Free Fallin'
13 - I Believe In A Thing Called Love
14 - Smoke on the Water
15 - Disaster Area
16 - Ashes in Your Mouth
17 - For Victory
18 - Impaled Northern Moonforest
19 - This Town
20 - White Light
21 - Lift Together
22 - Free Fallin'
23 - Final Countdown
24 - I Feel Fine
E1 - Stand By Me
0 - Solar Sect of Mystic Wisdom
1 - Innervision
2 - Clair de Lune
3 - Amber Rose

8 - Napalm Sticks to Foals

A gondola is a flat-bottomed boat, well-suited to the calm warm waters they’re usually found in. They offer a slow and scenic way to view Veneighs for the tourists that travel there and were never intended for something like, as a random yet poignant example, sliding across ice at high speed.

“He’s gaining on us!” Night Light yelled, looking back. The pooka’s cloven, clawed hooves beat against the ice, kicking up spikes of frost with every heavy stride, as steady on the slippery surface as a pony striding across a well-trodden road.

“Thanks, I didn’t notice that myself!” Velvet snapped, grabbing the oar and trying to adjust their path, narrowly avoiding another gondola frozen in place with three ponies working to free it with hammers and chisels.

Coldplay ran past them, and the ponies froze in place, streams of energy streaming from their mouths and snouts like a final puff of frosty breath before the ice claimed them, the magic swirling around the pooka.

“We need to lead it away from ponies!” Velvet shouted.

Night Light looked around them at the walkways still lined with ponies, most of them thankfully outside of the pooka’s aura of killing cold but none of them really aware of the danger they were in. Most of them were watching the spectacle with interest. Horrifyingly, there were dozens of foals even just along this one canal. “How are we supposed to do that? We’re in the middle of the city!”

“You’re just going to have to trust me,” Velvet said. “Do exactly what I say, okay?”

Night Light nodded.

“Good. Lean right, hard!” Velvet threw herself to the side and Night Light followed without question. The gondola jumped, sliding to the side, skipping over the waves frozen into the canal’s surface. A spire of ice larger than Night Light’s entire body slammed into the space where they’d been, spraying them with sleet.

They shot under a bridge, the pooka jumping over it, ponies fleeing away from the creature.

“Velvet, I don’t like to be negative, but--” Night Light pointed. Ahead of them, the canal crossed with another waterway and then abruptly ended in a complex of docks and stranded boats.

“I see it,” Velvet said. “We’ve got to, um…” She paused. “Just hang on!”

The air around the pooka swirled, and Coldplay launched another spike.

Velvet braced the oar against one of the benches in the boat, holding it in place with the whole weight of her body, the blade sticking out from the narrow boat like an arm and catching the giant icicle as it hit the ice next to the boat. Like a lever, it swung the whole boat around before snapping in two, the gondola skidding sideways into the crossway before momentum straightened it out again.

“You turned us! I can’t believe that worked!” Night Light grinned at Velvet, who looked at the broken end of the oar and tossed it out of the boat.

“We can’t do that twice, so we better hope we can figure something else out,” Velvet said.

“I can see open water that way,” Night Light pointed. There was a wide beam of sunlight ahead of them, a break in the clouds above. “If we get to the sun it can’t follow us, right?”

“I don’t think we’re going to get that far,” Velvet said. She swallowed nervously. “Even if we do, once we hit the water we’re going to lose all our momentum. We’ll be sitting ducks and it’ll be able to pick us off by throwing ice at us.”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

Velvet hesitated. “One. It’s not a good chance but it’s the best we’ve got.”

“How bad is it?”

“If it works we’ll go to Las Pegasus when this is all over, because we’ll be experts at beating the odds.”

“At least I’ve got great buffets in my future,” Night Light joked.

Behind them, Coldplay jumped up out of the canal, freezing footholds into the buildings along the waterway and running ahead of them.

Night Light watched in horror as the monster overtook them. “He’s going to cut us off!”

“When I say, hold onto me, okay?” Velvet looked back at the stallion. “It’s going to be easier keeping both of us safe if we stay close.”

The pooka stopped, clinging to the side of a building, and the air wavered around it like a heat haze, the building cracking as ice cracked the foundations from below.

“Now!” Velvet yelled. Night Light grabbed her around the barrel and she jumped free, using her magic to make herself as light as possible.

The ruined building crashed down into the canal, forming a wall of rubble. The gondola sailed into it at speed, crashing against the stone and exploding into splinters and broken spars.

Velvet helped Night Light to his hooves.

“You okay?” she asked.

“I think so,” Night Light said. “I’m so cold I can’t feel my hooves.”

“Don’t speak so quickly,” Coldplay said, as it picked its way down the rubble wall with the sure steps of a goat. “Neither of you are going to be ‘okay’.”

“What do we do next?” Night Light whispered.

“It’s rude to speak in front of your betters without including them!” Coldplay launched itself between them, knocking Velvet aside with its lizard-like tail and grabbing Night Light with a clawed hoof, pulling him up to look him in the eyes.

Night Light squeaked in fear, unable to make any noise more coherent or threatening than the kind of small toy one might buy for a puppy. His magic started to tear out of him like a frosty breath, but the moment Coldplay tasted it, the pooka recoiled and threw Night Light away, coughing and gasping.

“You taste like Mudhoney!” It spat out what it had been chewing on, the magic drifting back to Night Light. “That’s disgusting! Don’t tell me he’s been nibbling on you!”

“He had a big bite,” Night Light groaned. “It really wasn’t a fun time.”

“Nothing my sibling does is pleasant,” Coldplay agreed. “He’s a mess. No hygiene at all. That’s why I’m superior. Cold has a purity to it. Ponies struggling against the chill, justifying doing awful things to each other because of a late harvest. Quiet, soft deaths for those who succumb.”

“Your brother is dead,” Velvet said.

Coldplay spun to face her, whirling around like an ice skater.

“They sent him to a different museum before you woke up,” Velvet explained. “He escaped and I had to kill him.”

“Is that so?” Coldplay asked. “You know, I never did like him.”

Night Light’s ears perked up. “Does that mean you’ll let us go for doing you a favor?”

“No, of course not. As much as I hated him, he was family.” Coldplay smiled, showing crystalline teeth. “I’m sure you understand. Ponies do care so much for family, don’t they?”

“Come and get me, then,” Velvet said. “I took one of you down. Do you think I can’t handle it again?”

“I think if you could, you wouldn’t have been running,” Coldplay replied. The air whirled around it.

Velvet edged an inch to the left, in front of an otherwise nondescript wall.

The pooka launched a half-dozen spears of ice at her, and she moved, following her magic’s guidance and twisting into a pose that nearly threw out her back. The spears moved around her, sliding around her in a perfect outline.

“What?” Coldplay asked, shocked. “Don’t tell me, you’re just like your batpony friend?”

“No, I can just read you like a book,” Velvet panted. “And you did exactly what I wanted. I saw this coming.”

“You dodged one attack. That doesn’t matter much in the long run.”

“And you’re going to lose because you think that.” Velvet raised her chin. “Ponies have advanced a lot in the last few hundred years. Back when you were frozen in stone we didn’t have nice things like the printing press, indoor plumbing, or…”

“Or what?” Coldplay asked, sounding bored.

“Oil heating,” Velvet said, throwing herself to the side.

Behind her, the wall collapsed as the massive oil tank Coldplay had punctured with his spears failed, a flood of heating oil washing over the pooka and the icy surface of the canal, Velvet running just ahead of it.

“This smells uncomfortably like my late brother,” Coldplay said. “Wonderful. You ponies have managed to find a way to make disgusting ooze all on your own. I don’t see the point of it, unless you thought it would sicken me.”

As Coldplay spoke, the oil thickened on its hide to a waxy consistency, not quite solid but too thick to flow.

“Maybe you’ll understand when you see this!” Velvet yelled. She shot a spark from her horn, and it died in the cold and wind.

Coldplay raised an eyebrow.

Velvet tried again, and the fire spell failed almost before it began, her magic too weak to create heat in the overwhelming aura of cold the pooka was putting out.

“I’m not impressed,” Coldplay said. “It’s time to bring this little farce to an end. I apologize for not learning your name, but you simply aren’t that interesting.”

Coldplay started charging up an attack and Velvet looked into the future. No matter how hard she looked, there didn’t seem to be a place to dodge. She needed a miracle, because no action she took was going to change anything.

A bolt of red fire slammed into the pooka from above. The attack it had been preparing shattered, ice falling at its hooves as the gelled oil ignited, flames spreading over the chaos spirit.

“What?!” it gasped and stumbled back, burning drops igniting the oil around it, creating a sea of flames with Coldplay at its center.

Velvet looked up. On the roof of the building above them, a pony in a black cloak launched another fireball at the monster, slamming it into the ground with concussive force.

“What is this?!” Coldplay demanded. “What have you done?!”

“The combat magic expert,” Velvet breathed. “She found us.”

“Well of course I found you!” The expert sorceress had a much higher, squeaker voice than Velvet had expected. She tossed her hood back, revealing a wavy red and yellow mane, bright cyan eyes, and a pony a decade Velvet’s junior. “Do you know how much of a mess you imbeciles made?!”

“A filly?” Velvet asked, blinking.

“You were supposed to wait at the cafe and when I got there, the whole building was missing!” She vanished in a flash of teleportation and appeared next to Twilight Velvet, a full head shorter than the young mare, though her ego and force of will more than made up for it.

“Sorry?” Velvet offered, stunned. “Who are you?”

The filly snorted, rolling her eyes. “I’m the pony that’s getting you out of this mess, duh! You can kiss my hooves after I finish dealing with this stupid monster.”

Coldplay roared, jumping over the wall of rubble.

“I’ll be back!” It yelled. “You tricked me!”

“Say that to my face!” The filly yelled. “Do you know who I am?!”

Coldplay jumped, splashing into the water on the other side of the barrier, burning oil leaving a long trail as it swam away to lick its wounds.

“Is it gone?” Night Light asked. “Am I dead? I don’t feel dead but I keep coming close and I don’t want to miss it when it happens.”

“Hmph. It’s gone,” the filly said, annoyed. “I hate it when monsters run. I take time out of my busy schedule teaching that total bumpkin imbecile how to use her horn and I don’t even get to finish the fight cleanly.”

“I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” Velvet said. “Are you really the pony Clearwater wanted us to meet?”

“You’re talking to the greatest combat sorceress in Equestria,” the filly boasted. “I’m Princess Celestia’s personal student, Sunset Shimmer, and now I’m the one in charge!”

Author's Note

Remember, everyone: Napalm Sticks to Kids

4 - Liquid Swords

“What did you do to my father?” Velvet demanded, peeking out of the cover she was sharing with Night Light to look at the pooka. The marble floor was hissing and bubbling, discolored from the slime spread over it.

“He served my hunger,” the monster said. Every word seemed to bubble up its throat and through its browned teeth. “You ponies haven’t changed at all in a thousand years.”

“It’s a pooka,” Night Light whispered. “It’s a kind of chaos spirit. It’s what I was trying to warn your father about!”

“Maybe you should have mentioned there’d be a monster!” Velvet hissed.

“Would you have believed me if you hadn’t seen it yourself?”

“We have to get it away from my father,” Velvet said, dodging the question. “You’re the monster expert. What do we do?”

“Monster expert? Me?”

“You’re the only one who knows anything, that makes you the expert!” Velvet shot him a smile.

Night Light blushed and coughed. “Well, ah, okay, it’s a chaos spirit. It was trapped in stone by Princess Celestia. I think the Temple of the Sun’s Heart was a kind of prison for them. According to the legend, the spell Celestia used turned them to stone as long as Her sun shone down on them, and the Sun’s Heart was forged to keep them in constant sunlight.”

“That must be why it hasn’t left the museum,” Velvet said. “It’s the middle of the day!”

“What we’ll do is, I’ll distract it, you grab your father, and we’ll run outside,” Night Light said. “On three. One, two--”

Velvet had a sudden moment of insight, but before she could even start to warn Night Light, he fired a bolt of magic at the monster. The streak of silver light hit the creature dead on, a perfect shot that was worse than useless.

The pooka’s skin crawled, the magic simply sinking in like a stone landing in quicksand, and started sucking Night Light’s magic in, his aura flickering as the pooka pulled at the connection he’d inadvertently made.

“I can’t stop it!” Night Light yelled.

Twilight Velvet swore under her breath and pushed her head next to Night Light’s so the tips of their horns just barely touched, crossing her magic stream with his. The connection between him and the pooka snapped, and the blue stallion fell onto his haunches, looking drained.

“What was that?” the pooka asked. It curled its lips, disgusted. “It almost tasted like the Sun Pony’s magic.”

Velvet had no idea what it was talking about, but she knew she needed to get Night Light on his hooves and chatting would buy her time.

“I know a few tricks,” she said. “If you let my father go, we can walk away. You go your way, I go mine.”

“Amusing. If you had any real way to defeat me, you’d have done it already.”

“I don’t even know who you are,” she pointed out. “I don’t like to fight somepony before I’ve even been properly introduced.”

“Oh, is that so? How polite. I am Mudhoney, spirit of Ooze. And you’re one of the Sun Pony’s little servants. Don’t bother telling me your name, unlike you I don’t particularly care.” It smiled a crooked smile, the edges of its lips dripping, its whole body looking like it was barely even staying solid.

“If we don’t stop it, it’s going to eat everypony in Canterlot,” Night Light hissed.

“Just your magic,” Mudhoney corrected. “There’s nothing quite like melting down that little heart of magic you ponies have inside you. All I needed was two hapless little pastel horses to break that curse the Sun Pony put on me.”

“You killed Amber Rose,” Velvet said. It wasn’t a question.

“You ponies don’t last long with my magic replacing yours,” Mudhoney said. “It’s that beautiful conversion from harmony to chaos that sustains me, but it tends to, well, just look at this.” The monster nudged Velvet’s father. The older stallion’s skin was breaking out in boils, his hair falling out in clumps.

Velvet felt her heart seize. He looked half dead already.

“You’ll see what I mean soon enough,” Mudhoney promised. Its skin started to ripple, and Velvet was ready this time, her premonition already up and running. Night Light ducked behind the empty plinth, and she took his hoof, running for the entrance to the hall. A wave of sickly green hit the stone they’d been using as cover and went around it, splashing in a wide arc that was burning through the marble.

“What do we do?” Night Light asked.

“So much for my monster expert,” Velvet muttered. “That thing can dissolve stone! We can’t even hide from it!”

“Wait, I’ve got an idea!” Night Light pointed at a security box. “We’ll call the Guard!”

“No, that’s just going to--” Velvet wasn’t able to stop him in time.

He grabbed the lever and pulled it. Sirens blared, and less than fifty feet away, right between them and freedom, a steel security grate dropped into place.

“--trigger a lockdown,” she finished, through clenched teeth. “What’s the point of seeing disaster if other ponies don’t bloody listen?!”

“Sorry,” Night Light said, weakly.

“We can’t use magic,” Velvet said. Her eyes fixed on the steel spikes and poison darts tastefully arranged in glass cases. “You grab the spikes!”

Night Light nodded, and they bucked cases open, glass spilling around their hooves.

“This is almost amusing,” Mudhoney called out, a laugh bubbling from its lips. “I’d tell you it would be less painful to surrender, but it would be a lie.”

Night Light took aim and threw a spike, the sharp point going right through the pooka’s neck. It had about as much effect as if he’d blown a kiss at the monster, the steel hissing and slumping, discoloring as it turned into a slurry.

“It can dissolve metal, too!” Night Light said. “I don’t think the darts are going to work.”

“We can’t just give up,” Velvet retorted, throwing them anyway. Her magic pulsed painfully, her headache starting to return. The pooka tossed its head, catching one of the darts while her aura was still wrapped around it.

“Careless,” it chided. The monster pulled at her magic, and she could feel it creeping back inside her like a burning stain, until another pulse surged through her, and the pooka recoiled, losing its grip on her magic.

“Ow!” Velvet hissed, rubbing her temples.

“Annoying,” the pooka growled. “I’m not going to bother eating your magic. You taste too much like the Sun Pony.”

It reared up, and Velvet saw in her mind’s eye a rush of acid strong enough to dissolve metal. Night Light started to bolt, and she grabbed his hoof.

“Wait,” she hissed, her head still pounding.

“Wait? But--”

Velvet shook her head, holding him. “Trust me.”

Night Light held his ground. A deadly wave rushed towards them.

“Now!” A pink aura surrounded him, Velvet’s aura helping pull him to safety at the last moment, the acid surging past them and into the steel security grate, hitting the panels and hissing, noxious gas bubbling as the barrier dissolved.

“A way out!”

“It was the only way we were getting out of here,” Velvet explained. “Don’t touch the edges!”

The two ran out ahead of the monster and into the hallway, the alarms still going off.

“We can get to the guards!” Night Light yelled. “Even if we just get outside we’ll be safe!”

“We won’t make it out. There are more security doors over all the entrances!” Velvet skidded to a halt, looking at the entrance to the bathrooms.

Night Light groaned. “I’m about to make a mess too, but no matter how scared you are this is a bad time to use the little filly’s room!”

“Shut up! I’ve got an idea.” She ran inside.

“What am I supposed to do?” Night Light asked, hesitating at the doorway.

“You’ll figure something out!” Velvet said.

Night Light groaned. “Figure something out,” he repeated, looking around. A bright red box caught his eye, and he pulled it open, revealing a firehose. “It’s not going to be able to melt water!”

Mudhoney lurched through the molten grate, the floor hissing and cracking with the snail trail it left in the wake of its cloven hooves. Night Light grabbed the nozzle and twisted the valve, struggling with the hose, the pressure making it writhe in his grasp like a huge burlap snake. His trembling, weak limbs could barely hold it, still feeling like something had been scooped out of his heart.

“What do you think you’re--” Mudhoney started, just as Night Light wrestled the spray into its face. The chaos spirit sputtered and stepped back, splatters of filthy gel falling to the floor around it like it was being washed away.

“It’s working!” Night Light stepped forward, trying to press the monster back.

Mudhoney roared like a geyser’s rumble, a spray of acid missing the stallion.

“That’s not going to work,” Night Light said. “You can’t do anything about water!”

The stream sputtered and trailed off. Night Light frowned and shook the hose. He yanked at it in frustration, and it tore apart in his hooves, the edges hissing and burning from where Mudhoney’s acid spray had eaten through the canvas.

“Oh. I guess there was something you could do,” Night Light whispered.

“Do you know how much it hurts to be dissolved?” Mudhoney growled.

“Why don’t you tell us?!” Velvet yelled. A blue plastic jug smacked into the pooka, splashing something amber-colored and as thick as syrup over the monster. It started reacting almost instantly, foaming and hissing and letting off grey vapors.

“What is that stuff?” Night Light asked. The pooka screamed in pain, layers of slime peeling away like the thick skin on a pudding sloughing off.

“Drain cleaner,” Velvet said. She held up two more jugs. “I knew they had to have some in the cleaning closet. It’s a really strong base, and since the pooka is acid, they react and neutralize each other, like vinegar and baking soda.”

“I’m going to tear you apart!” Mudhoney roared. Half its body was discolored, pale white and pulsing with bright green veins.

“I just don’t see that happening,” Velvet retorted. She threw another of the jugs.

This time, the pooka was aware of the danger, smacking it away with a long, lizard-like tail instead of dissolving the container. It splattered against the wall, the pooka keeping its distance.

“The same trick won’t work twice,” it said, voice distorted, only able to speak out of half its face.

“I know,” Velvet agreed, throwing something else.

The pooka’s tail lashed out again on instinct. It saw its mistake at the same time Night Light did. Velvet hadn’t thrown one of the plastic jugs of drain cleaner. Instead, she’d tossed a bright red fire extinguisher, and when the tail hit it, it exploded in a plume of fire retardant and shrapnel.

“You insolent little--” the pooka thrashed, trying to clear its eyes, the cold slowing it as it thickened like molasses in winter.

Before it could finish its threat, Velvet upended the jug of drain cleaner on it.

At the same time, the security door popped open. Gold-armored guards poured in. Naturally, Sergeant Sky was leading them.

“What in Celestia’s name is going on?” he demanded.

Mudhoney stumbled toward them, a skeletal horror nearly as tall as Princess Celestia, the flesh melting away as it crumbled.

“What is that?!” Sergeant Sky demanded

“Stay back!” Velvet warned. “Don’t use magic or let it touch you!”

The guards kept their distance, watching in horror as the monster thrashed and fell in a heap, what little was left of it turning into stone, like its bones had fossilized while it was alive.

“Miss Velvet, you’d better have an explanation for all this,” Sky said.

“Talk to this guy, he’s the monster expert,” she said, pushing Night Light towards the Royal Guards. “I need to check on my father!”

She ran, Night Light stuttering out an explanation as she picked her way through the ruin and back into the Temple exhibition. Her father was curled up in a heap on the floor, and she slowed as she neared him, unsure what to do until he started coughing, hacking up a huge spurt of mucous.

“Dad!” She ran the rest of the way to his side, kneeling down and cradling him. “Don’t try to move. The Guard is here. We took care of the monster.”

“I’m so proud of you, honey,” he whispered. His skin was blistered and discolored, entirely bald in some places. “You remind me so much of your mother…”

“You just hang on,” she said, squeezing his cracked hoof. “I don’t want to lose you, too.”

“Just promise me… promise me you won’t let this happen to anypony else,” he said. “I should have listened to Night Light when he came the first time…”

“I promise,” Velvet whispered.

Her father nodded and smiled. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d rather like to go to the hospital. I know I look on top of things, but I feel terrible.”

Velvet laughed and hugged him.

Author's Note

Today's Musical Ref: Mudhoney

5 - Definitely Maybe

“I demand to see my father!” Velvet yelled, pounding a hoof against the table. She couldn’t have dented it if she tried. It had been designed to hold up to angry earth ponies. “I haven’t done anything wrong! You have no right to treat me like a criminal!”

“Calm down,” Sergeant Sky sighed. “You’re not being charged with anything. At least not yet.”

“Then why aren’t you letting me leave?” Velvet asked. “And why do I have this bloody ring on my horn? You’re acting like I’m some kind of, of dangerous monster!”

“The restraining ring is on your horn because you’re a flight risk,” the pegasus said. “Right now you wouldn’t be allowed to see your father. He’s in intensive care. If you calm down and ask nicely I’ll get you some coffee or something to eat.”

“I just…” Velvet deflated. “I’m worried about him.”

“I know,” Sky said. “If there’s any news, you’ll be the first to know, okay? We’re waiting for somepony.”

“Who?” Velvet frowned. “Wait, is it the Princess?”

“I wish,” Sky sighed. “We’re having problems getting word to her. No, we sent for an expert monster hunter. Unfortunately, she was apparently still sleeping when the call went out.”

“But it’s the middle of the day,” Velvet said, confused. “Why would they be asleep?”

The door burst open and a grey batpony in dark armor and sunglasses stormed in. “Because she’s nocturnal!” She yelled. “And was listening at the door. I don’t like walking in on anything blind.” She tapped the sunglasses with a hoof. “Figuratively, I mean.”

“Nocturnal?” Velvet asked, confused.

“If you hunt monsters, it’s a good trait to have,” she said. “Agent Clearwater, Night Guard, division six.”

The batpony offered a hoof, and Velvet shook it, confused. “Division six?”

“You like repeating what people say as a question, huh? I stopped by the museum before I came here,” Agent Clearwater said. “Looks like pretty nasty work. I had the monster’s remains put in secure storage. Things like that have a habit of not staying dead when they should.”

“What do you need from me?” Velvet asked. “It sounds like you already know everything.”

“If I knew everything my job would be a lot easier,” the batpony said. “Sergeant Sky, can you get me a cup of coffee? With, uh, seven or eight lumps of sugar. No milk.”

The pegasus sighed and left the room. Agent Tears waited for him to leave before she started talking again.

“I emptied the coffeepot once already when I came in,” Clearwater said. “It’s been a really long morning. We’ve probably got two or three minutes before he comes back. I wanted to apologize to you - we should have been more on alert, especially after Miss Rose was killed. You did really well for a civilian, though.”

“Thanks,” Velvet shrugged.

“If there’s anything I can do for you, let me know. Your father’s medical bills are going to be covered by the crown, and he’s getting the best treatment possible.”

“You could get this ring off my horn,” Velvet said. “It’s making my headache worse.”

“Promise not to run away on me?” Clearwater asked. Velvet nodded, and the batpony motioned for her to come closer before pulling it off with a wing and a few careful tugs.

“So what happens next?”

“We’ll do a few tests, make sure that monster didn’t leave any nasty surprises, and then you go home,” Agent Clearwater said. Her tufted ear twitched. “But unless I’m mistaken, Sergeant Sky is here with our coffee.”

The door popped open, and Sky put two mugs on the table.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Agent Clearwater said, taking her mug and sipping, grimacing at the taste. “I should have asked for nine lumps.”

Velvet sipped on her own mug without complaint, the pounding at her temples and under her horn getting worse.

“It’s already more sugar than coffee,” Sky said.

“I hate to see what you feed your prisoners if this is what the staff gets,” the batpony muttered. “Miss Velvet? Are you feeling alright?”

The next thing Twilight Velvet knew, she was lying on the ground and the two Guards were kneeling next to her.

“...some kind of side effect from the monster attack?” Sergeant Sky asked.

“No, that was her own magic,” Agent Clearwater said. “Might have been brought on by exhaustion. She’s been through a lot.”

“What happened?” Velvet muttered, the headache finally starting to fade.

“I was hoping you could tell us.” Agent Clearwater offered a hoof, pulling Velvet to her hooves. “You had a magical surge and used your coffee rather artistically.”

“Not again,” Velvet groaned. The eggshell white wall of the room had been turned into an impromptu canvas. There were brown stains on the paint, half splashed and half drawn by hoof. It would have been unremarkable if it didn’t form a picture.

“This has happened before?” Clearwater asked.

Velvet looked up at the menacing figures depicted in brown silhouette. Three sets of eyes in vague outlines, the edges dripping where the coffee ran down the paint.

“It’s… it’s a kind of automatic writing,” Velvet admitted, looking away. “Sorry.”

“Tell me what you see, Sergeant Sky,” Clearwater said.

“Why me?” Sky asked.

“Humor me.”

“Well, ah,” the pegasus cleared his throat. “It looks like three figures, and the writing underneath it says ‘light and love fall without moon and stars.’”

“Interesting,” Clearwater nodded. “Automatic writing. I’ve come across that a few times. I heard Clover the Clever had the gift. Most scholars consider it a form of prophecy.”

“I can’t do it on purpose. it happens when I have a magic surge. My grandmother had the same problem - she got the same headaches and weird magic I do. I mean, there was the rumor she used it to win a few bets but I can’t focus it or anything or I’d have the winning lottery numbers instead of… instead of whatever this is.” She motioned at the wall.

Clearwater nodded. “I think I’ve heard enough. Sergeant Sky, I want you to release Miss Velvet and Mister Night Light into my custody.”

“I don’t have a problem releasing Miss Velvet, but the stallion--”

“I’ll vouch for him on my personal authority,” Clearwater said. “I think what’s important is that we get to Veneighs, not about proper procedure. Not when we can’t even get a message through to Her Highness.”

“What do you mean, Veneighs?” Velvet demanded.

“That’s where the rest of the artifacts are,” Clearwater explained. “Normally, I’d just pass this up the chain, but most of the chain of command is in Saddle Arabia waving the flag. There are important assets that might be at risk if we wait.”

“Important assets?” Sergeant Sky frowned. “I have duties here. I can’t simply leave!”

“Hm? Oh, when I said ‘we’, I didn’t mean you.” The batpony motioned to Velvet. “I’m going to travel with Miss Velvet and Night Light.”

“They’re civilians!”

“I’ll go,” Velvet said, before Sky could keep interrupting. “I promised my Dad I’d make sure these monsters didn’t hurt anypony else.”

“Are you sure?” Sky asked.

“Light and love fall without moon and stars,” Velvet said. “I’ve got stars on my flank, and I’m already in this mess. Night Light had a moon. There’s a good chance we’re involved no matter what.”

“That’s the spirit,” Clearwater crowed, patting her on the back. “Don’t worry. I’ve got a great ship in mind to get us to Veneighs safely.”

“You can’t be serious,” Velvet said. She’d packed light. For her, that meant saddlebags with a few necessities tossed in. Apparently, for Night Light, it meant two suitcases that felt like they were full of bricks but ended up just being most of his personal library.

The airship docks were packed with ponies moving cargo and passengers, and Night Light had been easy to spot as a dam in the flow as he dragged the bags behind him.

“We might need these,” he said. “I brought my research and all my primary sources and some of the reading those sources suggested.”

“We definitely don’t need all that,” Velvet retorted.

“Well, use your future vision and figure out which books we need.” He stepped back to let her see.

“...We won’t need any in the next minute or two,” she said, lamely. “Look, my precognition is only really accurate for a few seconds! I don’t know what’s going to be needed two weeks from now!”

“And that’s why I need to bring all of it,” Night Light said. “We’ll probably need to make our case in front of scholars. It’s going to be worse than my dissertation!”

“You kids realize we’re going somewhere with a library, right?” Clearwater asked, as she touched down on the dock. She’d left the Night Guard armor behind and was wearing a wide scarf fastened with a familiar looking pin.

“Wait a minute,” Velvet narrowed her eyes. “You’re part of the cult!”

“It’s more like a gentlemare’s club,” Clearwater said, her expression hard to read behind the dark sunglasses she wore. “Anyway, take like, half of that at most. Only what you can carry on your own.”

“Any suggestions?” Velvet asked.

“Eh, books don’t do much for me,” Clearwater shrugged. “Come on. We’re meeting the Limozeen on dock eight.”

“Just give me one minute…” Night Light shuffled books between the two bags, every choice obviously a painful one.

“So is the Limozeen a Royal Guard airship?” Velvet asked.

“Funny you should ask that,” Clearwater said.

“This is a smuggler's ship,” Velvet said.

“And that’s why it’s funny that you asked if it was a Guard ship!” Clearwater explained, grinning.

“It’s a wreck,” Velvet said, looking at the airship. It hadn’t seen a coat of paint in so long that there was more bare wood and patchwork showing than color. The gasbag had been repaired so many times it was more like a quilt. She shared a worried look with Night Light.

“The Limozeen is the fastest ship in Canterlot,” called out a pony on deck, a brown-coated stallion a few years Velvet’s senior. “More importantly, it’s a ship for hire and willing to go off the usual shipping routes to avoid any, ah, entanglements.”

“Velvet, meet Mister Caballeron,” Clearwater said.

“Doctor, actually,” Caballeron corrected. "Correspondence courses, you see."

“Doctor,” Clearwater conceded. “You look good.”

“Oh, that means a lot, coming from you,” Caballeron laughed. “This is a rather special run, isn’t it? You three are my only cargo.”

“Wait, so I could have brought all my books?” Night Light asked. “Maybe I can still find that courier we asked to take the other suitcase back--”

“Kid, I’m saving you a headache later,” Clearwater said. “We’re not going camping in the middle of nowhere. It’s one of the oldest cities in the world.”

She started pushing Night Light up the gangplank.

“We’ll set off once you’re settled in,” Caballeron said, strutting off to check the rigging.

“Are you sure about him?” Velvet whispered.

“I’m sure it’s our best option,” Clearwater said. “For the last few days, we’ve been trying to get in touch with Celestia and failing. That already has the Royal Guard worried, and a few ships on the regular routes are late reporting in. Nothing big like a passenger liner, but a cargo ship here, a yacht there… it’s a definite pattern.”

“You think a smuggler can avoid that?”

“He’s not going to file a flight plan, and we’ll be outside all the usual traffic lanes. If something finds us, then we couldn’t have avoided it no matter what we do, so get comfortable. Or as comfortable as you can, anyway. This isn’t a luxury cruise ship.”

Night Light had a half-dozen books spread out in what was generously called a table in what was even more generously called a stateroom.

“It says here that the pookas are a kind of primordial chaos spirit,” Night Light said. “They were created when the four Harmonious Elements - earth, air, fire, and water - clashed. Over time, the energy born of that natural conflict gave birth to them and they resided in the most unformed, chaotic places in the world.”

“Mudhoney said he was a spirit of ooze,” Velvet said, looking over the crabbed hoofwriting on the pages, most of the books predating the printing press.

“Right,” Night Light said. “That’s a mix of earth and water, the water trying to dissolve the earth and the earth trying to turn the water solid. I think based on what we saw, they feed by converting harmonious magic into their own, like how a fire turns wood and air into ashes and releases a lot of light and heat in the process.”

“Sounds like a terrible creature,” Caballeron offered. “Where did it come from? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Some grad student named Daring Do dug them out of a ruined temple in the Badlands,” Clearwater said. “I don’t think she knew what she was unleashing.”

“I’ll remember the name,” the older stallion joked. “I’ll make sure not to carry any cargo for her in case she digs up more monsters. So you think there are some waiting for you in Veneighs?”

“With any luck, they’re still sealed in stone,” Night Light said. “Princess Celestia petrified them, and from what I can tell, sunlight keeps the spell in place. They were buried with a gem that constantly shone light on them to keep them imprisoned.”

“And one got away, eh?” Caballeron shook his head. “I’ll make sure you get to the city. Monsters are bad for profit, and there are so many collectors and antiquarians in Veneighs who are good customers of mine. I can’t afford to lose them.”

“Very thoughtful of you,” Clearwater said, snorting. Her ears perked up. “Something’s going on outside.”

Caballeron opened a shuttered port, and the sound changed from a light tapping that only the bat noticed to a rattling riot like pebbles hitting a roof.

“Hail,” he said. “Not the usual kind of weather for this latitude.”

“Do you sense anything?” Clearwater asked, turning to Velvet.

“I’m not a monster detector!” She huffed. “But no, I don’t see anything bad happening to us in the next few minutes.”

“Then what’s that light?!” Night Light demanded, pointing. A dim, flickering violet light danced along the rigging and spars of the airship.

“Saint Anger’s Fire,” Caballeron said. “A bad omen, but nothing truly dangerous on its own.” He closed the shutter. “There’s an old tradition to be done in poor weather with a bad sign. Would you all care to join me in it?”

He opened a small chest and pulled out a glass bottle and glasses.

“I’m up for that,” Clearwater said. “Rum?”

“No, no, rum is for pirates,” Caballeron said. “I am a stallion of taste. This is limoncello, made by hoof. It keeps the scurvy away and lifts the spirits.”

He poured the glasses, careful not to spill anything on Night Light’s books, more out of concern of the drink than the text.

“Salud, dinero, amor,” Caballeron said, before downing his drink. “To health, money, and love, may we find at least one of the three when we arrive.”

Author's Note

Today's Music Selection: Creedence Clearwater Revival: Have You Ever Seen The Rain?

6 - Deja Vu

Veneighs, the city on the water. One of the oldest and most beautiful cities in the world, and a stunning example of determination in the face of adversity. That’s what the tourist board said, anyway. It certainly was beautiful, but it was also incredibly expensive to maintain and existed mostly because Old Unicornia had been unwilling to admit anything was wrong even when boats replaced carts in the streets and everypony had to build an extra story or two on their homes to keep their hooves from getting wet.

The buildings were all in that classic decaying empire style, brick fronted with stucco and marble pillars added purely for decoration, amazing artwork framed by crumbling ruin barely held at bay. The tourist trade had made a larger mark on the city than any art movement, though. Safety railings were bolted to buildings hundreds of years older than the laws requiring them, small shops offered the latest editions of the Canterlot Times, and down the street Velvet could just make out a sign for a very ambitious expansion of Hayburger Princess.

“Are you sure we can’t just go there?” Velvet asked, looking forlornly at the sign.

“What, are you predicting we’ll get food poisoning?” Clearwater asked.

“It’s comfort food,” Velvet muttered.

“If we manage to stop the evil chaos spirits, I’ll buy you a Princess Meal myself,” Clearwater promised. “For right now we’re going to eat in this wonderful local cafe.”

Velvet looked around the ‘wonderful local cafe’. Ponies often talked about taking in the local color. In this case, the local color was black, in a dozen different shades. She was very quickly learning the difference between newsprint black, rich black, ebony, nightshade, and the very dark shades of navy that could easily be mistaken as black at a distance.

“I can’t help but notice this place is kind of themed,” Velvet said. “In fact, when we were walking in, everypony on the serving staff was wearing a rather odd pin.”

“Here we go again,” Night Light sighed.

“Look, before you go off and offend everypony here, we’ve got bigger things to worry about,” Clearwater said.

“The pookas,” Velvet said.

“I was talking about my expense report,” Clearwater corrected. “Members can eat free and then I bring the receipts back to Canterlot and it’s like I’m getting paid to eat! It might not sound like much but it adds up when you travel a lot.”

“You’re joking.”

“A little, but we can’t do anything yet. We’ve got a combat magic expert coming to meet us before we go out to the museum. Unless you really want to try taking them on without support?”

Velvet sighed. “We’ll wait”

“At least you’re not reading at the table,” Clearwater said.

“I’m just looking at a map of the city,” Night Light said. “I’ve never been here before. It seemed like a good idea to pick up a book at the port and… I kind of always bring home books as souvenirs.”

“Put it away. We’re not here to do the touristy thing and I think I hear our food coming.”

Plates were placed in front of each of them, and Velvet recoiled the moment she got a look at what was in the bowl.

“You can’t be serious,” she whispered.

The shallow sky-blue bowl contained something that very nearly resembled food and then veered sharply into realms Velvet didn’t want her palette to go. Pasta formed the base of the dish, black and slick and tossed with a purple sauce flecked with white specks. Star-shaped slices of fruit decorated one side of the plate as a garnish.

“It’s a local specialty,” Clearwater said. “You’ll like it.”

Night Light flipped through the slim book he was still reading. “According to this, the pasta is colored with squid ink, and the spicy sauce is made with purple tomatillo, red wine, and star anise.”

Velvet frowned and waited for Clearwater to start before she gingerly picked a noodle off the plate with her magic and ate it as if afraid it was going to poison her.

“That’s not bad,” she said, surprised. “It looks like the kind of mess I make in the kitchen when I try to cook, but it actually tastes good!”

“I think the appearance is half the experience,” Night Light said. “Otherwise it’s not that different from any other pasta dish.”

“So the pony we’re meeting, what are they like?” Velvet asked. She started eating with gusto after deciding it wasn't poisoned or disgusting.

“I haven’t met them face-to-face but…” Clearwater hesitated, taking a sip of the dark berry wine she’d ordered to buy herself time. “Look, all I know for sure is that everypony who’s had to work with her hasn’t enjoyed it. She’s not pleasant or nice, but she can get the job done and if we need something blasted to Tartarus there’s nopony better.”

“I really don’t like the sound of that…” Velvet muttered. “Is she another member of your little cult?”

“It’s just a club, and no, not really. If it makes you feel better, Princess Celestia trusts her and has her here instead of Canterlot training a VIP. The details are kinda hush-hush.”

“So secret you can’t even tell us?” Velvet asked.

“It’s a need-to-know thing. Even I shouldn’t really know. It’s the kind of secret that puts lives at risk. The important thing is, she’s dropping everything to come here, so we’re gonna wait.” Clearwater paused and swirled her now-empty glass. “And I’m gonna get more wine. You kids stay here.”

She got up and left to bother the bartender, leaving Night Light and Velvet to their plates of black pasta.

“A combat magic expert,” Velvet muttered. “I wonder what she’ll be like?”

“If she’s an expert, she’s probably an older mare,” Night Light said. “Maybe even one of the teachers at the School for Gifted Unicorns.”

“Nah, they’d never let somepony like that near foals. She probably walks around in armor all the time, with a big dark cloak.”

“Why would she need a cloak?”

Velvet rolled her eyes. “Everypony knows that mares with tragic backstories have black cloaks so they can hide the scars.”

“I’m pretty sure that doesn’t happen in real life.”

“And if she fights monsters she’s probably got like, an eyepatch and a hook hoof!” Velvet continued. “And then she sweeps ponies off their hooves…”

“Now you’re turning it into some kind of weird romantic thing,” Night Light said.

“Hey, you never know!” Velvet huffed. She started on her food again. “Aw. It went cold already?”

“This place is really drafty. Old buildings usually are, but this is crazy!” Night Light shivered. “I should have brought a sweater…”

Velvet nodded, shivering. “Maybe Clearwater will get us something from the bar to help us warm up if we ask nicely.”

“The weird thing is that Veneighs is supposed to have a moderate climate all year long,” Night Light said. “See? It says the last time the temperature here went below freezing was during a raid by Pegasopilus.”

He turned the book so Velvet could see the tiny woodcut reproduction of pegasus raiders attacking Veneighs under cover of a winter storm.

Outside, hail started pelting the narrow windows.

“I think that book is going to need an update,” Velvet said.

“Hey, you two!” Clearwater yelled from the bar. “I got a bad feeling. Get yourselves ready to get going in a hurry.”

The front door burst open, hail and cold wind swirling inside, the banners and drapes around the room rippling.

A pegasus in golden armor stumbled inside, falling just as he got through the door.

Velvet rushed over, kneeling down next to him.

“He’s got frostbite,” she said. “This is really bad. Um… I think for frostbite we need room-temperature water and blankets.”

“I can get the water,” Night Light said, after slamming the door shut to hold back the cold.

“Wait!” The pegasus gasped. “You have to listen!”

“Stand down, soldier,” Clearwater whispered. “You can tell us after we’ve got you warmed up.”

“No time,” the pegasus said, shivering. “I was at the museum. S-she ordered us to go take a look. We didn’t- we didn’t even get through the front door!”

“You’re okay now,” Velvet assured him. She couldn’t look him in the eye or he’d see the lie. How was she supposed to tell a pony that the glimpse she’d taken into his future ended very abruptly no matter what they said or did?

“It’s not okay. I barely got away. I shouldn’t have- I shouldn’t have left!” He shivered. “They must have let me go so they could follow me!”

Clearwater motioned for Night Light to go to the window.

“Keep your eyes open,” she whispered.

“There are three of them,” the pegasus said. “You need to get word to the Princess! She’s the only one who can possibly stop them!” He clutched Velvet’s hoof with an incredibly tight grip until she nodded in silent agreement.

The pegasus took one last breath and slumped, going totally limp.

“He’s gone,” Clearwater whispered. “We need to move. If he’s right about being followed they could already be on their way here.”

“Ma’am, I think we have a problem.”

Velvet put the pegasus down gently and stood up to look.

Outside, the canals were freezing solid.

“They’re here,” Velvet whispered.

7 - Coldplay

The wind howled around the cafe. The building was two hundred years old and had never been intended for anything colder than the light winters they got here, where the closest snow was in the mountains just visible on the horizon. Now, though, hail was coming down on the building like a million tiny fists, the canals outside frozen unevenly, waves frozen in place like time had stopped.

“This is amazing,” Night Light said, peering carefully through a cracked window. “How many pegasi would it take to make a weather system like this?”

“That’s wild weather,” Clearwater said. “Nopony is controlling it.”

“I don’t think it extends very far,” Night Light said, stretching his neck to look. “It only goes a block or two, then the ice just stops!”

“Be careful!” Velvet warned. “We don’t know where it is!”

“I don’t see it anywmmmph!” Night Light stumbled back from the window.

“What’s wrong?” Velvet asked, running over.

“He’s not breathing,” Clearwater said, from across the room.

Velvet knelt down next to the struggling stallion. Ice had formed across his snout and sealed his mouth shut. He looked at her, panicking and turning blue. Bluer, anyway.

“Get the, um--” Velvet closed her eyes for a heartbeat, thinking. “Coffeepot!”

Clearwater grabbed the tin pot, still bubbling behind the bar, and ran over with it. Velvet grabbed it with her magic and tried to carefully pour the steaming coffee on Night Light’s face.

The ice melted away, and Night Light gasped as his jaw was suddenly freed.

“The moisture in my breath froze!” Night Light said, between big breaths. “I didn’t think that was possible!”

“If it’s freezing right on your face it means the temperature must be negative seventy or eighty!” Velvet said. “That could kill a pony in minutes!”

“Even a pegasus,” Clearwater said, motioning to the pony that had died on their doorstep. “If the hail is focused around us, then he was right about being followed. We need to figure out how to get out of here without being seen.”

“If it wasn’t a death sentence I’d say we figure out some way to swim to safety,” Night Light said. “From what I read, a lot of the foundations are connected here and we could get to another building.”

“If we could swim through underground water-filled tunnels,” Velvet muttered. “Even if it wasn’t this cold that would be a bad idea. If we get caught exposed and dripping wet in this weather we’ll be dead before we can realize how stupid the idea was to begin with.”

“Velvet, try doing your trick and figure out how to get out of this,” Clearwater said. “If you can’t figure anything out at least tell me what definitely won’t work and we’ll go from there.”

Velvet nodded and closed her eyes, trying to focus.

Almost immediately she gasped and stumbled back, looking horrified.

“Somepony’s going to die,” she said. “I don’t know who, but--”

“Keep that kind of good news to yourself,” Night Light said. “It’s me, isn’t it?”

“I just said I wasn’t sure who!”

“You and Miss Clearwater are more important. I’m just here because I got excited about being able to show off my research and ponies respecting me… I can’t fight monsters!”

Clearwater slapped him with her wing.

“Knock it off! You can’t lose it now! We need to get everypony here to safety, and if you weren’t so self-centered you’d remember we aren’t the only ones in here. The staff here are just ponies doing their jobs. We have a responsibility to get either help them escape or lure the monster away.”

“She’s right,” Velvet said.

“Don’t worry about us,” one of the waiters said. “You were right about the basements, but ours is sealed. We use it for storage. We can shelter down there until this is over.”

He pulled open a door, revealing steps down.

“As you can see, we’ll be quite comfortable while…” he looked down and gasped. “The basement!”

Water filled the dark space, lights flickering where they hadn’t already gone out. Boxes of food and produce floated in the murky slush, the whole room already colder than a commercial freezer.

“What happened?” Velvet asked.

Night Light looked past the distraught stallion moaning about the loss of thousands of bits worth of food. “Look! You can see cracks in the stone of the foundation! That’s how the water must have gotten in!”

“Cracks in the stone?” Velvet frowned. “But we would have heard if there was something hitting the building that hard.”

“It’s ice erosion. Water seeps into tight spaces, then freezes to ice and forces cracks open. More water gets in, and then when that freezes the stone gets pushed open wider and wider. It should take hundreds of cycles to get this bad! This is impossible!”

The building trembled like it was shivering in the cold.

“What was that?” Velvet asked.

“Something’s happening below us!” Clearwater said, “Be careful!”

There was a crack as loud as thunder but with the wet sound of branches snapping. The building lurched to one side, and the waiter at the top of the steps fell, landing hard on the steps before sliding into the slush pouring into the building.

“No!” Night Light grabbed for him and missed, and the pony vanished under the frigid water.

“The cracks in the foundation are making the whole building unstable,” Velvet said. “We can’t wait any longer or we’ll just end up at the bottom of the canal trapped in rubble!”

Clearwater tapped a hoof, thinking. “There has to be a way out of this,” she mumbled.

Almost in time with her tapping, there were three hard knocks on the door.

Velvet took a step towards it.

“Don’t,” Clearwater said. “I’ll get it.”

The batpony walked to the front door and pulled it open in one motion. Frost flowed in just ahead of the tall, pale creature that stepped inside. It was as tall as Princess Celestia, colored like an ice sculpture covered in a dusting of snow, icicles dripping from its lizard-like chin, the creature looking more like a deer than a pony, the air distorting around it like a mirage.

It looked around the room, cold eyes fixing on each of the ponies there in turn.

“I thought there would be more of you,” it said, eventually. “Such a grand city, yet you can’t raise an army against me?”

“I apologize. If you’d like, we can go get an army and come back,” Clearwater offered.

The pooka chuckled. “At least you have a sense of humor in the face of death.”

Clearwater’s wing twitched, and a steel star appeared in the pooka’s neck. It reacted slowly, tilting its head and letting it pop free.

“Was that supposed to hurt?” it asked.

“I was hoping,” Clearwater admitted.

“You need to try harder. Like this.”

The air shimmered around the pooka, the distortion whirling around six points like rocks in a stream, ice forming around tiny nuclei of dust and turning into crystalline spears in the blink of an eye as the water in the air froze.

Clearwater threw herself to the side, beating her wings hard, creating enough wind to deflect the icicles before they could connect, sending them slamming down into the floorboards. They smashed through the wood like they were made of iron, the ice barely even getting scratched by the ancient oak.

“Not bad,” the pooka said. “But how will you handle this?”

The air shimmered around the pooka, and Clearwater’s ears twitched. She threw herself to one side, then the other, hitting the wall and running halfway up it before backflipping away. Along her trail, the floorboards shuddered.

“What’s going on?” Velvet asked.

Clearwater recoiled and rolled, then got to her hooves with a slim cut along her cheek, blood dripping free.

A drop fell and hit something invisible in midair, revealing a razor-thin sheet of ice that had sliced into the floorboards.

“I’ve never seen a pony avoid that attack,” the pooka said. It waved a cloven hoof, and frost caught on the edges of a hidden field of razors that Clearwater had managed to avoid. “I admit I’m impressed with your fighting spirit, pony. Tell me your name. I want to remember it after you’re cold.”

“Agent Clearwater, of the Night Guard, division six. I’m a professional monster hunter. Since you’re a monster, that means you’re my responsibility.”

“My name is Coldplay. It was a pleasure to meet you before you died. Tell me, though - how did you dodge that? I’ve never met a pony who could see through that attack.”

Clearwater raised her sunglasses, revealing that her eyes were milky-white. “I didn’t need to see it at all. I used sonar.”

“Very good!” Coldplay laughed. “It’s really too bad. I haven’t had a good fight in hundreds of years. I hope there will be more ponies like you.”

“One is more than enough,” Clearwater said. She tugged at the scarf around her neck, pulling a long silver chain free, the end capped with a mace-like weight. She wrapped one end of the long chain around a hoof and jumped into the air, swinging the weight around in a circle before letting it go, swinging it in a wide arc.

Coldplay stepped away from the seemingly clumsy attack, and Clearwater grabbed the chain in her teeth, abruptly changing the sweep. The pooka cried out in surprise as the chain-whip slammed into its shoulder, cracking its hide like it was made of glass.

Clearwater yanked the chain back, twirling it overhead again.

“Pure lunar titanium,” she explained. “Almost unbreakable.”

“That hurt,” the pooka hissed.

“This is going to hurt a lot more!” Clearwater yelled, before swinging the chain whip again, taking to the air to strike from above.

Coldplay tossed its head, long spines of moving ice catching the chain and tangling up with it. Clearwater saw the danger too late, frost creeping along the chain faster than she could react, the metal biting into her skin and instantly freezing. She cried out in pain, falling to the floor and shattering a few of the sharp-edged ice sheets still lodged into the floor, opening up cuts along her back that didn’t bleed, the blood already frozen inside the wound.

“Oh no!” Velvet gasped.

Clearwater looked back at them, glaring. “Why are you two still here?! Run!”

“We can’t leave you!” Night Light protested.

Velvet grabbed him, dragging him toward a window.

“She’s doing this to buy us time,” Velvet said. “We have to go now!”

“But--”

“It’s the only way,” Velvet whispered. “If we stay here we’re going to die. She knows it too.”

“You kids stay safe,” Clearwater said. “Try and get some adult supervision, or, well, you’ll find out when you meet her.”

Velvet nodded, then grabbed a chair and broke the frost-covered window, pulling Night Light out with her.

“Right,” Clearwater said, smiling at the pooka. “Now let’s get serious.”

“I can’t believe we left her,” Night Light said, his breath clouding the air. Along the edges of the canal, ponies had come out of the businesses and homes to look at the spectacle.

“We didn’t have a choice!” Velvet pulled him along the walkway, running through the crowd and managing not to actually run into anypony thanks to her gift. “I don’t know how much time she actually bought us, either.”

“You think it’s still going to come after us?”

“Of course it will! Because she had to tell us to leave, it knows we’re important! If we’d been smart enough to just sneak out…” Velvet shook her head.

The street rumbled under their hooves. Behind them, the cafe crumbled into the canal, the ice cracking and sending a surge through the flooded streets.

“I’ve got an idea!” Velvet said. “Come on!”

She jumped over the edge of the walkway, landing in one of the stranded gondolas locked in the ice.

“Are you sure--”

“Just jump!” Velvet yelled.

Night Light swallowed and jumped next to her. The shock from their impacts cracked the ice around the small boat.

“So now what?” Night Light asked.

“Hang on,” Velvet said, as the wave hit them, picking the gondola up and sending it skittering across the surface of the ice-covered canal like a bobsled.

Behind them, Coldplay pulled itself out of the rubble and spotted them, smirking.

“Run as fast as you can, little ones,” It said. “I enjoy a good chase.”

9 - Attitude City

Velvet looked down at the filly. A pony who knew how to handle foals might have tried treating her as an adult (if a tiny one). An even wiser pony who’d seen the filly throw massive pyrokinetic spells around would do whatever they needed to do to keep her happy and calm.

“Do your parents know you’re here?” Velvet said, demonstrating that despite her precognition she was flexible enough to insert her hoof firmly into her mouth.

Sunset’s cheeks puffed up and she made a noise like steam escaping from a kettle, stomping her hooves.

“I don’t need parents! I’m Princess Celestia’s personal student!” Sunset was trying her best to look intimidating. “I saved your lives! You should be thanking me!”

“I’ll thank you if you help me up,” Night Light called out, from the canal. “I can’t reach the walkway, and the ice is starting to melt, and I could really use a boost!”

Sunset rolled her eyes and yanked him up with telekinesis, dropping him on his head.

“Thanks,” Night Light mumbled, true to his word.

“I was doing something actually important and I drop it just to come out here to fight monsters for you imbeciles, you know,” Sunset huffed. “You’re clearly in over your heads.”

“Sorry,” Velvet said. “I just find it hard to believe that Agent Clearwater would have sent for, well…”

“The most powerful sorceress you’ll ever meet?” Sunset asked, glaring at her. “Yeah, I’m surprised she was smart enough to do that, too! Now where is she? I should be dealing with the pony in charge, not her…” Sunset sniffled and motioned with her hoof imperiously. “Underlings.”

“She’s dead,” Velvet said. “That pile of rubble that used to be the cafe? She stayed behind so we could escape.”

Sunset opened her mouth, as if about to make a cutting remark, then turned without saying whatever she was thinking.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know if you two were close, or…”

“Don’t be stupid. I barely knew her. I just helped her hunt monsters once in a while.” Sunset rubbed at her eyes, still facing away from Velvet, not letting her see her expression. “Come on. We’re going to the museum.”

Velvet panted, already out of breath. The crowd closed ranks until there was no clear path through. Night Light caught up as she came to a stop.

“Where’s the filly?” Night Light asked.

“I don’t know, I lost track of her,” Velvet said. “She keeps teleporting ahead when she gets slowed down.”

They could see plumes of smoke over the heads of the ponies around them, the tourists excited and trying to figure out what was going on and the locals speaking in hushed tones, worry evident on their faces.

“I think I see her,” Night Light said, pointing. Sunset was arguing with a pony in uniform.

Velvet pushed through the crowd, making apologies along the way.

“There you are,” Sunset said, once they got up to her. “Explain to this... this peon that we’re on official business.”

“Is this your child, Ma’am?” the uniformed pony asked. “You’ll need to explain to her that the museum is closed at this time. There’s been a fire.”

“And like I tried to explain, it isn’t a fire, it’s a monster attack!” Sunset snapped. “Show them your Night Guard badges.”

“Uh…” Night Light looked at Velvet.

“Badges?” Velvet asked.

“You don’t…” Sunset turned on them. “You have to have papers or something!”

“We’re not actually members of the Night Guard. We’re sort of… deputies? Contractors?” Night Light looked at Velvet for help.

“Technically I don’t think we’re anything except concerned citizens,” Velvet said, after thinking for a moment.

“You’re both so useless!” Sunset snapped.

“That’s no way to speak to your parents,” the uniformed pony said.

“They’re not my parents!”

“Now honey, that’s rude,” Velvet said.

Sunset looked up at her, shocked.

“Just play along so we don’t get arrested,” Velvet whispered.

“But- whatever.” Sunset huffed and looked away.

“I’m so sorry, officer,” Night Light said. “All the confusion just has her in a bad mood. We were really looking forward to going to the museum today. Do you know what happened?”

The uniformed pony immediately looked happier to be dealing with adults. “Well, sir, like I was telling your daughter, there was a major fire. I don’t have more information than that right now but we’re keeping ponies away right now while we assess the damage to the building. There’s some concern that it might collapse, so we’re maintaining a perimeter.”

“That’s really too bad,” Night Light said. “Will we still be able to see the Gallerie del’Solarium?”

“Oh, of course, sir.” The guard smiled and stepped aside, pointing down the path he’d been guarding. “I’ll let you through, but make sure to follow the correct signs. There’s a walking tour that’ll take you over some of the more important bridges.”

“Like the Bridge of Whinnies?” Night Light asked.

“A wonderful structure,” the guard agreed. “I’m sorry about the museum, but I hope you enjoy your time in our beautiful city.”

“Thank you for your help,” Night Light said. “Let’s go, girls.” He ushered them down the way the guard had pointed and around a corner.

“What was that all about?” Velvet asked. “How did you even know about those places?”

“I read a guidebook, remember?” Night Light said.

“Good work getting us past the perimeter,” Sunset said. “You’re not as useless as I thought.”

“Thank--” Before Night Light could finish, Sunset pulled him down to her eye level with her magic.

“Don’t ever call me your daughter again. I don’t have parents.”

“Understood,” Night Light squeaked. Sunset let him go.

“You could help instead of yelling,” Velvet snapped. “Why don’t you just teleport us to the museum?”

“...I’m not allowed to teleport other ponies,” Sunset admitted. “I haven’t got it perfect yet. I can teleport myself okay but anything I bring with me, um…” She looked guilty. “It sort of breaks. But I’ll get it right once Princess Celestia gets back to teaching me instead of having me on this stupid assignment in the middle of nowhere!”

“Veneighs isn’t the middle of nowhere,” Night Light said. “It’s the third largest city in Old Unicornia.”

“And if I was on assignment here, I wouldn’t complain!” Sunset snapped. “I’m- you know what? I’m not going to tell you.” She smirked. “You aren’t part of the Guard. You don’t get to know all the top secret stuff I do.”

Velvet rolled her eyes. “Which way is the museum?”

“That way,” Night Light pointed. “Towards the um, the ominous plume of black smoke.”

Sunset tugged on the stubborn door, the frame warped by temperature extremes. It rattled, either locked or stuck.

“Hold on,” Velvet said, pointing to a door a few paces away. “I think we can--”

Sunset tore the door off its hinges, tossing it aside.

Velvet opened the second door easily, the smooth hinges not even making a sound. “I was saying we could go this way.”

“My way is faster,” Sunset said, holding her head high as she walked inside.

Velvet sighed and closed the door, Night Light shrugging at her expression, both of them following the filly inside the staff entrance.

“This is starting to bring back memories,” Night Light said, looking around the ruined hallway. The ceiling was black with soot, tiles warped and cracked under their hooves. “You don’t think they’re still here, do you?”

“If they are, we’re going to come up with a plan,” Velvet replied. “I don’t think drain cleaner is going to work this time.”

“You don’t need a plan when you’re strong,” Sunset said. She stopped at a junction, looking both ways and frowning.

“That way,” Velvet said, pointing.

“Why that way?” Sunset asked.

“My father works in a museum, so I’ve spent a lot of time in service corridors like this,” Velvet explained. “Since they have to go behind exhibits, they’re kind of like a backbone for the whole building. The wider hallway means they probably use it for moving exhibits.”

“I’ll go first,” Night Light said. “I can read the signs.”

“You can?” Sunset asked, looking at the Neightalian plaques.

“On the trip over I memorized a few phrasebooks,” he explained.

Sunset made a pleased sound. “You two aren’t as useless as I thought. Just get behind me if there’s trouble, okay?”

Night Light nodded and walked ahead, reading out the signs.

“Ancient Roam, um… this one is Pegasopilan art… Oh! The Ponieta! I always wanted to see that!” He reached for the door until Sunset cleared her throat. Backing away and blushing. “Sorry. Um… I think it’s this one. It’s labeled as the Temporary Exhibition Hall.”

Sunset yanked the door open, and a plume of black smoke escaped, sending all of them into coughing fits.

The damage in the staff hallway was nothing compared to what they found outside it. Black, steaming rock covered part of the floor, still radiating heat despite the chill from the glacier of ice cutting off half the room. Inside the ice, Velvet could just barely make out dim shapes that looked like ponies.

“They must have woken up while there were tourists in here,” Night Light whispered. He looked like he was going to be sick.

“This is volcanic rock,” Sunset said, tapping a hoof against the black stone. “The ice thing didn’t like fire. No way it was able to make magma.”

“Lava, actually, since it’s on the surface,” Night Light said. Sunset shot him a look. “Sorry.”

“I don’t think they’re here,” Velvet said, after a long look around the room. Nothing was trying to kill them, which made for a nice change of pace. “Why didn’t we hear about all this when we were at the cafe?”

“They wouldn’t want to send up an alarm and frighten the tourists off,” Sunset scoffed. “Idiots.”

“I don’t understand, though,” Night Light said. “This museum had the Sun’s Heart. It should have been able to keep the pookas locked in stone, right?”

“It’s supposed to be a big gem shining like the sun. Do you see it in here?” Velvet asked.

“No,” Night Light admitted.

Sunset’s horn lit up, and a wave swept across the room.

“There’s a bunch of weird chaos magic in here,” she said. “But I think I feel something familiar over here…”

She walked across the room, picking a path between the cooling lava and the floes of ice. Sunset yanked a door open, and light flooded in from the next room.

“Don’t hurt us!” somepony yelled.

Velvet and Night Light ran over. The next room was full of light, no trace of the lava and ice inside, even the air seeming clear of the lingering smoke. A dozen foals cowered behind a single adult pony, the older pony wearing a sweater and thick glasses that screamed ‘teacher’.

Above them, casting the light, a gem shone like the Sun.

“That must be the Sun’s Heart,” Night Light said.

“Don’t worry, the monsters are gone,” Velvet said. “We’re here to help.”

Night Light looked around the untouched gallery. “The pookas must have avoided this room because of the gem. They got really lucky.”

“Yeah,” Sunset agreed, before ripping the Sun’s Heart free of its housing.

“Sunset! That belongs to the museum!” Velvet admonished.

“It belongs to me now. We need it more than they do.” She looked at the scared foals. “What? You’re safe! Get out of here and go home!”

“I can see why Princess Celestia decided to make you her student,” Velvet said. “Yelling at scared foals. You’ve really got a way with ponies.”

“Shut up,” Sunset said, her cheeks red. “I don’t get along well with ponies my own age. We need the Sun’s Heart if we’re going to stop those monsters, right? Letting it sit in a museum is dumb, and those ponies were dumb for not trying to escape.”

She patted her saddlebags, the gem wrapped up tight in the cloak she’d been wearing.

“With this, I can definitely beat them,” Sunset said.

“We should send a message to Princess Celestia to tell her what happened,” Night Light suggested.

“No!” Sunset snapped. “What are you, stupid?”

“We need her help,” Velvet said, gently. “There’s nothing wrong with asking for help.”

“That’s not the point!” Sunset sat down and rubbed her temples. “We don’t have a good way to contact the Princess. Even if the message isn’t intercepted, it’ll take days to get it there and back and I don’t want monsters running around for that long.”

“What else are we supposed to do?” Velvet asked.

“We could try and figure out what they want,” Night Light suggested.

Sunset nodded quickly. “Yeah! Good idea. Easy to tell you’re the smart one. We’ve got a trump card to beat them, so we just need to figure out where they’ll go and ambush them!”

“Well… they eat pony magic,” Velvet said. “But they didn’t stay in town to eat everypony here.”

“Maybe they’re worried about attracting too much attention,” Night Light suggested. “If they’re weak from being imprisoned they might want to find somewhere safe. Like cockroaches running away when you turn on the light.”

“That would make sense,” Velvet agreed. “They don’t know where Celestia is. For all they know, she could be in the city. That might be why we only saw one of them. They scattered in all directions.”

“I wonder how many ponies they’d need,” Night Light muttered.

“How many ponies they’d need for what?” Velvet asked.

“To match Celestia’s power,” he said. “To break the curse, they’d probably need as much magic as Princess Celestia. They won’t go after her directly, so they’ll have to eat magic from other ponies.”

“...An alicorn’s magic,” Sunset whispered. “Oh no.”

Velvet blinked. “Oh no?”

“We need to go, now,” Sunset said. “If they don’t know yet they might find out soon. The only advantage we have is that she’s been kept secret!”

“Who’s been kept secret?” Night Light asked.

Sunset took a deep breath, looking pained. “There’s another alicorn. And I abandoned her to come here.”

Author's Note

Welcome to Attitude City, Sunset Shimmer's home town.

10 - Led Zeppelin

Night Light groaned and looked at his bit bag. Just an hour ago it had been full of bits, each one representing a not insignificant amount of his savings. Now it was all but empty, a single golden coin at the bottom only serving to stare up at him with an accusing golden glare, demanding to know where its siblings had gone, what vitally important errand had been worth spending them.

“You know, this airship is a lot nicer than the one we came here in,” Velvet offered, gamely trying to improve his mood. Under their hooves, the deck gleamed, flakes of gold worked into the lacquer over heartwood in such a warm shade it almost seemed to glow. Silk flags and banners decorated almost every surface in white and teal stripes, so impossibly clean they had to be enchanted. The gasbags overhead were large enough that it almost felt like the ship hung down from the sky itself instead of merely balloons.

“Of course it is,” Sunset scoffed. “This is the Merriweather Post Pavilion. It’s one of the finest luxury airships in the world.”

“One of the most expensive, too,” Night Light muttered.

“Don’t complain, I let you call me your foal again so you could save money on my ticket,” Sunset said. “You can’t imagine how embarrassing that is for me.”

“Couldn’t we have gone on a smaller ship?” Velvet asked. “There were other airships going this direction. Most of them were faster, too.”

“I’m Princess Celestia’s personal student,” Sunset said, her high-pitched voice carrying an edge. “I am not going to travel on anything less than the very best ship available.”

“Does Princess Celestia’s personal student get an allowance they could use to pay me back?” Night Light asked.

Sunset rolled her eyes. “Once we save Equestria I’m sure you’ll get a reward or something.”

“Save your receipts,” Velvet joked.

“It’s just that we could have chartered a ship for how much the tickets cost,” Night Light said. “We could have gone directly where we need to go. Wherever that is.”

He looked sideways at Sunset. She sighed, deflating slightly.

“I can’t tell you,” she said. “I’m not supposed to tell anypony, and if the monsters show up they might be able to force you to tell them everything you know. Besides, I’m worried we might be being followed. If we hire our own ship, they’ll know exactly where we are. A big ship like this we can hide in the crowd. They might not know which airship we’re on.”

“You know what’ll make you feel better?” Velvet asked. “A hot meal after almost freezing to death. We never actually managed to finish lunch.”

Night Light’s stomach growled.

“At least the tickets included meals,” Night Light said, his mood already starting to improve, in no small part thanks to the wine they’d brought to the table. Nopony had bothered asking if he and Velvet should actually be drinking, and consequently, they were on their second bottle in less than an hour.

“You’d have known that already if you bothered treating yourself once in a while,” Sunset said. “Whenever Princess Celestia travels, she gets the best everything. This would just barely be acceptable.”

“I don’t know, I think it’s more than acceptable,” Velvet said. She took another sip of wine before cutting into her food, artichoke hearts battered and deep fried and served over wild rice with a lemon-butter sauce. Slices of toasted baguette topped with gruyere rounded out the dish, giving her something to sop up the sauce with.

“It would be better with mushrooms instead of artichokes,” Sunset said.

Velvet shared a look with Night Light and they drank at the same time to avoid commenting on the way the filly’s special talent was obviously finding something to complain about no matter the situation.

“So what do you two actually do, since you’re not part of the Night Guard?” Sunset asked. She reached for the wine, and Velvet slid the bottle away to keep her from getting it.

“My father is one of the directors for the Canterlot History Museum,” Twilight Velvet said.

“That’s what your dad does. What do you do?”

Velvet sighed. “I guess I sort of… don’t do much. I help out at the museum and I’ve been trying to break into the writing market but it’s hard getting published.”

“What’ve you been working on?” Night Light asked.

“I was writing a historical romance but after all this maybe I’ll write about monster hunters.”

“Good,” Sunset nodded with approval. “Romance is dumb. Ponies go on about the power of love like it’s actually important, but it’s not! What’s important is power and making ponies respect you!”

“Well, romance is important too,” Night Light said. “I’d love to read your story, Miss Velvet. If you do write about all this, maybe you could make me taller and a little more, um…”

“In shape?” Velvet asked, smiling.

“I’ll have you know I’m one of the fittest ponies in the observatory,” Night Light said, with mock offense. “When they need a junior researcher to move piles of books they call me because they know I can easily lift dozens at a time.”

Velvet giggled. “Very impressive!”

“I’ve been working on my thesis project for my doctorate,” he said. “You know that the stars slowly drift over time, right?”

Velvet nodded. “It’s not really visible to the naked eye but they touched on it in school.”

“Well ancient star charts show them fixed in place for entire centuries. Every record is identical until about a thousand years ago. The common reasoning is that ponies didn’t really record the movement of the stars carefully until then, and once astronomy was invented they began measuring stellar drift.”

“I take it you disagree?” Velvet asked.

Night Light leaned forward as if sharing a dire secret. “I think they’ve got cause and effect reversed. The records are extremely fragmentary, almost like they were tampered with, but I’ve found many passages suggesting that astronomy was invented because the stars started moving and ponies needed to start keeping track of them.”

“How would you prove it?”

Night Light leaned back and sighed, pulling the wine bottle away from Sunset before the filly could pour herself a drink. “I’ve been estimating the positions of the stars at the time ancient star charts were made. There are definite discrepancies between where backtracking along their path shows they should be and where the charts show they actually were.”

“You could just ask the Princess,” Sunset said. “She was there a thousand years ago.”

“I wrote her a letter. All I got back was a form letter from the Palace that basically said it was cheating to ask her instead of doing the research myself, but, you know, phrased very politely. I have it framed in my apartment.”

Sunset snorted. “That definitely sounds like Princess Celestia. She hates giving ponies a real answer to anything. She likes making them figure everything out for themselves.”

“Is that so?” Velvet asked. “What did she have you doing?”

“I already told you it’s a secret! But I guess I can tell you a little, so you understand why it’s important.” Sunset wiggled in her seat with the excitement only a foal with a secret could manage. “I already told you there’s another alicorn. She’s a total idiot and barely even knows how to use magic. Princess Celestia sent me to teach her the basics because I’m a genius and it’s gonna take a genius to get through her stupid pink skull.”

“So you’re sort of a royal tutor?” Velvet asked.

“She’s not really royalty. She hasn’t even been elected or… crowned, or whatever the word is.”

“Coronated?” Night Light offered.

“Yeah, that. She doesn’t even do anything important but…” Sunset looked to the side. “She’s an alicorn, and even if she can’t use her magic right she’s got a lot of it. Princess Celestia thinks she’s special but I don’t think she’s nearly as great as everypony says. It’ll be better once things are normal and Princess Celestia gets back to teaching me.”

Velvet smiled a little. “I’m sure everypony will be happy when things get back to normal.”

“Yeah,” Sunset muttered. “Hey! I know what we should do!”

“Get another bottle of wine?” Night Light asked.

“No. I’m basically a royal tutor like she said. You two are useless right now. But I bet I can teach you to be less useless.”

The cabin was bigger than Night Light’s apartment back home. There were only two beds, and Sunset had claimed one of them as hers. Night Light hadn’t asked yet if he’d be sleeping on the floor, because he wanted to pretend otherwise for a few more hours.

Sleep wasn’t going to happen for a while, though. Sunset Shimmer probably wasn’t going to let them rest until they passed out.

“Usually if I was trying to teach a pony combat magic I’d start with fireball spells but we probably can’t actually teach those here,” Sunset said. “Fire is really good for fighting monsters because evil stuff burns really well.”

“Trust me, using magic on them isn’t a great idea anyway,” Night Light said. “When we fought the ooze monster in Canterlot, it started eating my magic.” He shuddered. “It was really, really awful. Like swimming in sewage while it melts you.”

“It couldn’t eat my magic, though,” Velvet said. “What was up with that?”

Sunset narrowed her eyes and looked closely at Velvet. “Hm…”

“Is there something on my face?”

Sunset effortlessly lifted Velvet up, rotating her slowly in the air and passing a beam of magic over her body.

“The pookas are creatures of chaos, right?” Sunset asked.

“Put me down!” Velvet said. Sunset apparently heard this as a positive response to her question, because she acted like the mare had said ‘yes and I am very excited to be levitated against my will.’

“Some ponies have a faint connection to harmonious magic,” Sunset explained. “I do, obviously, and Princess Celestia’s is the strongest of anypony, but maybe one in ten thousand ponies has the potential. You can usually spot them when they start singing. Everypony ends up singing along with them.”

“I thought that was just a normal thing,” Night Light said.

“If it was normal, everypony singing in the shower would turn into a parade in the streets. You probably get magical surges, right?”

Velvet nodded.

“That’s pretty normal. Harmony magic leaves a kind of… of beat or pulse in your magic aura. It can kind of echo and build up like, um… like how notes can turn into chords. If you’re not expecting it, you get a resonance effect and bam! Magic surge!”

Sunset dropped Velvet without warning. Night Light tried to catch her and ended up merely being a softer landing zone than the floor.

“They probably can’t handle the harmony magic. That’s good. At least I don’t have to worry about you making them any stronger.”

“I can see why Princess Celestia sent you out as a tutor,” Velvet said. “You’re really a great teacher.”

“Even the best teacher can only do so much with the raw material she’s given,” Sunset retorted. “I’ll try and go more slowly so you can keep up.”

A bit over an hour later, as night fell, Night Light was trying to keep a magical shield up while Sunset bounced a ball against it over and over again, and Twilight Velvet was unsteadily keeping herself in the air under her own power, the aura around her body wavering and pulsing and threatening to fail at any moment.

“See? That’s getting better already,” Sunset said, putting the ball down. “I mean, they’ll just eat your magic and then you, but if you can convince them to have a pillow fight maybe you’ll survive long enough to scream for help.”

“Should I stay behind?” Night Light asked, lowering his shield. “I don’t want to end up making things worse by being there. That whole last fight, Velvet had to protect me the whole time.”

“There is one thing I can try,” Sunset said. “It’s possible to sort of force a connection to harmony magic for a while.”

“Really?” Velvet lost her concentration and fell onto the bed, having learned her lesson about fall safety.

“It’s um…” Sunset bit her lip thinking. “Like a tuning fork! Yeah! If I set up the resonance inside your magic, it’ll stick around for a couple hours before it fades away. If we do it before a fight, you’ll be safe from being eaten.”

“That… actually sounds like a good plan,” Night Light said. “How does it work?”

“Stand still. I’ve only sort of invented this now,” Sunset said.

“I’m sorry, you only what?”

Sunset, instead of answering Night Light’s excellent question, fired a blast of magic into his horn. His whole body vibrated like a bell and he fell to the floor in a shaking heap, shivering uncontrollably.

“Maybe a little less force next time,” Sunset noted, watching the stallion twitch. “It probably still worked.”

“I smell burning toast,” Night Light said, from the floor. “That’s bad, isn’t it?”

“No, I smell something burning too,” Velvet said.

“It’s not my fault!” Sunset said. “I don’t care what anypony told you, I don’t always set everything on fire!”

“I don’t think it’s you,” Velvet said, pointing to the cabin door. “Look!”

Black smoke trickled through the gap. As if on cue, fire bells starting ringing all over the ship.

Author's Note

Today's Selection: Merriweather Post Pavilion

11 - Breathless

The smoke creeping in around the door was pitch black, thick enough to look more like the tendrils of some living thing than wisps of gas. Velvet backed away from the door on instinct, the fire bells outside slowly being joined by muffled cries of alarm and terrified screaming from other cabins.

“Don’t worry, I’ve had to deal with a lot of fires,” Sunset said. “I’m basically an expert.”

She trotted over to the door and gingerly touched the handle.

“It doesn’t feel hot,” Sunset reported. “That means the corridor outside isn’t hot. The fire might be nearby, though, because we saw the smoke before the alarms went off. When I open the door we’ll go to the deck. We can figure out what to do next once we get there.”

“Wait,” Velvet said. “I don’t think that’s a good idea! We should seal the door so the smoke stops coming in and--”

“You can’t hide from a fire!” Sunset snapped. “It’s not like the fire department is gonna come for us when we’re a mile above the ocean! If you’re on a ship and it’s in trouble, you need to get to the deck. It’s common knowledge and I shouldn’t have to explain this to adult ponies!”

“That’s not what I--”

Sunset yanked the door open, and a wall of black smoke rolled in like a pitch-black fog, the smoke as noxious as the plume from an old tire thrown on a pile of burning garbage. Sunset was forced back by the opaque smog, coughing, her eyes already red and burning.

“Stay low!” Night Light yelled. “Smoke rises so all the fresh air is near the floor!”

He dropped to the floor, and immediately went into a wheezing fit of his own as a carpet of smoke rolled over his face.

“Never mind,” Night Light gasped, trying to get up. “The smoke isn’t rising. I was wrong. I’m going to write a very stern letter to the author of the fire safety book I read as a foal if we survive this.”

“It’s not much better up here!” Velvet grabbed the blanket from the bed, trying to breathe through it. It didn’t help as much as she’d have liked, her eyes still burning like she’d been cutting up onions, but her throat felt less raw.

“We can probably make it to the deck if we go really fast,” Sunset said. “But also we can’t get lost, so we’ll have to go fast and accurately and not get lost or else you’ll end up in a dead end and you’ll die.”

“Of course that will only work if the smoke isn’t fighting you,” somepony pointed out.

“Who said that?” Sunset demanded.

“Tight spaces like this are just so dangerous,” the voice continued. “Not a lot of ventilation, no easy way out. Did you know ponies used to use smoke to drive rodents out of their dens? It’s, hm, its what one does with vermin. There’s nothing personal in it.”

“Get out here!” Sunset yelled, her voice rough. She fired a bolt into the black wall of smoke, hitting nothing.

“Weren’t you all planning on leaving?” The voice asked, amused. “Running and panting in these corridors like the animals you are, reduced to your base instincts and blindly trying to find a way out.”

“It’s one of the pooka,” Velvet warned, her voice muffled by the blanket. She tore a strip free and tied it around her snout like a mask before doing the same for Night Light. “How did it find us?”

“I followed you from the museum,” the creature said, stepping out of the smoke. The motion was less like it had been hiding in the cloud and more like it was part of the cloud detaching itself and becoming better defined, the line between transformation and camouflage blurred.

It was as unique as the others, somehow feminine compared to Mudhoney and Coldplay, with a long coal-black coat that waved in the air like she was floating underwater, long fetlocks obscuring her hooves and fading into invisibility at the edges, her legs not quite touching the floor. Her face was obscured by the veil of smoky hair, the only clear feature her eyes, burning like coals through the thin strands.

“I decided to… linger around in the destruction,” Smoke said. “My brother and sister went their own ways. Coldplay chased a pony he allowed to escape and my sister, well, who can predict a sibling like that?”

The pooka shrugged, its whole body wavering like it was just a projected image.

“In the name of Princess Celestia, I order you to surrender,” Sunset coughed, pushing Velvet away when the older mare tried to help. “If you give up, maybe I’ll put in a good word for you before you go to Tartarus.”

“That’s a very tempting offer, but I’ll have to pass,” the pooka said, slowly scanning the room, eyes fixing on Velvet and Night Light. “You’re the ones who killed Mudhoney. I overheard. I wanted to thank you for that.”

“To thank us?” Night Light asked. He wobbled, light-headed, when he stood. “Why would you want to thank us?”

“It would take too long to explain,” the pooka said, sounding a little sad. “I’m sorry. Unlike my siblings, I don’t like… big displays of power. While we’ve been talking, I’ve been removing the oxygen from this room. I could have waited until you were asleep but I wanted to make sure I had the right ponies. There’s no need to waste the rest of the lives on this ship.”

Velvet’s vision started to go black around the edges. The burning in her lungs was getting worse, even standing was difficult, her body aching like she’d been sprinting.

Sunset fired another blast of force, the pooka ducking around the clumsy attack, body distorting impossibly far.

“Sunset!” Velvet gasped. “Over here!”

The filly turned to look. Velvet pointed to the outside wall.

“Blast it right here!”

Sunset threw a bolt without questioning it. Her magic hit the bulkhead and broke through, tearing a hole in the hull. Air started rushing through the cabin, the fresh air from outside washing away the suffocating smoke.

“That’s a little better,” Velvet gasped.

The pooka’s body dimmed, the wind rippling through its body, veil over its face parting for a moment to reveal a skull-like grimace of mummified flesh.

“Clever,” it grumbled.

“Of course it’s clever,” Sunset said.

She immediately paused her dramatic speech to hack up black phlegm.

“I planned all of this,” Sunset continued, once she could speak. “This is an airship route over the ocean. There’s nowhere to hide if you want to follow us. You’d have to get onboard to attack us. I’ll be honest, I thought you’d have attacked sooner.”

“During the day?” the pooka shook her head. “No. It was hard enough getting on board. There was no need to risk that kind of confrontation.”

“Well you’re risking a confrontation anyway,” Sunset said. “You’ve got nowhere to run or hide now. The ice monster got away because I couldn’t track him, but you aren’t so lucky.”

“The same could be said for you,” the pooka said. “You’re cornered in your room. You might have, hm, cleared the air a little, but perhaps you’d allow me to do the same?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Velvet asked.

“I don’t have any real interest in you personally. I don’t particularly… care. You’ve done nothing to truly hurt me. We can… make a deal. Ponies like deals. Before the Sun Pony imprisoned us, your ancestors would… wish for things. Sometimes I would grant them, in return for service.”

“We’re not interested in being your slaves,” Velvet said.

The pooka nodded. “I was considering a more simple… trade. You tell me where the alicorn is, and I will leave.”

“Princess Celestia is in Saddle Arabia,” Night Light said. “It’s in all the papers. I’ll give you a bit for the Canterlot Times.”

“The new alicorn,” the pooka sighed. “I can feel her magic in the world like a… like a faint scent in the air. Too faint to find the direction. If you tell me where she is, I will leave. And I will leave without killing every pony onboard this clever little flying ship.”

“If you do that, you’ll never find her,” Sunset said.

“I disagree. At worst, it’s a delay, and I’m rather impatient after centuries spent waiting for my chance. You can either tell me where she is, or die. You simply aren’t as important as the alicorn.”

Sunset’s eye twitched.

“Not as important?!” She yelled, voice cracking. “Do you know who I am?! I’m ten times the pony she is! I worked my tail off every day and she just got everything on a silver platter!”

The pooka tilted her head. “This sounds rather like family drama. How amusing.”

Sunset ripped one of the beds free of the bolts holding it to the deck and threw it, the pooka’s body dissipating into smoke as it smashed through her, reforming in the same place a moment later, apparently undisturbed.

“You can’t punch smoke,” the pooka sighed, sounding more resigned than anything else, as if dealing with nothing more serious than the temper tantrum of a spoiled foal.

“I can punch anything I want!” Sunset yelled.

The pooka shook her head and took a deep breath. When it exhaled, a plume of yellow gas erupted from its nostrils. Where it touched the wood, the veneer clouded and started flaking almost instantly.

Sunset took a step back, surprised, and fell on her rump as another coughing fit took her, breaking her concentration.

The vapors rushed toward her, and stopped short, hitting a faint, flickering wall in the air. Sunset looked back. Night Light strained, trying to push more into the shield he was projecting.

“This is a lot easier than the bouncy balls you were throwing at me,” Night Light said, trying to sound like it was no big deal. “That’s some seriously bad breath. Didn’t they have toothbrushes a thousand years ago?”

Velvet pulled Sunset back closer to them to reduce the strain on Night Light creating such a large shield. The mustard-colored vapors eroded everything they touched as the three ponies sheltered behind the shield.

“I can’t eat your magic,” the pooka said. “That’s too bad.”

“Yeah, no free in-flight snack,” Night Light quipped, sweat running down his brow. The tiny fraction of the gas getting through the shield was enough to burn with every breath. Velvet pulled Sunset closer and wrapped cloth around her snout, patting her back as the filly descended into another coughing fit.

“I meant too bad for you.” It sighed. “I suppose since we’re making a production of this I should tell you my name. I don’t usually bother. I meet so many ponies and most of them end up dead before we even get a chance to talk.”

“Dead because you kill them?” Velvet asked.

“Well…” the pooka shrugged. “You wouldn’t bother introducing yourself to your food before every meal. But… maybe for a treat you were saving for later. Something you didn’t want to eat all at once.” It bowed slightly, mostly just a nod of the veiled head. “Breathless. It isn’t a pleasure to meet you but it is… at least interesting.”

“That’s super flattering,” Velvet said. “We’re--”

“Twilight Velvet, Night Light, and Sunset Shimmer,” the pooka said, with an exhausted tone. “I told you, I’ve been following you and listening in. I’ve had more than enough time to learn your names.”

“Good,” Sunset said. “Then you know the name of the pony that’s going to destroy you.”

Breathless shook her head. “I doubt that very much.”

“Then prepare to be surprised, because you’ve walked right into my trap.”

Author's Note

Today's Reference: Breathless

12 - Free Fallin'

The pooka was silent for a moment, a spectre of shadow and death looming in the doorway and pinning Velvet, Night Light, and Sunset Shimmer in their cabin.

Then Breathless started laughing, a hacking, sickly sound like somepony on their deathbed struggling to fill their lungs.

“I walked into your trap?” It asked. “That is the sort of bluff I would expect from the Sun Pony, and you are a poor substitute for her.”

“Who says it’s a bluff?” Sunset asked. “I already told you I expected you to attack.”

“It’s easy to claim you had a plan after the fact,” the pooka said, taking another step into the room. “Show me. I want to see your… trap.”

Sunset smirked and pulled Velvet’s saddlebags across the room, spilling their contents out and grabbing a wrapped bundle.

“There was one room in the museum that wasn’t filled with smoke and I bet you couldn’t follow us in. You didn’t know we brought this with us!”

Sunset tore the wrapping free, revealing the Sun’s Heart, bright white light filling the room like noon on a summer day.

Breathless cried out in alarm and fear, throwing herself back, slamming into the wall and leaving a trail of black ash behind her as she tried to get away from the light.

“Get it away from me!” she hissed. “I won’t go back! I won’t spend centuries staring at that rock!” She stumbled, the deck shaking, the pooka suddenly solid, gaining mass and weight by the moment as the sunlight shone on it.

“Next time you won’t ever get out,” Sunset said, holding the gem high.

Breathless bolted for the door, limping in obvious pain.

“Don’t let her get away!” Sunset yelled, jumping out of Night Light’s shield without thinking. The lingering gas and smoke in the room immediately blinded her with tears and sneezing, and she lost her grip on the Sun’s Heart, the gem rolling under the remaining bed.

Breathless’s steps became lighter the moment the light wasn’t on her, and she vanished into the smoke in the corridor, each hoof fall coming more quietly than the last.

“Buck!” Sunset yelled.

“Don’t use language like that,” Velvet said, almost automatically.

“Really? You’re going to yell at me for language?” The filly coughed a few more times, trying to clear her lungs. “Grab the Sun’s Heart. We need to get her before she does something like, like eating everypony on board!”

Sunset ran into the corridor after the pooka.

Night Light dropped his shield, and Velvet grabbed her bag and the stone, wrapping it up again to keep it safe.

“We need to stay with her,” Velvet said, grabbing Night Light’s hoof and running into the impenetrable gloom. “She’s only a filly. She’s going to end up getting lost!”

“We’re going to end up getting lost,” Night Light said. He lit up his horn, but all that did was throw glare into his eyes from the smoke around them. “I can’t see anything!”

“I thought you’d have the map of the ship memorized,” Velvet joked, as she pulled him along, taking a turn into a side passage Night Light hadn’t even been able to see until they trotted into it.

“I didn’t have enough to buy a book in the gift store,” Night Light muttered, as they carefully stepped over a uniformed steward collapsed in the middle of the carpet. “Velvet…”

“I know. We can’t drag all of them out of here. We’d just collapse trying and we wouldn’t even save ourselves.” Velvet pulled him into an almost invisible door, the smoke clearing slightly as they entered a stairway, spreading out more in the space and making it easier to breathe.

They pushed up the stairs, the poor quality of the air making it like struggling up a mountain. The climb seemed endless until they pushed through a curtain of smog and the wind hit them with soothing cold, both of them taking deep breaths of the night air on the open upper deck, bodies demanding they fill their lungs.

“Oh thank Celestia,” Night Light gasped, between big breaths, pulling the cloth mask away from his snout and spitting. “All I can taste is ashes!”

Velvet leaned against him, rubbing her temples. “Between Sunset’s practice sessions and finding my way through the lower decks, I think I’ve used my horn enough today that it’s trying to twist its way back into my brain.”

“It could also be all the wine--”

“Yes, it could also be all the wine!” Velvet snapped. “Sorry. Headache.”

“How did you two get here so quickly?” Sunset asked, as she walked out of the smoke on wobbling hooves.

“We went the right way the first time,” Velvet said. “You’re lucky you didn’t get lost.”

“Ugh. We don’t have time for all this arguing,” Sunset grumbled. “I was trying to stay on her heels but she went into a vent or something and I had to find another way up.”

“I see her!” Night Light yelled, pointing.

Breathless was making its way up the rigging towards the semirigid gasbag above, sliding along the ropes connecting it to the hull of the ship.

“She can’t fly,” Velvet noted. “She’s climbing along it like she’s anchoring herself.”

“I got her,” Night Light said, grabbing a spool of rope with his magic. “I read a book on knots.”

He quickly tied a lasso and threw it, the rope passing through the pooka and only serving to alert her that they were still there.

“That worked better in my head,” he admitted. “I thought the Sun’s Heart made her turn solid!”

“It must have worn off already,” Velvet said. She started to pull it out, and Sunset stopped her, kicking her ankle.

“Don’t. We’re right over the ocean! If it falls, we’ll never get it back!” The filly looked up at the monster. “It can’t use its poison gas out here because of the wind. We’ve got the advantage.”

“Why is it going up there, though?” Night Light asked. “There’s nothing there!”

“Idiot, that’s where all the gas is!” Sunset snapped. “It’s going to crash the airship!”

“But it’s on the airship too! It’ll crash with us!”

“It’s made of smoke! Do you really think it’ll die just from hitting the water?”

“It would be nice,” Night Light sighed.

“I’ll cut it off and get ahead of it. You two get ready to… to do something.” Sunset frowned. “Figure something out while I blast it!”

The filly vanished in a flash of light. Her plan had been to teleport past Breathless to the top of the gas envelope, trapping the monster between her and the deck. Instead, she felt her teleport cut short, the magic path derailing and throwing her free, her lungs instantly filling with noxious smoke.

“What?!” Sunset gasped, the last of her breath escaping.

“You fool,” Breathless sighed. “Your magic is tainted with harmony. Of course it failed when you tried to use it to go right through me! It’s like mixing fire and water!”

Sunset tried to say something, but she was quickly turning blue and couldn’t quite manage whatever insult she had prepared. Breathless held her lightly, watching the filly struggle and start to pass out.

A rope circle closed around Sunset’s hoof and yanked, tugging her free, falling into the clean air below.

Twilight Velvet jumped, surrounding herself in her aura to lighten her body, catching Sunset high above the deck and rolling as she landed, protecting the filly until they came to a stop against the railing.

“You ponies,” the pooka exhaled. “Always forced to make up for each other’s weaknesses. It’s so sad in its own way.” It crawled the rest of the way up before the ponies could respond.

Sunset groaned in Velvet’s grasp. “That hurt,” she mumbled.

“We need to get up there,” Night Light said. “This would be easier if we had a pegasus with us.”

“Shut up!” Sunset snapped, anger giving her the energy to stand. “We don’t need some featherbrained idiot like- like-- anyway, just shut up and find a ladder!”

“You know, I think once we’re done with this, I’m going to need therapy before I step hoof on an airship again,” Night Light said, as they got to the top of the tall ladder, the deck below just far away enough that the fall would kill you painfully, and the ocean so distant that while death would be instant, he’d have a long time to think about the mistakes he’d made on the way down.

“We’ll take a regular boat back home,” Velvet assured him.

“Don’t worry,” Sunset said, pulling herself onto the service platform at the front of the envelope, too narrow and thin to feel safe. “This ship is practically unsinkable. It uses individual gas cells so no one leak will be fatal.”

The whole airship shook.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Night Light muttered.

“You shouldn’t have called it unsinkable,” Velvet groaned. “It’s like asking ‘what else could go wrong?’”

“It’s not my fault!” Sunset yelled, pulling open a hatch and running inside. The gas cells were vast horseshoe-shaped balloons, like ribs supporting the shape of the smooth, protective envelope that covered the whole array. The inspection gantry was along the rigid bottom of the airship’s gas envelope in the open space that ran through the middle of the stack.

Breathless was already there, tearing part of the railing free like a spear.

“Such a fragile thing,” the pooka said. “It’s almost a pity to destroy something so delicate.”

“Good thing you’re not delicate because I’m gonna destroy you,” Sunset said. Her horn lit up, a spark of fire at the tip.

“Sunset, no!” Night Light gasped. “We’ll explode!”

“What?” Sunset looked back at him.

“The gas! If there’s a spark--”

“That’s hydrogen!” Sunset snapped. “The Merriweather Post Pavilion uses--” her voice suddenly raised several octaves to a squeak. “Helium.”

Gas hissed out of ruptured fabric, Breathless using the sharp-edged shard to cut through the thick material. “I wonder how many of these I’ll need to break?” The pooka threw it through a second gas cell, the ship shuddering again as helium escaped into the air.

“Stop her!” Sunset yelled. She threw a bolt of fire that burned itself out in midair before it even reached the pooka.

“I will not be imprisoned again,” the pooka hissed, its own voice unaffected by the helium.

“The gas is escaping the cells,” Velvet muttered, an idea sparking.

“Yes, that’s the current problem,” Sunset growled, her voice so high pitched she squeaked every vowel.

“I have a plan. Just follow my lead!” Velvet grabbed the Sun’s Heart out of her saddlebag, holding the glowing crystal high in the air.

Breathless backed up, shielding its eyes and recoiling in fear and pain.

“Grab the fabric from the balloon and wrap it up!” Velvet yelled, trying to keep the monster pinned in place.

“Right!” Sunset tore a sheet free of one of the deflating cells.

“A blanket won’t hold me!” Breathless roared. It tried to run, one of its legs giving out as it was forced to support a steadily increasing weight.

Sunset swept the fabric under it and twisted it into a tight bundle, Night Light finding a rope somewhere to tie the whole thing securely with a decorative bow as a final flourish.

“A blanket won’t hold it, but that treated fabric will,” Velvet said. “It’s designed to hold helium gas. There’s no way smoke can escape, and it needed a tool to rip through it before.”

“Good thinking,” Sunset said, her voice slowly returning to normal. “You’re not awful at monster hunting.” She kicked the struggling bundle. “This should hold until we can figure out a more permanent solution.”

“That was really close,” Night Light sighed. “I was worried… that…” he trailed off as everything started to list to one side.

All three of them looked up.

“I think when it threw that thing like a spear it might have actually made holes in a bunch of these balloons,” Sunset said. “It should be fine, though!”

One of the cells tore apart, and the outer skin of the gas envelope ruptured.

“We’re gonna die!” Night Light yelled.

“You, come with me!” Sunset shouted at Velvet, running for the bow.

“What about the pooka?” Velvet asked, shoving the Heart back into her saddlebag.

“We’ll deal with it later!” Sunset snapped. “Just because I’m a genius doesn’t mean I can solve every problem at the same time!”

“Right, fine,” Velvet looked down. The ocean already looked a lot closer. The wind was starting to pick up as they lost lift.

“The lower hull is basically a boat,” Sunset said. “All we have to do is make a soft enough landing on the water that it doesn’t shatter the wood frame!”

“How are we going to do that?!”

“We’re gonna guide it down with telekinesis!” Sunset grinned. “Hang on to your flanks!”

13 - I Believe In A Thing Called Love

Modern airship design owes much to traditional naval design. The older an airship is, the more obvious it becomes that their gondolas are essentially boats hanging from a bag full of lighter-than-air gas. Over time, materials were lightened, control surfaces were refined, and various methods were found for propelling them against the wind.

“...and since it’s a boat, we can put it down on the ocean safely,” Sunset yelled over the wind rushing past them. “We’re in a good spot. We’re near land but not right over any islands.”

“We can’t hold up a whole airship!” Velvet shouted. “Do you know how much it weighs?!”

“A couple of the gas cells are still intact, so that’ll help too,” Sunset continued. “Look, I know you’re used to being weak but I’m the best! I don’t wanna hear about how weak you are! All I wanna hear from you is ‘wow, Sunset, you’re amazing and this plan is gonna work!’”

“But--”

“I could probably do it myself,” Sunset said, cutting off Velvet’s protest. “I’m using you as a safety net, understand? You just use the levitation tricks I’ve been teaching you and try to make the airship a little lighter.”

Velvet nodded. There wasn’t much point in arguing. They were going to crash either way so they had to try something. She reached out for the rigid base of the gas envelope around her and tried to use what Sunset had taught her. Just pulling and lifting was like using a lever attached to your horn - a long distance was a lot harder and too much weight would give you a terrible headache.

The trick to self-levitation, and holding up large objects, was just to keep them from falling. That might sound obvious, but cancelling the momentum was easier than actually moving them. It was the difference between trying to stop a baseball being pitched by an expert and one falling off a shelf.

Unfortunately, the Merriweather Post Pavilion was already moving. Velvet tried to bleed it away, streamers of her magic acting like airbrakes, shaving off only a fraction of the momentum they were gaining moment-to-moment.

Light flashed through her closed eyelids, and she opened her eyes to see Sunset’s horn blazing like a nova, the filly’s aura as bright as the sun. The whole ship started to glow with that light, and Velvet’s own spell redoubled in power, like a common note with Sunset’s magic was striking a chord.

Everything became weightless for a moment, loose scraps and drops of water falling upwards in defiance of an entire world’s worth of gravity.

The ship slowed and nearly came to a stop.

The very tip of the bow touched the water.

Sunset’s horn flickered and the light snapped off like a bulb burning out. Velvet’s spell collapsed in the rush of unraveling sorcery, and the Merriweather Post Pavilion lurched back into motion, hitting the water hard enough to make everything jump.

“Any landing you can trot away from, right?” Night Light asked.

“It occurs to me,” Sunset said, her voice faint. “We punched a big hole in the hull in our cabin.”

“Do you think that’s going to be a problem?” Night Light asked.

The three of them watched as the last of the Merriweather Post Pavilion sank below the waves from their lifeboat.

“At least the cold water and the shock from the fall woke everypony up,” Night Light offered. “I heard somepony mention that everypony got out okay.”

“We had to leave that monster onboard,” Sunset muttered. “I don’t like it. Trapping it with airtight cloth was clever but it’ll eventually figure some way out.”

“What monster?” One of the other ponies on the lifeboat asked.

Velvet looked back at the dozen ponies she didn’t know. All of them looked like they were from Canterlot. That is, they had too much money to know what to do with and only listened to other ponies when it wasn’t convenient for anypony involved. The mare who had spoken was wearing a fur coat despite being on a tiny lifeboat. It was already soaked but she refused to take it off.

“It’s, um, foals like to make up stories,” Velvet said, lamely. “It was probably an iceberg.”

The well-to-do pony blinked in surprise. “In the air?”

“Winter comes earlier every year,” Velvet said.

“Nothing like the winters I had as a foal,” a pony in a ripped top hat at the back of the boat scoffed. “Why I remember there was so much snow we got the whole weather team fired for ruining our lawn!”

The vacationers descended into comparing stories about the weather, and Velvet breathed a sigh of relief.

“There are boats on the way already,” Night Light said, pointing. Lights were moving closer from the shore. “We’ll be back on land soon.”

“Good. Once we get picked up, I’ll pay the captain to take us the rest of the way,” Sunset said. She pulled out a small bag of bits with her cutie mark on it.

“Right, then we can-- wait, you had money? You made me pay for the airship tickets!”

“This is an emergency fund,” Sunset snorted. “It wasn’t an emergency until I was the only one with cash.

Night Light groaned.

“Really? This is where we were going?” Velvet asked as she stepped off the small fishing boat and onto a dock that had seen better days.

The town couldn’t have held more than a hundred ponies and half that many buildings, a tiny speck that probably didn’t even appear on the map. Everything looked weather-worn and sun-bleached, like it had stood undisturbed for generations.

“Trust me, I had the same reaction the first time,” Sunset sighed. “I was expecting like, a secret castle hidden in the forest and instead I got dropped off here.”

“Should we go to the hotel?” Night Light asked. “Is there a hotel?”

“You two are going to stay around here,” Sunset said. “I have to check on some important stuff. Don’t wander off. I’ll come back when I need you.”

Velvet frowned. “When you need us?”

“You’re right,” Sunset said. “I shouldn’t have been so rude. If I need you. There are actual trained guards here. You’ll probably be going back home.”

The filly stuck out her tongue and strutted off, Velvet and Night Light watching her go.

“I’m going to write a letter to Princess Celestia about her,” Twilight Velvet decided. “And I’m going to recommend she appoints somepony to spank that filly until her cutie marks are hoofprints and she’s learned how to be polite.”

Night Light sighed and stopped as they walked off the dock and onto the grass. “I don’t care how rude she is. I’m just glad to be back on dry land.” He stomped his hooves a little. “This isn’t going to sink or explode or crash into the ocean and right now, that’s enough.”

Velvet smiled. “Come on. We’ll get a snack while we wait. My treat.”

“And what is this?” Night Light asked, looking at the paper plate Velvet had returned with.

“Well, these are fries,” Velvet said, pointing at one side of the plate. “And, uh, the pony at the booth said these were kind of a local specialty.”

The other half of the plate was occupied by golfball-sized battered balls, and everything had been doused in malt vinegar and mayonnaise and sprinkled with seasoned salt.

“Did he tell you what the specialty actually was?” Night Light asked.

“Try one first,” Velvet said.

Night Light carefully speared one of the balls with a toothpick and bit into it, revealing a mealy white center. He chewed slowly before swallowing.

“Fish?” he guessed.

Velvet nodded and took one for herself. “Apparently they do a lot of fishing here, and the land isn’t really great for farming. The balls are kind of a fish sausage made with olive oil and barley, then battered and deep-fried.”

“They’re not bad,” Night Light admitted. “Sort of pegasus cuisine, I guess.”

“Is it, though?” Velvet asked. “I mean, how would a pegasus catch fish? They live up in the sky. They don’t have rivers or lakes or anything.”

“Well, there’s some interesting history there,” Night Light said, perking up. “It’s actually because of the long history of cultural transfer between griffons and pegasi! Griffons have to eat meat or they get sick, kind of like how ponies need to eat vitamin C or we get scurvy. Fish are basically the only thing they could eat around ponies, and pegasi ended up incorporating it as part of their own culture because--”

Velvet popped another ball of fish into his mouth in the middle of his speech. “Eat before it gets cold. Fried food is awful once it cools down.” She grinned, holding back a giggle at his expression.

Night Light nodded, blushing and sharing the food with her, the two occasionally feeding each other as they polished off the street food.

“You know, despite all the near-death experiences, this hasn’t been a bad trip,” Night Light said. “I never got to do anything exciting with my life before this.” He looked out over the bay. There were cone-shaped islands stretching out to the horizon, most of them black rock and overgrown with tangles of scrabbly plants, the trees stunted and twisted.

“It hasn’t been that bad,” Velvet admitted. “The filly is annoying but she’s probably right that we’ll be going home. The Guards are better equipped to handle this.”

“If you wanted, maybe we could… do something sometime?” Night Light asked.

“I wouldn’t mind a hoof around the house with Dad in the hospital,” Velvet said, her cheeks turning pink. “You can cook, right?”

“I can manage sandwiches, and they’re usually…” Night Light looked past her shoulder. “...beautiful.”

“Beautiful?” Velvet asked, turning to follow his gaze.

A pink pony was watching them, trying ineffectively to hide herself while she stared, wings halfway spread like she was about to take to the air.

And she was beautiful enough to make Velvet’s heart jump in her chest.

“Oh, uh, don’t mind me!” the pink pony said, embarrassed. She stepped out of the cover of the bush she’d been watching them from. “Sorry.”

Night Light prodded Velvet and pointed at the pink pony’s head. And her horn. Horn and wings.

Velvet gasped and scrambled to her hooves and bowed, Night Light quickly following suit. “I’m so sorry, Princess! Sunset didn’t tell us you’d be coming!”

“No, no, please, don’t bow,” the pink alicorn pleaded. “I’m not a princess. Not officially, anyway.”

She helped Velvet and Night Light up.

“Please, just call me Cadance. The last thing I want is ponies making a fuss over me.” She smiled a little. “I heard ponies talking about some new arrivals and I just wanted to sneak out and have a look for myself.”

“Sunset Shimmer really should have warned us we’d be meeting you today,” Velvet said. “I’m so sorry. My name is Twilight Velvet, this is Night Light, and my mane is a mess, we both need showers--”

“You don’t need to apologize. I’m nopony special,” Cadance assured them. “Ponies keep trying to pretend I am, but I’m not really royalty or anything. Princess Celestia raises the sun every morning, I can barely even help the ponies here that need me.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.” Velvet smiled. The pink alicorn’s presence was warming, somehow, even more than the hot food had been. “My father always said that everypony is special in their own way.”

“Sometimes I wish I was less special,” Cadance said. “It was easier when I was just an orphaned pegasus filly.”

“But… you’re an alicorn,” Night Light pointed out.

“I wasn’t a few years ago,” Cadance sighed. “Now everypony acts like they don’t know how to treat me. I used to be the filly they took care of out of pity, and now…” Cadance trailed off.

“Now you’re a bigger pain in the flank than the monsters!” Sunset snapped, appearing in a burst of sorcery. “What’s wrong with you?! I told you before I left not to go out in the open and to stay away from strange ponies!”

“Well, um…” Cadance blushed and smiled. “It’s nice to see you got back safely, Sunset.”

“I tell you to stay away from strange ponies and what do you do? You go and talk to the only two ponies in town that are strangers!” Sunset huffed. “You didn’t even tell the guards where you were going!”

The filly started in on her, squeaking out a long list of annoyances that the pink alicorn had forced her to suffer through. Cadance looked past Sunset to Velvet and mouthed the word ‘help’ silently.

“Um…” Velvet coughed. “So you’ve been teaching her magic, Sunset?”

“Huh?” Sunset stopped her tirade. “Yeah. Why?”

“Princess Celestia must really trust you a lot if she gave you a responsibility like that.”

Sunset blushed and scoffed. “Obviously! She always says I’m the most ambitious student she ever had!”

“So, since you’re in charge, what should we do next?”

“In charge- right! Of course I’m in charge!” Sunset grinned. “Follow me! We’ve got planning to do!”

Author's Note

I Believe In A Thing Called Love

14 - Smoke on the Water

“It’s dumb, right?” Sunset asked, once the guard station came into view. It had, not long ago, been just a barn on the edge of town, perched on the one road in and out and used by the few traders who came along the path to store their carts and wares overnight.

Now it was trying very hard to be a fortress. The fence had been reinforced into a palisade, a gate had been added across the road, and a tower had been built to allow one pony at a time to keep watch over the dirt path. There was one thing clear about every modification to the barn - it was all definitively temporary. Measures that weren’t intended to stand the test of time, and would be removed just as quickly as they’d been added once they weren’t needed.

“Princess Celestia had to assign like, a dozen guards,” Sunset said. “They didn’t even have one here before Cadance.”

“It’s a safe town, usually,” Cadance added. “I don’t think we need the guards but… Princess Celestia insisted.”

“It’s supposed to be an honor guard but it’s more like a punishment detail,” Sunset said. “This is the most boring town in the world.”

Cadance sighed. “It’s not always boring. There was Prismia…”

“Not this story again,” Sunset groaned.

“What story?” Velvet asked.

“There was a witch named Prismia who came here with an evil artifact that amplified her power,” Cadance explained. “She tried to enslave everypony here. Her dark magic didn’t work on me, and when I tried to stop her, the artifact exploded.”

“And unfortunately, the story doesn’t end there,” Sunset grumbled.

“She changed her evil ways and I, well, I grew a horn. Princess Celestia sensed something and came here herself. She wanted me to go with her to Canterlot and become a Princess and… I just can’t handle that,” Cadance sighed.

“You’re stronger than you think,” Velvet said, putting a hoof on the pink alicorn’s shoulder. “You’ve had to put up with Sunset for even longer than I have, so you must have an infinite reserve of patience.”

“Hey!” Sunset snapped. “She’s lucky to have a great teacher like me! I learned from the best, and she learned from me, so that’s basically like she’s learning from the best too!”

“I really am thankful,” Cadance assured her. “Everypony else in town is an earth pony. None of them knew how to help me. Not that they would.” She sighed. “Ever since this happened all of them are afraid to even talk to me.”

“It’s called respect,” Sunset corrected. As they walked into the guard post, the stallions standing watch saluted. Sunset motioned to one of them. “Like this pony. He’s not afraid of you, but he respects you.”

She stopped in the middle of the barn. Cots had been set up along one wall, and tables along the other.

“The good news is, they won’t have to salute you in this dump for much longer. We’ll be going back to Canterlot as soon as possible.”

Cadance frowned. “I already told Celestia I didn’t want to go.”

“Well, things are different now!” Sunset jumped up on one of the tables to be at eye level with Cadance. “There are monsters looking for you. If I let you get eaten, Celestia is gonna kill me!”

“If there are monsters looking for me, I definitely can’t leave,” Cadance said.

“How does that make sense?” Sunset demanded. “You think they’re not gonna find you just because you’re in the middle of nowhere? They can probably smell you from a mile away with how sweet you pretend to be.”

“If they’re looking for me, they probably will come here,” Cadance agreed.

“Right. So we have to leave.”

“No!” Cadance looked back at Velvet and Night Light. “You have to understand, if I leave, the guards will leave too. The town will be totally undefended. Whatever these monsters are, I’d rather be here so I can at least try to do something to stop them. If I left and they came here and hurt ponies when I wasn’t here to stop it…”

“You’d never be able to forgive yourself,” Velvet finished.

“Exactly,” Cadance said, with a sigh.

Sunset paced on the table, stepping on the paperwork that the guards had been doing. “What if you knew the ponies here would be safe?”

“If I knew they’d be safe… I don’t know. Maybe.” Cadance looked uncomfortable. “But I don’t know for sure. That’s the problem.”

“We can find out, though!” Sunset pointed at Velvet. “She can tell us!”

“She can?” Cadance turned, her eyes wide with amazement and surprise.

“Wait, wait!” Velvet backed up. “I can’t--”

“You have precognition! All you have to do is… precognate things around here,” Sunset said, waving her hoof. “Then we’ll know if a monster is coming or not, and we’ll be able to agree on what to do.”

“It’s not like that,” Velvet said. “I can only see a few seconds into the future! You’re talking about, about hours or days or weeks!”

“There was that one thing back in Canterlot,” Night Light said. “You know. The prophecy thing.”

“You’re not helping!” Velvet hissed through her teeth.

“What was different in Canterlot?” Sunset asked.

“What I did in Canterlot was automatic writing,” Velvet explained. “It’s not something I can just do whenever I want. In Canterlot I had a big magic surge, and that set it off. It was an accident, not some kind of spell!”

“A magic surge, huh?” Sunset said, tapping her chin.

“Exactly,” Velvet nodded. “And it doesn’t happen that often. It could be weeks until it happens again.”

Sunset grinned. “No problem. I can give you a surge right now!”

Velvet took another step back at Sunset’s expression.

“No, look, it’ll be safe,” Sunset assured her. She hopped down from the table, her horn already glowing. “Princess Celestia taught me how to control my own magic surges, so I can totally set one off, too. It’s just like, uh, pouring water in a cup until it overflows, or something like that. She was better at the metaphor stuff.”

“Maybe I can, um, work on it myself?” Velvet offered. “Really, we don’t have to go to all this trouble when--”

“Here we go!” Sunset reached out and grabbed Velvet’s horn with her magic, and the air was filled with a smell like thunderstorms and starlight, the magic filling the air with static.

Velvet stumbled into the wall, one of the guards catching her before she fell.

“Sunset, you can’t do that without permission!” Cadance admonished. “What if you hurt her?”

“I’m an expert,” Sunset said. “If she got hurt it would be because I was trying to hurt her, duh. Since I didn’t try to hurt her, she isn’t hurt.”

Night Light waved a hoof in front of Velvet’s eyes. “Uh, she’s acting a little strangely. Velvet? Are you okay?”

Velvet pulled out of the nameless guard’s grasp (well, he wasn’t nameless, but Sunset had never bothered finding it out, and Cadance hadn’t asked the first day because she was so overwhelmed with everything and now it was too awkward to ask him) and stumbled into the table, knocking over an inkpot.

“Is this supposed to happen?” Night Light asked.

Sunset shrugged. “How should I know?”

“I thought you were the expert!”

The ink on the table started to glow as it spilled over the papers on the table, flowing and pooling and mapping out the tributaries of an invisible river. An image started to form on the timesheets and reports, becoming clearer by the moment.

“Um, everypony?” Cadance looked over Velvet’s shoulder with increasing worry. “Look at this.”

On the paper, picked out in white on black like a negative woodcut, ponies fled in every direction, trying to get away from some horrible disaster that had reduced everything behind them to burning rubble, half-drowned in the sea.

“That doesn’t look like everything’s going to be okay,” Cadance whispered.

“It could mean anything,” Sunset argued.

Night Light pressed a tin cup into Velvet’s hooves.

“Here,” he said, quietly. “This is made with willow bark. It’s good for headaches.”

“I’m glad we’re so far from civilization we’re using home remedies instead of medicine,” Velvet sighed. “Thanks for the tea.”

“It’s obvious there’s some kind of disaster,” Cadance said. “I am not leaving these ponies to their fate.”

“Maybe the disaster is only because you stayed here!” Sunset yelled. “If we leave, it might follow us, a-and leaving will keep them safe!”

“If you want to leave, you can,” Cadance said, quietly. “I know you don’t like me, Sunset. I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to face this. You’re just a filly.”

“I’m not just a filly!” Sunset snapped. “Don’t act like you’re in charge! I’m your teacher and that means you have to do what I say!”

“Whatever you decide to do, can we avoid using me as a test subject?” Velvet called out, interrupting them. “This argument is just making my headache worse.”

“Do you need me to get you a doctor?” Cadance asked.

“Is there a doctor here?” Sunset muttered.

“I’ll be fine,” Velvet assured her. “At least nothing too bad happened.”

The ground shook.

“Was I the only pony who felt that?” Velvet asked.

“No, you weren’t,” Night Light said. The earth shook again, and bells rang across town. Cadance bolted outside, the others following her.

A plume of smoke was visible even from this distance, rising over the horizon from some source out in the ocean.

“What is that?” Velvet asked.

“I’m not sure,” Cadance said. “But I don’t like it.”

“It looks like Mt. Kalessin,” the sailor said. “It’s about ten miles out to sea.”

He pointed to a spot on the map, one of a chain of islands. He’d brought the chart out to the guard station after getting back to port, and had so far been polite enough not to mention the scene of destruction

“All these islands are volcanic, but they’ve been dead for centuries,” he said. “Not even so much as a rumble of them turning over in their sleep. There’s no reason it should have woken up now.”

“No natural reason,” Velvet muttered.

“Accordin’ to the stories, the last time it blew its top, everything in a day’s sail burned,” the sailor muttered.

“We should evacuate,” Cadance said. “If we move everypony inland, maybe it’ll keep them safe.”

“There are probably a hundred little towns and fishing huts around the sea you’d have to evacuate,” the sailor said. “And accordin’ to local legend, most ponies who died starved because the eruption blocked out the sun an’ killed the harvest.”

Cadance swallowed, staring at the map. “If the guards go out, maybe they can at least warn some of them.”

“Ma’am, there’s somepony coming down the road,” a guard called out from the doorway. “You might want to see this!”

“It might be a pooka,” Sunset said. “I’m going first!”

“Hold on!” Cadance yelled, chasing after the filly as she ran outside.

In the middle of the road, three ponies were standing placidly, two of the Royal Guards keeping them there at spearpoint.

Each of the three strange ponies had cracked, dry skin, blistered around their hooves. White and black ashes had been spread across their bodies like paint in rough, tribal patterns.

“Are those pookas?” Cadance whispered, leaning close to Velvet.

“Trust me, you’d know if they were,” Velvet said. “But when one of them was controlling my dad, it affected them like that. They’re probably some kind of servants or slaves.”

“Hear us!” The lead stallion yelled, his voice as dry as his skin. “Our mistress knows the pony she demands is near! If she is not appeased, she will destroy this land!”

A crowd had started to gather, the townsponies coming to see what was happening.

The stallion reared up, the guards holding him back from charging forward. “Our mistress, Danger Zone, commands you to turn the alicorn over to her!”

15 - Disaster Area

They were caught in a circle of guards, holding back the ash-covered victims of chaos magic on one side and the scared townsponies on the other.

“Do you think the pooka knows she’s here, or did it send ponies out to every town around here?” Velvet whispered into Night Light’s ear, watching the dazed-looking slaves standing uneasily on burned hooves only a few paces away.

“The other pooka said she could smell alicorn magic,” Night Light said. “But it couldn’t place it, exactly. Maybe it can tell she’s somewhere in the area.”

“Maybe,” Velvet agreed. “It would have come for her, right?”

“I don’t know.” Night Light watched the guards gently trying to push the crowd of townsponies away. “In Veneighs it was the only one that ran away. Coldplay came right at us, and Breathless was apparently waiting in the museum to see who came by.”

“You think it’s smarter than the other ones?”

“It’s definitely using a different strategy,” Night Light said. “She’s making us come to her. Every other pooka hasn’t been afraid to fight us on our own turf.”

Velvet nodded.

“Hey, you two!” Sunset yelled. “Get your things.”

“What things?” Night Light asked. “The books I didn’t lose when the cafe collapsed are at the bottom of the ocean.”

“It’s a metaphor!” Sunset snapped.

“No one has ever used that as a metaphor.”

“I happen to be a trendsetter,” Sunset retorted. “Just get ready to go. We’re leaving.”

“Right,” Velvet nodded. “So what’s the plan? Some kind of big ritual spell? No offense but I don’t want to just go in blind this time.”

“We’re not going to fight it,” Sunset said, quietly.

“What? But- it’s going to kill ponies!”

“I know that!” Sunset snarled, then looked away. “It’s the smart thing to do, though.”

The ground trembled under them, a crack splitting open across the road, pebbles bouncing down into darkness and vanishing, so deep it was impossible to even hear them hit bottom. In the harbor, waves splashed as high as buildings, boats overturning and washing ashore.

Above them, the sky darkened with streaks of dark clouds. Flakes started to fall.

Night Light caught one on his tongue and blanched, spitting it out. “Ew. It’s ash!”

“The pooka can’t really be this strong, can she?” Velvet asked.

“There was already a volcano there,” Sunset said. “It takes a lot of effort to start a fire using sticks, but it doesn’t take much work to stoke a fire that’s already burning, even if it’s just embers.”

Velvet nodded. “That’s… surprisingly wise.”

“Somepony has to be an adult,” Sunset said. “I’m Cadance’s teacher. That means I have to be smarter than she is. Which isn’t hard.”

“Everypony calm down!” Cadance called out. The crowd wasn’t listening, the curious crowd rapidly turning into a riot. Ponies pushed each other in every direction, shouting about whose fault it was, about what they should do, and then just yelling to yell.

One of the guards shoved a pony back when he tried to push through the cordon. A second townspony took offense and threw a rock, the stone hitting the guard just above the eye, drawing blood.

Spears were lowered. Another rock was thrown.

“Stop!” Cadance shouted, loud enough to be heard over the crowd. She flew into the air, shedding grey ash as she hovered in the air where everypony could see her. “What are you all doing?!”

“They are helpless before the fires of the earth,” the head cultist called out. “They can feel it instinctively in their bones. We, too, were filled with the terror of it, the helplessness we all have before the earth’s might.”

“These guys are a little crazy with the whole dark mistress thing,” Night Light muttered.

“Wise words from a cultist,” Velvet teased.

“Give us the alicorn or be wiped away!” the cultist yelled.

The crowd started muttering at that. Velvet could see them turning the thought over in their minds, whispering to each other, sneaking glances at Cadance. Trying to act like they weren’t discussing sacrificing one pony to save themselves.

The guards clearly saw the idea infecting the crowd, though. They closed ranks, trying to hold the crowd back.

“Why do they even want you?” somepony in the crowd demanded.

“What did you do?” another voice asked.

A third voice joined them from the press of bodies. “Freak!”

Cadance’s flight faltered, her wings freezing for a moment.

The crowd quieted as if aware they’d crossed a line.

“It’s my responsibility to keep all of you safe,” Cadance said, not needing to yell to be heard now. “Ever since this happened to me, I’ve wanted to find a way to pay all of you back for the kindness you showed me as a foal. Princess Celestia told me that the most important thing a ruler can do is be willing to make difficult choices.”

“She better not be doing something dumb,” Sunset muttered.

“I’m going to go and face the monster myself,” Cadance said. “If it wants me, it can have me. I can’t ask you all to bear the risk if I don’t do what it’s demanding.”

“And there we go,” Sunset snapped. “Doing something dumb!”

“All of you go and return to your homes,” Cadance said, loudly, trying to ignore Sunset. “Pack only what you can carry and the Royal Guard will help you evacuate until it’s safe to return to your homes.”

Ponies started shuffling off, and the tension bled away.

“Where are we going to evacuate them to, Ma’am?” one of the guards asked.

“You’ll have to improvise,” Cadance said, apologetic. “If you can spare the soldiers, try to warn other towns around the area.”

“You think the rumbling and smoke isn’t enough warning?” the guard joked. “That’s going to leave us stretched thin, Ma’am. We’ll send four ponies out as heralds to get the locals moving, four with the townsponies here, and four with you.”

“None of you are coming with me,” Cadance said.

“We swore--”

“If Princess Celestia was here, she’d be ordering you to take care of her little ponies and ask you to let her worry about taking care of herself,” Cadance sighed. “I know I don’t compare, but give me the same benefit of the doubt.”

“You’re insane!” Sunset yelled, stomping her little hooves. “You don’t know anything about fighting! You can’t beat a monster like that!”

“Probably not,” Cadance agreed.

“Even if it keeps up its end of the bargain, and it won’t because it’s not as stupid as you are, it’s going to eat you and your magic and then things are gonna get worse! It might even get too strong for Celestia to beat it!”

“The prophecy didn’t look good,” Velvet added. “A shattered castle falling into the water, fire everywhere, ponies running around in confusion…”

“At least there aren’t any castles in town,” Cadance said, smiling a little. “Maybe all that trouble will happen somewhere else.”

“Maybe, but it’s going to happen,” Velvet said. “I’ve never been wrong before.”

“There’s a first time for everything.” Cadance took a deep breath, then started trotting towards the docks. “I’m going to have to borrow somepony’s boat to get out to that island. I don’t want to fly with all this ash coming down.”

Velvet followed, Night Light trailing behind.

“Tie up those ponies!” Sunset snapped at the guards, pointing to the charred slaves at the edge of town. “We’ll figure out what to do with them later!” She chased after the others after asserting her authority, livid with anger.

On the short walk to the shore, there was damage everywhere. Roof tiles fallen and broken, cracked windows, gardens being covered by ash, the street itself cracked and warped. Ponies tried not to look at them as they passed.

“What a great town,” Velvet muttered.

“They’re just scared,” Cadance said. “I can’t blame them for that. I’m scared too.”

“Sunset isn’t wrong,” Night Light added. “We’re going to need a plan before we leave.”

“What? You can’t come!” Cadance stopped, looking back at them with fear in her eyes for the first time. “You might get killed!”

“And you’re not risking anything?” Velvet asked. “You said you’re not a Princess yet, so you can’t order us around. I’m going with you. So is Night Light.”

“I am?” Night Light asked. Velvet glared at him. “I mean, of course I am.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Cadance said, quietly.

“It’s what any decent pony would do.” Velvet smiled. “You’re going to have to help us with the boat, though. I don’t think Night Light is going to be able to do much without an instruction manual and I’ve never been a sailor.”

“Come on,” Cadance said, with a little more energy, leading them to a small boat at the end of the dock, just a little bigger than a rowboat, with a simple sail and rudder. She hopped onboard. “Just ignore the fishing rods unless you want to try and get lunch on the way.”

“I’m not that hungry,” Velvet said, hopping after her, almost immediately losing her footing and falling into Cadance. The lean, athletic unicorn held her up, wrapping a wing around her to help stabilize her.

“Careful,” Cadance warned. “You need to get your sea legs.”

Velvet blushed and laughed. “Yeah.”

Night Light very carefully tried to back into the boat one hoof at a time, as if afraid his weight would cause the whole boat to capsize.

“You’re all dumb,” Sunset said, from the dock. “You’re going to end up getting killed!”

“You don’t have to come with us,” Cadance said.

“Well I’m not coming!” Sunset snapped.

Cadance steadied Velvet, then flew up to the dock to stand next to Sunset, kneeling down to the filly’s level and hugging her.

“Thank you,” Cadance said. “I know you never wanted to come here. I just wish I was able to make up for coming between you and Celestia. You still did your best to teach me, and I wasn’t the best student.”

“W-what are you doing?!” Sunset demanded.

“I might not have a chance to say sorry later,” Cadance said.

“Idiot!” Sunset sniffled. She shoved Cadance away. “Now if I don’t go I’m going to look like a jerk!”

“That’s not what I--”

Sunset pushed past her and jumped onto the boat, the impact making Night Light fall over the side and into the ocean. She plucked him out of the water and stepped up to the bow before turning to address her small crew. “You better come up with a better plan before we get to the island, or I’m gonna turn this boat around!”

Author's Note

Disaster Area

16 - Ashes in Your Mouth

“That’s not the most friendly island I’ve ever seen,” Night Light said, looking across the dark water at the even darker rock ahead, the peak glowing and throwing plumes of smoke into the sky. “I guess the travel guide was exaggerating when it said this was a vacation destination.”

“It’s much better in the spring,” Cadance said. “Everything goes into bloom, and there are wildflowers everywhere. Last year there was a big festival and we brought out a kettle so big four ponies had to carry it to make soup for the whole town!”

Her smile faded.

“There won’t be one next spring, will there?” Cadance asked. “No matter what happens, it’s all going to change.”

“Look on the bright side,” Sunset said. “Maybe the volcano will erupt and kill everypony so you don’t have to keep making up sob stories about how they treat you differently.”

“Sunset!” Velvet snapped.

“What?” The filly turned on her with a glare that was as sharp as Velvet’s tone. “She acts like we should all feel sorry for her because her perfect little life in the middle of nowhere is screwed up. But you know what? I’d love it if my life was messed up because I grew wings! The little perfect pink princess just wants to feel sorry for herself when she can go to Canterlot any time she wants and have a hundred hoof-picked servants brushing her hair every morning!”

“I don’t want ponies serving me!” Cadance yelled. “I just wanted a normal life. A real family.”

“Everypony wants what they can’t have,” Sunset muttered. “How long is it going to take to get this boat to the island?”

“Another hour, maybe,” Cadance said. “I’ve only gone out this way a few times. There aren’t any dangerous shoals, but there are rip currents that could end up carrying us miles out to sea.”

“Would it help if there was more wind?” Sunset asked.

“Yes?” Cadance replied, slowly and carefully. “I haven’t exactly gotten a formal education on the weather, but the hot air from that volcano is probably going to make most of the wind actually push away from the island, slowing us down. There’s this neat trick called tacking that I’ve been using to--”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Sunset said, cutting her off. “I’m sure you know all kind of peasant sailorpony tricks. More wind means more faster, right?”

Cadance sighed, rolling her eyes. “Yes, fine, More wind would make us go faster.”

“Great!” Sunset’s horn started glowing with a worrying amount of magic. The kind of magic that in other circumstances would have made ponies run for cover, not that there was cover anywhere on the tiny boat. “I know a spell that’ll create a gust of wind!”

Velvet had a sudden but very strong premonition. In fact, everypony on board the ship managed to have the same premonition of disaster except the pony that was going to cause it. “Wait, Sunset, I don’t know if that’s a good--”

Sunset completed her spell, and a burst of hurricane-force wind slammed into the sails.

This was not what professional sailors might call, in their quaint nautical terminology, ‘a good thing’.

The mast didn’t break, which was a miracle on its own, and the whole boat jumped forward, throwing everypony back. Sunset fell from her perch on the bow and into Cadance. Velvet grabbed a rope with the few seconds of extra warning that her sight gave her, wincing at the rope burn as she slid back, trying to keep her grip strong.

Night Light got the worst of it, cracking his head against the deck hard enough to bleed.

The boat skipped over the waves, the sail rippling and straining against the force of the wind, slamming down into the water after every launch into the air like a giant wooden hammer that was, unfortunately, full of screaming ponies.

“Look!” Velvet pointed ahead, to where a cluster of ash-covered boats were lined up around foreboding docks. “It’s a town!”

“And we’re going to run into it!” Cadance yelled.

“It’s okay!” Night Light shouted, grabbing the rudder. “I can… I’ll…” He pulled it one way, then the other. The boat kept going as straight as an arrow.

“The rudder isn’t in the water!” Cadance shouted.

Velvet looked up at the sail, tugging at the rigging. Cadance caught what she was doing and helped, working the knots on the other side until the sail tore free, flapping in the wind like a flag.

The boat started to slow, not carried entirely on momentum, the wind whipping past uselessly.

“Brace yourselves!” Cadance yelled, as the dock rushed forward.

Velvet closed her eyes.

The boat slowed and gently bumped against something as it came to a complete halt.

Velvet looked over the side of the boat. They’d come to rest against a half-sunken hulk tied to the dock.

“I think the rudder’s working again,” Night Light reported.

[br]

“You know, I didn’t appreciate your tiny little town before, but now I’m really starting to miss it,” Sunset said. Ash was still falling from the snow, thick enough on the ground that the drifts reached up past their ankles.

The town, or what was left of it, was little more than a burned ruin. Blackened beams rose out of the ashes to mark where buildings had been, though there was so little left that it was difficult to tell where one destroyed shell ended and another began.

“This must be where those burned ponies came from,” Velvet said. She nodded toward a shuffling, scorched pony trotting aimlessly through the ashes. It was drawn and skeletal, like it was halfway dried to jerky while still alive. It wasn’t even possible to tell now if it had been a stallion or mare.

“We shouldn’t have let Sunset come,” Cadance whispered. “A foal shouldn’t have to see this.”

Not quietly enough for Sunset to avoid hearing her. “I’m not just a foal!”

“Careful,” Velvet cautioned. “We don’t want to offend the locals.”

The dried-out thing that used to be a pony turned toward them, blindly stumbling towards the sound. More of them started shuffling slowly closer.

“They’re not moving very quickly,” Night Light said. “Well, that or the concussion is getting worse and this is a hallucination.”

“Unfortunately, what you’re seeing is probably real,” Velvet said.

“Even the staircase going up the volcano?” Night Light asked.

Velvet smiled. “Probably not that.”

“Actually, I see that one too,” Cadance said, pointing.

A black staircase shone against the gray landscape, gleaming like a jewel. The ponies walked quickly to it, staying ahead of the increasing mob of slaves.

“This is obsidian,” Sunset said. “It’s a volcanic rock. Technically, volcanic glass.”

“It’s a red carpet up to meet our host, I think,” Velvet said. “Look. The ash isn’t even falling on it.”

“And all the zombies are herding us towards it,” Night Light added.

“I’m not sure they’re actually zombies but…” Velvet looked at the shuffling horde. “Close enough.”

“This might be your last chance to turn back,” Cadance said. “It only wants me.”

“It’d be dumb to turn back now,” Sunset said. “If something goes wrong, all that would happen is we’d be on the ocean too far away to do anything about it, and if everything goes right, we can’t take credit for it!”

“That’s one way to look at it,” Velvet said, with a smile. “I’d rather say we came here to help, and we’re not turning back now.”

“Thank you,” Cadance said, quietly. “I think I’d be too afraid to actually go through with this if I was alone.”

“Come on!” Sunset yelled, hopping up the first few stairs. “And be careful! They’re slippery! What kind of idiot makes stairs out of glass?”

“Don’t mind me,” Night Light said, pushing past Velvet to the stairs. “Those zombies are just getting too close for comfort.”

“He’s right about that,” Velvet agreed. “You go ahead, Cadance. I’ll take up the rear.”

Cadance nodded and skipped up the stairs, Velvet shooting the dried-up slaves one last look before following.

The stairs were rough, just slabs stacked up one on top of another, the glass surface slick and smooth, offering little purchase for hooves, which Night Light quickly found when the volcano rumbled again.

The stallion tripped and fell, his fetlock hitting the edge of the stair.

“I’m bleeding!” Night Light yelled, shocked.

“The edge is like a razor,” Velvet said. “Hold on, I can stop the bleeding.”

“Why do I keep getting hurt today?” Night Light muttered, while Velvet tended to him.

“Because for some reason you decided it would be a good idea to come fight a monster on top of an exploding volcano,” Velvet said. “You’re very brave.” She kissed his hoof like he was a foal. “Does that feel better? I cast a spell to stop the bleeding until we can get a real bandage on it.”

“It’s a little better,” Night Light said.

“Hurry up before he tries to convince you his lips are sore and he needs a kiss there, too,” Sunset called out, from a dozen steps ahead. “We’re sort of on a time limit! I don’t wanna be going up these stairs when the volcano explodes!”

Night Light blushed. “I wasn’t-- I wouldn’t have--”

“If we get out of this safely, Sunset, I’ll even give you a kiss,” Velvet said, rolling her eyes.

“Ew,” Sunset said, sticking out her tongue. “Why would I want a kiss?”

“You’ll understand when you’re older,” Cadance assured her. The mountain rumbled again, harder this time. “If we live long enough to get older!”

There was a crack above them as a boulder finally conceded victory to gravity and fell, more rocks following its example downwards. A fist-sized stone smashed into the stairs between Cadance and Velvet, throwing shards of black glass into the air like shrapnel.

Sunset snapped a spell into the air, trying to blast the falling rubble apart. Some of it scattered away, but the rest rained down around her.

Velvet threw Night Light towards Cadance just as the boulder hit the stairs. The obsidian shattered under her.

Cadance caught Night Light, and Velvet fell after the boulder.

The thing about falling objects is, the average pony can’t possibly predict all the variables that go into knowing where they’re going to go if they bounce and rattle around. You’d have to be able to see the future to predict anything with certainty.

Velvet followed the big boulder down, adjusting her stance and trusting entirely to her ability. She landed in the ashes on a small plateau, something rounded under her hooves. A broken, mostly petrified log.

The boulder that had broken the stairs landed on the other end of the log, catapulting her back into the air.

Velvet caught herself with her aura and drifted down, landing a few steps ahead of Sunset.

“That was--” Sunset blinked. “That was actually pretty impressive. For someone without formal training, I mean. I could do that if I wanted.”

Velvet smiled, her expression strained. “Tell you what, next time I’ll let you be the one to do it.”

“Are you okay?” Cadance asked, rushing to look at her. “I thought you were going to die!”

“That’s what I thought, too,” Velvet said. “I-I’m still shaking a little. I think I need a minute. And maybe a hug.”

“There’s no time for hugs on an adventure,” Sunset admonished. “Now come on! We’ve got a monster to fight!”

Author's Note

Ashes in Your Mouth

17 - For Victory

“I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this,” Velvet admitted.

“That means a lot coming from somepony who can see the future,” Sunset said. “But you know, it all kinda looks familiar…”

Walkways and bridges of obsidian hung over the boiling magma below. Stately buildings in a chaotic disarray of shapes and sizes poked out of the caldera like stalagmites, the lava and rising columns of ash making it look like a city burning from below.

“It’s Veneighs,” Night Light said. “Sort of. It’s like if you tried to build the city from what you saw in a few postcards and old vacation photos.”

“These buildings are empty,” Cadance reported, flying up to a second story to have a better look. “There aren’t even walls and floors in most of them. They’re just… facades.”

“Creepy,” Sunset said. “It’s a ghost town. In a volcano. Then again, it’s sort of less creepy than the town full of zombie ponies, you know?”

“Where’s the pooka?” Velvet asked, looking around as if worried the buildings would come down around them. “I thought it would be here to meet us.”

“If I had to guess…” Cadance, perched higher than the others, pointed ahead. If it was a real city, she’d be pointing into the next street. There, just visible from where they stood, fireballs and streamers of flame crested over the rooftops like fireworks.

“Somepony else go first,” Night Light said.

“Just follow me,” Cadance said. “It wants me, after all. Might as well let it see it’s getting what it wants…”

She swallowed and touched down ahead of them, the group carefully picking their way across the city of stone. The whole thing was missing details - windows were empty frames, signs were blank, and places where there should have been sculpture or art were filled in merely with unfinished stone.

A wave of heat caught them as they turned the next corner. A fountain stood at the center of a wide platform, filled not with water but magma and fire. The molten rock splashed as the creature lounging in it turned over lazily to watch the ponies approaching.

“What do we have here?” the monster asked, in a husky tone, obviously pleased. “And just when I thought my day couldn’t get any better!”

“My name is Mi Amore Cadenza,” Cadance said, trying to keep her voice from wavering. “I am here as demanded.”

“You know, the way you say it really sucks the fun out of it,” the pooka sighed, standing up. Like the others, it could only be mistaken for equine if one was observing it from a great distance and had particularly poor eyesight.

The creature before them was even taller than Princess Celestia, skin smooth and black and as perfectly formed as a statue. With every motion, the pooka’s skin cracked, revealing glowing heat underneath, healing when it slowed.

“What do you think of my little villa?” the pooka asked. “I decided to model it after that wonderful little place where I woke up.”

“So it is Veneighs,” Night Light muttered.

“As my servants have hopefully told you, my name is Danger Zone,” the pooka said. It would have been beautiful in an abstract, statuesque way, if not for the way it moved. It was like some kind of boneless slug or blob wearing that statue-skin as a disguise. “I was hoping we could talk.”

“Since you’re holding my people hostage, I don’t have much choice,” Cadance said.

“It is a clever little ploy, isn’t it?” The pooka smiled, which was its own variety of unpleasant. “My siblings love throwing themselves at problems with brute force. I prefer to, hm, think more about the easiest way to get what I want.”

“And you wanted me.”

The pooka nodded. “And I wanted you. I could have chased you around, tried to outsmart you. That’s what my siblings did. Why should I go to all that effort when I can just make you come to me, though? I could smell you in this island chain somewhere, so all I had to do was threaten to destroy the whole thing and your precious little pony friendship and herding instinct dragged you here like you were on a leash.”

“If I do what you want, you’ll agree not to force this volcano to erupt? You’ll leave the ponies here alone?”

The pooka nodded. “I’ll even let your servants leave here alive, even though you’ve practically served the helpless little things up to me on a silver platter.”

“I’m not helpless!” Sunset snapped.

“Hush, the adults are talking,” the pooka said.

“Don’t you dare look down on me!” Sunset’s horn flashed, and before anypony could stop her, she threw an ice spell at the pooka, a sharp shard of ice that boiled to water in midair and only splashed against the monster’s side, evaporating with a sharp hiss.

“I can see you didn’t get any tips from Coldplay,” Danger Zone said. She stretched, steam pouring from her skin. “It’s too bad you won’t have a chance to learn anything else at all.”

The pooka’s static, sculpted mane shattered, a dozen tentacles of liquid rock studded with shards of obsidian erupting from its head and neck.

“Wait!” Cadance yelled. “You agreed to let them go!”

The pooka paused, tentacles pausing in their dance towards Sunset.

“I did,” the pooka said. “Well, I suppose I can at least be a gracious winner and forgive your servants for being poor losers.”

“Thank you,” Cadance sighed.

“My siblings would have killed her in an instant. I’m more civilized.” The pooka tossed its head, the whirling lashes of death curling back into a perfectly coifed mane, the obsidian barbs twisting like puzzle pieces and interlocking into that smooth skin.

“It makes me curious just what you’re planning on doing with my magic,” Cadance said.

“I’m not much for planning.” The pooka started pacing around the edge of the lava fountain, walking on the ridge of obsidian blocks at the perimeter. “I prefer going with the flow. If it makes you feel better, though, I’ll probably take care of my siblings for you.”

“What?” Cadance took a step back, surprised.

“Well, only one of us can be perfect,” Danger Zone said, with a liquid shrug rippling across her body. “Obviously I deserve it more.”

It stopped pacing and looked down at Cadance.

“Now, it’s time to hold up your end of the bargain. You’ve been polite, so if you have any last words, go ahead and make them now.”

“There is just one thing I wanted to say.” Cadance lowered her head. “Princess Celestia told me that I had to learn how to face down threats on my own. But… I couldn’t have come here on my own. I couldn’t have faced you down without the others here.”

“How touching,” the pooka said. “The power of friendship and sacrificing yourself for others, yes, yes.”

“Actually, the reason I wouldn’t have been able to come here is that I wouldn’t have had this.”

Cadance pulled a bundle out from under her wing, tearing cloth away to reveal the shining Sun’s Heart, the glare even painful to her eyes, reflecting from all the dark glass around them.

Danger Zone fell back, losing its concentration. Its graceful, smooth movements turned turbulent as it scrambled away, the black smooth sculpted skin peeling away and falling to the ground as shattered stone.

“You had that this whole time?!” Danger Zone hissed.

“That’s right,” Cadance said. “And you’ve got nowhere to run!”

The pooka dove into the magma, vanishing from sight.

“...you have somewhere to run,” Cadance said. “Sunset? What do I do now? We didn’t plan on it doing this!”

“Improvise!” Sunset yelled. “It’s gotta have a weakness!”

The platform under them cracked, railings falling away and empty facades mimicking a real city starting to crumble under the strain.

“I think the city just realized it’s in the middle of an active volcano!” Night Light yelled. “My hooves are burning!”

“The ground is heating up like a skillet,” Velvet said. “We need to get somewhere cooler!”

“Hold on, I’ll make a path!” Sunset cast an ice spell, the beam wavering and weak. “Mmph! This is harder than it should be!”

“We’re in the middle of a volcano, of course cold spells are barely working!”

“No, it’s like- it’s like something is disrupting ice magic!” Sunset yelled. “It’s why the first spell I cast didn’t kill it!”

“Wait, I know what to do!” Cadance threw the Sun’s Heart to Velvet and flew up, using the thermals to quickly gain altitude to the gathering clouds overhead. With a few swift kicks, the clouds rumbled and opened up, rain coming down first and trickles, building into a full storm.

“Hot hot hot!” Night Light yelled, his tail catching on fire from a shower of sparks.

Sunset rolled her eyes and turned her wavering ice beam onto his flank, putting the fire out. “This plan sounded a lot better back on the boat.”

“That’s because we were just glad to have a plan back on the boat,” Velvet said.

The ground shook, a roar building from all around them. A lash of obsidian blades and magma erupted from the caldera below, nearly hitting Sunset as it slammed into the buildings, going right through the streets and walls like a battering ram.

“I won’t let you leave here alive!” the pooka roared. “You think you’re so clever because you have a weapon against me? I am a weapon! No living thing in the world can survive against the power of the earth’s volcanic heart!”

Danger Zone pulled herself out of the volcano, the remains of the perfect black skin falling away and melting into nothing. Without it, she was nothing like a pony, just a horrible collection of tentacles and half-formed limbs made of glowing rock surrounding a mouth ringed with sapphire teeth and burning like a furnace.

“Stay back!” Velvet warned, holding up the Sun’s Heart. “I know you can’t get closer while I have this!”

“You idiot pony!” Danger Zone hissed, lava dripping from its body like a trail of molten gore as it lumbered towards them. “That would have worked when I was weak, but not now!”

Everything went white.

The pooka roared, a crater blasted out of its body.

“I might not have a formal education but I’ve had to bust a bunch of storms on my own!” Cadance yelled. “How do you like the taste of lightning?!”

The pooka just roared, beyond any kind of rational thought now.

“Take this!” Velvet yelled. She threw the Sun’s Heart into Danger Zone’s open maw, the glowing gem disappearing down its glowing furnace of a throat.

The pooka’s shrieks changed from cries of pain to ones of alarm, stumbling back and tearing at its own flesh, its skin starting to darken and solidify.

“Why did you do that?!” Sunset yelled. “You fed it our only weapon!”

“It’s working, though!” Velvet countered.

Danger Zone fell backward into the volcano, the cooling effect seeming to spread from her like a plague, the whole mountain cooling as she sank into the magma, turning from bubbling white-hot death to cherry-red taffy before finally solidifying with a cracking snap.

“Is it over?” Night Light asked, peeking past the edge.

Danger Zone’s claw was the only part of the pooka still visible, frozen in stone and clawing at the sky.

18 - Impaled Northern Moonforest

The small boat, with hasty repairs made to the sails, gently nudged up against the dock with absolutely no help from Sunset. She had been told several times that while yes, her spell had made the boat faster, it was by no means an experience anypony wanted to repeat - especially since they’d managed to avoid death once already.

“I can’t believe you threw our only weapon into its mouth!” Sunset said, for the hundredth time.

“It worked, didn’t it?” Velvet asked. “If we didn’t do something, we would have died.”

“You could have done something else, though,” Sunset pouted. “Do you know how important that artifact was?”

“Yes, I do,” Velvet said. “It could be used to imprison a monster in stone. Since that’s how I ended up using it, I consider it a net gain.”

“It could be used to imprison all of them!” Sunset snapped. “It held them for hundreds of years! Now instead of holding four monsters, it’s in the belly of one monster.”

“We tried getting it back,” Cadance sighed.

“You gave up after just two hours!” Sunset huffed. “All we have to do is dig through a little rock!”

“We have no tools, and even with trained ponies it would take a long time to dig through solid rock,” Cadance said. “Besides, wouldn’t you rather assign some guards to it?”

“...I do have better things to do than get my own hooves dirty digging in the dirt,” Sunset admitted.

“You know, you could look at it as two monsters down, two to go,” Night Light said. “That’s pretty good, right?”

“That’s fifty percent,” Sunset snapped. “You know what fifty percent is? It’s a failing grade! Failing!”

“We’re not being graded on hunting monsters,” Cadance said. Then she paused, mid-step. “We’re not, are we? This isn’t some giant test from Celestia to make sure I’m ready to be a Princess, is it?”

“You’d better hope not!” Sunset said, teleporting past her. “Otherwise you’re gonna end up flunking out and I’ll have to teach you all over again!”

“We should let everypony know they can come back home,” Velvet said. “I’m sure they’ll be glad it’s over.”

“Are you kidding?” Sunset snorted. “The ponies here are always grumpy and they stink like fish. They’re probably going to complain that we made them leave and the volcano didn’t explode. They’ll talk about how we made them walk all that way and there wasn’t even an earth-shattering kaboom to make it worth the wait.”

“She’s probably right,” Cadance admitted.

“We could let Sunset blow up a few buildings and tell them the volcano erupted a little bit,” Night Light suggested.

“We’ll see how much they complain first,” Cadance said. “Maybe if they’re polite we won’t have to burn anything down at all.”

The alicorn giggled, and it spread to the others, even Sunset laughing a little, though more at the thought of actually burning things than the absurdity of the idea.

Three gold-armored guards saluted as they walked into town.

“Princess, we have good news,” the patrol leader said. “A short time ago, the ponies we had in custody started recovering. It was like they snapped out of a waking dream.”

“That makes sense,” Velvet said. “The same thing happened with my father.”

“How are they?” Cadance asked. “They looked like they were in poor health.”

“Dehydrated,” the patrol leader said. “Two guards are still with them and doing what they can. Thankfully one of them had some training as a medic. We’ve got them sipping water slowly so they won’t get sick from it.”

“I’d like to speak with them,” Cadance said. “It’s likely they don’t have a home to go back to.”

“Of course, Princess. This way.”

Cadance nodded.

“You know, you only flinched a little when they said ‘princess’,” Velvet whispered, as they walked.

Cadance blushed. “I feel a little more like one, after that.”

“It came right out of the earth,” the former slave said, through cracked lips. “It actually swam through the earth under the ocean, and our island was just the easiest place to surface.”

“Take your time,” Cadance said, patting his back as he descended into coughs. “It’s over now. The monster is gone. Mostly. It won’t bother you again.”

“Thank you so much, Princess,” the pony said. “We can’t thank you enough.”

“I’m sorry we couldn’t do more. Whether you decide to go back to your homes and rebuild or settle somewhere else, I’ll make sure Crown funding is there to help.”

The pony nodded.

“Once the ponies that live here come back, I’ll get you a nice, home-cooked meal,” Cadance said, patting his head like a foal.

“That sounds great,” the pony wheezed, smiling.

“For now I just want you to rest.” Cadance stepped back and nodded to the guards. “Let me know if anything changes. These ponies have been through a lot.”

“Are you done playing at being a nurse yet?” Sunset yelled, from the door to the guard post. “We’ve got more important things to do!”

“You know, Sunset, I think Princess Celestia would want you caring more about the ponies around you,” Cadance said, smiling at her young tutor. “Maybe you could try telling these ponies that they’re going to be safe because you helped imprison the monster that was hurting them? I’m sure they’d be very thankful.”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “Hey, old guy!”

“Not a good start, Sunset,” Cadance mumbled through her teeth.

“You better not die after we saved you, you hear me?” Sunset yelled. “It was a ton of trouble fighting that stupid monster!”

The stallion laughed, the chuckles turning into coughs. “Sorry about the trouble,” he said, once he could speak.

Sunset nodded sharply and left, Cadance shaking her head and following her outside.

“Nicer, Sunset,” Cadance sighed. “We were focusing on being nice.”

“Whatever,” Sunset shrugged. “The point is, he lost to the monster, and I won. That makes me better. It’s just the order of things. Me on top, him below. Far below.”

“Where did you get that from?”

“Prince Blueblood. He’s basically like, the highest nobility in Equestria. Aside from Celestia, obviously. He knows how ponies are supposed to act around their betters.” Sunset tapped her chin. “You should probably get some lessons from him if you’re going to be in Canterlot.”

“I think Prince Blueblood and I have some very different ideas on how to treat ponies,” Cadance said.

One of the guards sounded the alarm bell, hitting it with a stick until everypony was looking his way. “Princess! There’s a pony on the road!”

“Is it a good pony or an evil pony?” Sunset yelled.

“I’m not qualified to judge the subjective morality of others, Ma’am, but objectively it looks like it’s one of the guards we sent with the Princess’ subjects to keep them safe while they evacuated the town.”

“They’re not my subjects, they’re--” Cadance sighed. “He’s probably coming to check if the danger from the volcano has passed. We’ve got good news to give him, so this is his lucky day!”

Cadance pranced over to the gate across the road, opening it with her magic so she could get a look at the approaching pegasus guard.

Her expression fell when she saw his soot-stained appearance.

“It’s terrible!” he yelled, sprinting the last of the distance and collapsing at Cadance’s hooves. “We were making a temporary camp in the woods to the north to shelter overnight, and this mist started rolling down from the mountains around us.”

“Mist?” Cadance asked.

“That’s what we thought it was, but when it got to us, we all started choking on it!”

“Oh no,” Sunset said. “Velvet! Night Light! Get over here!”

“Sunset?” Cadance looked at her.

“I knew that stupid fabric wouldn’t hold it for long,” Sunset muttered. When the others arrived, she glared up at them with fire in her eyes. “It was your stupid plan that lost us the Sun’s Heart and didn’t actually trap the stupid smoke monster, so you have to deal with this!”

“What happened?” Velvet asked, immediately worried.

“I flew over it,” the pegasus said. “It stayed close to ground level. I couldn’t get it to disperse no matter what I tried. I waited it out, but instead of fading away, it just crawled back into the mountains, and all the ponies went with it.”

“The whole village?” Cadance whispered.

“I’m so sorry, Princess,” the guard whispered. “I couldn’t protect them.”

“According to what he said, they went this way,” Sunset said, drawing a line on the map. “It goes right into the mountains. All the cities here are along the coast, though, so it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe we hurt it worse than we thought,” Night Light suggested. “It could be hiding somewhere licking its wounds.”

“But it can’t be out in sunlight,” Velvet pointed out. “It can’t just be sitting in the open. And it eats pony magic, so we’re looking for shelter and ponies.”

“The nearest town on the map is here,” Sunset said. “All the way on the other side of the mountains.”

“There’s something closer,” one of the dried-up ponies said, from behind them. “Sorry, I just overheard you talking, and…”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Cadance assured him. “We can use any help we can get.”

“Raven Valley,” the pony said. “It’s sort of a mining camp. It’s in the mountains and isn’t really on any map. Ponies don’t come and go from there so often, but we had a trader that’d do business there from time to time, got us coal and brought them crops.”

“Where is it?” Velvet asked.

“Help me up,” the pony said.

Cadance helped the exhausted pony stand, and they limped over to the map. He looked at it carefully, then drew an X on a deep rift valley.

“There,” he said. “That’s where you’ll have to go.”

“This was a better plan,” Sunset said, pleased. “We should have taken all the guards, though.”

They trotted along the trail into the mountains, following the vague directions they’d gotten third-hoof, though they’d proven accurate so far. Three of the royal guards walked with them, two ahead and one taking up the rear.

“The others needed to stay in town and tend to the wounded,” Cadance said. “I feel guilty about taking anypony.”

“We couldn’t let you go alone, Princess,” one of them said. “Even if you refused our aid, our comrades are caught up in this. That monster took ponies we care about and trained with.”

“I’m just here because Sunset asked so nicely,” Velvet muttered. “I think it was the first time a filly half my age threatened to tear off my tail.”

“We’re in this mess because we keep following your dumb plans,” Sunset said. “It’s too bad you have future sense instead of common sense.”

“I’m here because I want to be here!” Night Light said. “I couldn’t let you girls go after the pooka alone.”

“Well, that and you’re sweet on Cadance,” Velvet whispered, bumping her flank into his.

“Huh?”

“No, nothing, it’s fine. She is hot enough to make the list.”

“The list?” Night Light whispered. “What list?”

“You know. The list of mares that are attractive enough to make you question how dedicated you are to stallions,” Velvet shrugged. “You’ve got a list like that, right? Of stallions you’d be with?”

“What are you two whispering about back there?” Sunset yelled. “It had better be battle plans!”

“I thought you didn’t want me to make any more plans?” Velvet asked.

Sunset was silent for a moment. “...Right! No battle plans!” She snapped. “Your plans are all dumb, so you’re not allowed to think of them anymore!”

Velvet saluted. “No problem, Ma’am.”

Sunset huffed and double-timed her march, pushing past the soldiers to take point.

“I’m still a little worried about what we’ll do without the Sun’s Heart,” Night Light admitted.

“Are you going to blame me for throwing it?” Velvet huffed.

“No! It worked, so… you can only tackle the problem in front of you, right? It’s like when you play a game, you might try to save the best cards for later, but if you wait too long, the game is over and you never used them even when they would have made things easier.”

“That’s a really weird comparison,” Velvet said, giggling.

“Is it?” Night Light blushed. “Sorry. I play a lot of games.”

“This is no time for games,” Cadance said.

They stood at the crest of a hill. Below them, the valley was shrouded in mist. Rocky mountains surrounded it with sheer cliff faces, so high that sunlight didn’t reach the bottom. A few buildings stood in the distant smog like tombstones, black against the white mist.

“I think we’re here.”

Author's Note

Impaled Northern Moonforest

19 - This Town

Velvet stopped and looked into the mist. The trees here were stunted, the grass turning brown either from the lack of sunlight or an early frost. It was cold enough that it might dip below freezing overnight.

“Not that there’s much sunlight now,” Velvet muttered, looking up. The mountains hemmed them in on all sides with cliffs so sheer they’d be impossible to climb, the peaks casting everything into shade. It wasn’t dark, but the lack of direct sunlight explained why the mist was lingering for so long.

“Stay on the path,” one of the guards warned. “With visibility this low, it’ll be easy to get lost.”

“I hope we’re going the right way,” Cadance said, her ears folded back and head low as if trying to avoid hitting her head on a low ceiling.

“What’s wrong?” Night Light asked, watching her slink along.

“I don’t know,” Cadance said. “The air just feels wrong.”

“There’s something up ahead!” Sunset yelled back. She stopped and let everypony catch up to her. Just visible through the mist, a low building loomed on the road. A sign hung overhead, wordless and showing a full tankard drawn in black paint on stained boards.

“Must be a rest stop,” Night Light said. “I know I could use a drink after that walk.”

“I wouldn’t drink anything I found around here,” Sunset said. “Monster lairs are always full of poison.”

“There’s a fire inside,” Cadance said, nodding to the glow in the windows. “That means somepony must be there. They might be able to tell us if we’re really in the right place or not.”

“I should go first,” Velvet said. “We don’t know how they’ll react if they see armored guards or, well, a princess.”

“Uh, excuse me?” Sunset coughed. “Clearly I should go. I’m the only one here who can defend herself.”

“That’s why you need to hang back,” Cadance said. “If there’s a trap, you’ll have to be the one to pull them out of danger.”

“Oh!” Sunset blinked. “You’re right. Maybe some of my tactical thinking is starting to rub off on you!”

“I’m definitely learning the way you think,” Cadance agreed.

“Fine, you two go, and I’ll cover you.”

Night Light smiled. “If we need help, we’ll scream. It comes naturally to me.”

“Come on,” Velvet sighed, pulling Night Light with her. She probably wouldn’t have been able to walk there alone. There was a heaviness to the air like they were being watched from the impenetrable mist around them. Velvet felt like a mouse trying to sneak around under the gaze of a hungry cat.

The tavern they were walking towards didn’t help put them at ease. The building looked abandoned. The windows were broken, the front door was ajar, and there was a stink hanging around everything, a sickly sweet rot like spoiled fruit.

“Hello?” Velvet asked, knocking on the doorframe before pushing the door open.

Inside was a wreck. The tables that weren’t overturned were covered with dirty plates, like everypony had walked out in the middle of a meal days ago and just left everything behind.

Almost everypony, anyway.

A stallion stood in front of the fire, staring into the flames and muttering softly to himself.

“Excuse me,” Velvet said. “Hello?”

“So cold,” the stallion whispered. “Why can’t I get warm?”

“Do you need help?” Velvet asked, stepping closer. “We’re not from around here and, uh, we were wondering if you’d seen any strange ponies lately.”

The stallion turned to look at Velvet, working his jaw and not saying anything.

“Stranger than us, I mean,” Velvet laughed. “Not that we’re really that strange…”

She looked at Night Light.

“I think the pookas did something to him,” Night Light whispered.

“You aren’t… you aren’t welcome here,” the strange stallion said. “You’re not one of us…”

“We’ll just be going, then,” Velvet said, backing away. “We’ll leave.”

“No!” The stallion snapped, as if suddenly alerted. “Nopony can leave! Nopony can escape!”

He lunged toward Velvet, and she nodded to Night Light.

Night Light swung the chair he’d picked up at the strange stallion’s head, hitting him hard enough to shatter the wooden chair and hammer the stallion to the floor in a heap.

“He’s not dead, is he?” Night Light asked. He dropped the remains of the chair and craned his neck.

“Nah. Look at this, though,” Velvet lifted one of the stallion’s hooves. The frog and fetlock were blackened and blistered. “I think this is frostbite. If he does wake up, he might lose a hoof or two.”

“Watch out, he’s doing something!” Night Light warned, pulling Velvet back.

The unconscious pony shuddered like he was seizing, back arching in pain and jaw stretching wide. Smoke poured from the stallion’s mouth, a thick plume that curled like a black snake and escaped through one of the broken windows, merging with the mist.

“Okay, that was more than a little creepy,” Velvet admitted.

The door exploded in. Sunset jumped through the embers.

“I’m here! Where’s the monster?!” The filly scanned the room and found, instead of a monster, just Velvet and Night Light standing over a stallion. “Oh. You took care of it already. Without me.”

“You can have the next one,” Velvet assured her. “Cadance! It’s safe!”

Two guards marched in ahead of Cadance, one of them remaining outside at the door.

“I think we should take this as proof that we’re in the right place,” Cadance said. “Well, assuming that ponies around here aren’t just crazy. You hear stories about mountain towns.”

“But if this was Breathless, why does he have all this frostbite?” Night Light asked.

“Princess, we found something,” one of the guards called out.

“What is it?” Cadance asked.

“You should see for yourself.”

Velvet followed Cadance over and paled when she saw what the guard had discovered behind the bar. Four ponies were piled up like garbage, half-frozen and rotting.

“What is it?” Sunset asked, trying to get around them.

“You shouldn’t look,” Cadance said, moving her wing to block Sunset’s view.

“I can handle it!” Sunset yelled, shoving the wing out of the way. She got a good look at the scene and immediately paled and backed away. Her cheeks bulged, and she ran to the corner and threw up.

“I know how she feels,” Night Light said. “Do you think the whole town is going to be like this?”

Outside, somepony started shouting.

Sunset wiped her mouth on her hoof and ran to the window, thankful for the distraction. A haggard-looking pony in rags was running down the path.

“I have to get out!” he yelled. “I saw ponies coming in! That means ponies can get out!”

“Wait!” Sunset yelled.

“I’m not waiting for anypony!’ the rag pony yelled, running into the mist, laughing. “You can be stuck here if you want! I’m finally free!”

He started coughing as he ran past them, slowing and then stopping, the coughing fit growing stronger until he collapsed in a silent heap.

“What was that?” Velvet asked.

“I don’t know, but he didn’t seem to be under any kind of magical control,” Cadance said. “We need to help him.”

“I’ll get him, Princess,” the guard outside said, running into the mist. After a few steps, he started choking on the air.

“Come back!” Cadance yelled.

The guard turned and took half a step before collapsing himself. The mist closed over him, hiding him and the rag pony from sight.

“It isn’t going to let us escape,” Velvet whispered.

“The mist didn’t reach very high,” Cadance said. “I’m going to try and get to them from the air. If I’m fast, I should be able to grab them and get back here.”

She ran outside and jumped, spreading her wings and flapping hard to gain altitude. She only barely got above the roof of the building before something went terribly wrong. The air temperature dropped like a brick building in Cloudsdale, and the air turned gelid and thick. Ice instantly coated her feathers, and her lift vanished.

Cadance lost control, the ground rushing up to meet her.

She opened her eyes after a few moments of not crashing, and found herself hovering a few inches above the ground.

“Are you okay?” Velvet asked, straining to hold the alicorn up with her magic.

Cadance flipped over and Velvet set her down on her hooves.

“My wings completely iced over,” Cadance said, wincing as she stretched one out to look at it. “There’s a layer of incredibly cold air over this whole valley. It’s like a lid on a pot. That must be why this mist won’t go away.”

“Well, that’s probably not the only reason why the magical death fog that kills ponies trying to leave town is here, but it can’t be helping,” Velvet said, shrugging. “Will your wings be okay?”

Cadance nodded. “I think so.”

“Since we can’t leave, we have to go into town,” Sunset said, walking out of the tavern slowly. “There’s nothing we can do here.”

“We stay together,” Cadance said. “We have to find where everypony went. If those monsters took my people, they have to be here. I have to bring them back. I can’t fail them again.”

Author's Note

This Town

20 - White Light

The road into town was quiet. Incredibly quiet.

“There are no birds,” Cadance said, breaking the silence. “That’s what was wrong before. I couldn’t hear birds, or crickets, or anything. The woods are totally quiet.”

“They probably fled,” Velvet said. “Animals can sense danger.”

“Or they’re dead because they tried to run away through the death fog,” Sunset muttered. “Animals are stupid and do stupid things. We need to be smart.”

The curtain of mist parted slightly as they continued on, lingering in corners but revealing the town. Half the buildings were burned-out husks that were still smoldering, lingering traces of a blaze that might have been days old. The others were worn by age and more recently by the kind of rough wear and damage that could only come from a riot or, perhaps, teenagers.

A few ponies milled around, wandering aimlessly in the half-light. Most of them had splotchy patches across their coats and walked with limps like their legs were totally numb.

“Look!” Cadance gasped. “That’s Mister Sandman! He digs up clams on the beach in my town! We’re in the right place!”

She pointed to one of the less-filthy ponies wandering across the street, walking like he was either exhausted to the point of collapse or sleepwalking.

“At least we didn’t find some random cursed town,” Sunset sighed.

“Maybe if he sees me he’ll come out of it,” Cadance said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Velvet warned.

“I have to try,” Cadance said.

“Sure, go ahead, I mean, don’t listen to the mare who can literally see this going wrong about two seconds after you say hello.” Velvet rolled her eyes.

“...Really two seconds?” Cadance asked, hesitating.

Velvet nodded.

“Maybe we’ll try something else,” Cadance sighed.

Unfortunately, her sigh was just loud enough to get the wandering stallion’s attention. He turned slowly, spotted Cadance, and about two seconds later wailed an alarm and started lumbering towards them, eyes focused on the alicorn like she was the only thing he could see.

The two guards ran in front to intercept him, holding him back.

“Don’t hurt him!” Cadance shouted. “He’s a nice pony! He’s not usually like this!”

The guards struggled against the stallion’s insanity-born strength. “We’re doing our best, Princess!”

“There are more of them coming from this way,” Night Light warned, pointing down a side street where ponies were stumbling closer, mumbling to themselves and dragging tools behind them as they approached the group.

Sunset fired a blast at Mister Sandman, knocking him back on his flank.

“We need to get inside,” Sunset decided. “I can’t protect all of you when these ponies are surrounding us!”

“Most of these buildings look like they couldn’t keep out a strong wind!” Night Light yelled, flinching as a thrown rock bounced off of his shield, the magic barrier barely keeping it out.

Mister Sandman started getting back up. The two guards backed away, watching his empty expression for some clue about what he was going to do next.

“We’re not spoiled for choice!” Velvet yelled, kicking the door to the house next to her. The sturdy door rattled in the frame. She swore and grabbed the handle with her magic, trying to pull it open to no avail.

“Move!” Cadance yelled, Velvet ducking out of her way and letting the alicorn buck the door, the lock popping out of the frame. “Everypony inside!”

Cadance stood at the door and ushered them in, pushing the guards when they tried to make her go first. As soon as everypony else got through the door, she ran in and slammed it shut.

“It’s not going to hold with the lock broken!” Velvet yelled. “Help me with this!”

She pushed a bookcase along the floor until Sunset lifted it and shoved it against the entrance just as the door started to inch open.

“That’s still not going to hold,” Sunset said. “But as long as they have to come through the door, we can pick them off one at a time.”

“I don’t want to pick them off, Sunset,” Cadance said. “They’re practically my family!”

“Between them and Princess Celestia, you’re trying to hog all the relatives,” Sunset muttered. “How about you try and figure something out and I’ll only blast them until you have a better idea?”

One of the windows shattered, and Sunset snapped her head to the side, firing a bolt of magic that direction and knocking a blackened, soot-covered pony back outside. Smoke poured from his mouth when he hit the ground, and he didn’t get back up.

“Move the other furniture against the windows!” Cadance said.

“Night Light, help me with this,” Velvet said. The two grabbed a dinner table made of ancient, solid planks of wood and pulled it into place against the other window, getting a good look at what was outside waiting for them.

“There are dozens of them!” Night Light gasped, almost dropping his end before they had it in place.

“Two town’s worth,” Velvet agreed.

The guards pulled a dresser toward the other window. One wasn’t watching carefully enough, and one of the crazed ponies from outside the window reached in, grabbing him.

“Get him off!” the guard yelled.

“I can’t get a clear shot!” Sunset shouted.

“Hold on, I can--” Cadance started, but before she could do whatever she was going to do, the guard was dragged outside screaming.

“Oh Celestia,” Night Light whispered. Even Sunset was afraid!

“No!” Cadance yelled, bolting for the window. The screaming cut off with a wet gurgle, and she stopped, her legs losing all their strength. The pink alicorn’s flank hit the floor.

The last guard swallowed and shoved the dresser into place, cutting off their view of whatever had happened to his comrade outside. He stepped back and whispered an apology under his breath.

“With everything covered up, we should be able to hold out here for a while,” Velvet said, quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“He did his duty,” the guard whispered, his voice hoarse. “If we weren’t here, that could have been you or one of the civilians, Princess. We’d gladly give our lives to prevent that.”

There was a slam against the front door, the bookcase shuddering.

“They won’t get through that,” Sunset said. “That bookcase weighs like a thousand pounds. It’s, like, practically made of logs, the lumber is so thick.”

The slam turned into a deafening boom. The bookcase slid an inch forward. Sunset pushed it back into place, holding it there with her magic as another thunderous burst rang out against it.

“What is that?” Cadance asked.

“It’s nothing… I can’t… handle!” Sunset growled through her teeth, the light of her horn growing brighter and brighter as she strained against the unseen force.

The bookcase cracked, the head of a sledgehammer pushing through.

“You’re joking. A pony is doing that?” Night Light asked, backing up.

“A possessed, crazy pony,” Velvet said.

The sledgehammer hit home again, and the bookcase broke in half, a huge earth pony in ragged clothing trying to fit through the gap.

“A really big, possessed, crazy pony,” Night Light corrected.

Sunset changed tactics, letting go of the bookcase and firing a blast at the pony trying to shove it aside. The bolt caught him full in the chest and he only paused for a moment, rocking back on his hooves like it was no more than a stiff breeze before resuming the task of pushing everything out of the way like a juggernaut.

“Also he’s invincible,” Velvet said.

“I don’t think I can stop him unless I’m willing to kill him,” Sunset said, unsure.

“Don’t,” Cadance warned. “It’s-- he’s a victim. We’re not going to kill ponies who are suffering.”

Sunset nodded, not arguing for once.

The big pony shouldered his way inside, hefting the sledge and lumbering forward.

“Upstairs,” Cadance decided. This time the guard wouldn’t let her go last, pushing her toward the stairs.

Velvet looked around the small upstairs room, little more than a filthy bedroom, more broken windows on either side.

“I have an idea,” she said. “We can get to the next building from here. Maybe it’ll confuse them long enough for us to think of something.”

“They don’t seem very bright,” Night Light agreed.

“It’s a better plan than waiting here,” Sunset said. She pulled open one window, and one of the dazed ponies leaned in, reaching for her.

Cadance grabbed Sunset, pulling her away from the reaching hooves.

“Get away from me!” Sunset yelled, firing at the pony in the window, knocking him off the roof and out of sight. “Why can’t they be monsters?! If they were monsters I could just set them on fire!”

“That’s probably why they’re sending ponies at us,” Cadance said. “They know we don’t want to hurt them. That’s why they’re monsters and we aren’t.”

“Well when we find the real monsters, we’re going to blast them apart,” Sunset mumbled.

Velvet opened the other window, looking before getting too close to make sure the same thing wasn’t about to happen to her.

“We can get to the next roof from here,” she said.

“Ladies first,” Night Light offered.

Velvet took a step back then, with a running start, she jumped over to the far side. The next roof was low, this building only a single story. The wooden spars of the roof creaked under her weight.

Cadance was the next one out, flying through the window and setting down on the other side of the roof. When her weight landed on the building, the whole thing groaned, and they heard something snap. Ashes rose up into the air around their hooves.

“That’s not good,” Cadance said.

“I don’t think this building was exactly built to code,” Velvet muttered.

“The inside must have burned. The beams are mostly charcoal!”

Sunset appeared in a burst of light, and they actually felt the roof start to lean with the tiny added load.

“We need to be very careful,” Velvet whispered. “We’ll slowly move to the other side and drop down to the ground where the mob can’t see us and--”

Night Light jumped out of the window and slammed into the roof, the whole thing collapsing down into the tiny house below with a choking cloud of billowing ashes. Only one outer wall was intact, the others ruined by the flames that had gutted the building.

Above them, the last guard leaned out of the window, trying to spot them.

“Princess!” he yelled.

Cadance coughed and looked up, and she saw the relief on his face just before he was dragged back into the darkness without even a chance to scream.

“No,” she whispered.

A soot-covered pony stepped out of the window above them, falling to the ground and getting back up like it hadn’t even felt the impact, more of the mob following it, shuffling towards them, the burned-out building offering nothing even close to real shelter.

“What do we do?” Night Light asked.

“Um, we can…” Velvet looked around at the crowd, trying to spot a way out. “We can…”

A bell rang out, long and low.

The horde of ponies paused.

A second bell rang, and they started shuffling away, turning on their hooves and stumbling towards the town hall.

The light changed, and the sun rose into that thin slit of sky between mountain peaks, shining down into the valley for the first time.

Before the bell rang the twelfth and final time, the last of the enslaved ponies had vanished inside, escaping the sun.

Sunset looked around at the sudden ghost town. “Where’s everypony going? Lunch?”

21 - Lift Together

“Keep away from the window,” Velvet warned. “The last thing we want is for them to spot us.”

The loft in the barn wasn’t the most comfortable place in town, but there hadn’t been anypony inside and they’d only had a few minutes of sunlight to find a hiding spot. They’d piled the bales of hay to give themselves some cover against prying eyes, the single window looking down over the town square letting them keep watch for stray threats.

It was easier to just think about them as threats than about the fact they were ponies. If Velvet thought too long about that she’d start wondering what would happen if they couldn’t escape and ended up joining the shambling horde.

“They’re not gonna see me,” Sunset said.

“This whole town is gray and black and you’re the brightest-colored thing for miles,” Velvet countered. “We can’t risk it.”

“Well, Cadance is brightly colored too!” Sunset parried.

“That’s why I’m not near the window,” Cadance said, from where she sat against the back wall.

“I don’t think anypony was using this barn even before the pookas took over the town,” Night Light said, pulling a tarp off another crate. He’d been busying himself with inventory since they took shelter. It was easier than thinking about what had happened. “These have all been here for a long time. I think they’re rails for a train.”

Sunset sighed and stepped back from the window. “No, the gauge is wrong. They’re for minecarts. They probably had extra track and left it here.”

“Nothing we can use, though,” Night Light said.

“We can’t stay here, either,” Velvet said.

“We wouldn’t have to stay here if you’d just let me set the town hall on fire,” Sunset muttered. “That’s where all the crazy ponies are.”

“That’s why we’re not burning it down,” Cadance said, sounding exhausted. They’d had the same argument several times already. They’d nearly broken their previous record of sixty seconds without talking about it. “They’re innocent ponies.”

“Innocent ponies don’t do what those ponies did to the guards,” Sunset said, huffing and sitting down heavily on a pile of loose hay.

Cadance looked down. “If they’re lucky, they won’t remember they did it.”

Outside, the bell tower rang.

“This is it,” Velvet said, taking cover near the window, peeking out from the shadows. Everypony went silent, waiting and watching. The Sun's passage through the narrow slot of sky above ended, the light fading as it slid behind another mountain peak, still far from true sunset but ending the brief moment of direct sunlight they’d had.

The door to the town hall opened. The ponies that had shuffled in started lumbering out.

“Are they going to start looking for us?” Night Light whispered.

“Maybe we’ll be lucky and they’ll forget we were here,” Sunset said. “Like how goldfish forget everything.”

“They’re all going somewhere,” Velvet said. “Look. They’re not coming this way.”

The townsponies outside were shambling in rough single file out along one of the more well-trodden paths.

“Where are they going?” Velvet whispered.

“If you really want to know, you could ask them,” Sunset suggested, rolling her eyes.

“We should follow them,” Velvet said, turning to the others. “It’s dangerous, but it’s the only way we’ll figure out what’s going on. Sitting here is just wasting time. They’re not on the alert, so we have a chance.”

“If they see us, they’re just going to attack,” Night Light said.

“That goes double for me,” Cadance sighed. “I sort of stand out in a crowd.”

“Most of them are wearing rags,” Velvet said. “I’ve got an idea.”

“This is dumb,” Sunset hissed through her teeth. “We’re gonna get caught!”

“Stay quiet and pull your hood down lower,” Velvet whispered, adjusting her own improvised cloak. While little else from the barn had been useful, the tarps and sheets that had been left there had been easy to turn into disguises, the dry-rot only making them fit in more with the ponies they were following.

The herd of sleepwalking slaves had walked right out of town and to one of the nearby cliff faces. They were shuffling into a tunnel, grabbing tools at random from the piles around the camp surrounding the mine entrance.

“Look at this,” Night Light said, picking up a shiny black stone. “I think it’s coal.”

“Therituminous coal,” Sunset said. “You can tell because of the sheen. I’ve read about it. Apparently a long, long time ago some kind of disaster almost wiped out all life on the planet. There were huge monsters that got buried alive and slowly turned to stone over time.”

“And now we burn what’s left of them,” Night Light sighed, tossing the stone away. “They’re not going to wake up or anything, right? The last thing we need is more monsters.”

“Why, are you afraid you’ll be marching right into its mouth?” Sunset asked. “If you’re really scared you could wait out here.”

“Being stuck here alone is even scarier than that,” Night Light said.

“Grab a pick and try to look like you’re a zombie,” Velvet whispered, picking up a tool. “Nopony here is using magic, so hooves only.”

The others nodded, grabbing shovels and following, keeping to the back of the line as the townsponies lurched into the mine, the dark-walled shaft lit only intermittently by flickering lanterns. Half of them had already gone out, leaving long stretches in near-total darkness.

Thankfully, the townsponies seemed to know where they were going, and they were moving slowly enough that following them wasn’t an issue. The mineshaft descended down in a twisting path like they were following the curve of some gigantic tail. After what felt like an hour and miles of slow walking, the path opened up and one wall fell away, the funnel turning into a path carved into the face of a cliff on one side of a huge space, falling away on one side. Huge plumes of strange plants or fungi clung to pillars reaching all the way from the bottom of the chamber to the top, providing dim illumination across the whole space.

“My word,” Night Light breathed, the group stopping to take in the massive hall.

“An underground sea,” Velvet said, looking down. “Water must have seeped through the coal and carved this out. But why didn’t it collapse?”

“Those are holding it up,” Sunset said, pointing with the small trowel she’d been carrying. “Those aren’t stone. Those are ribs. If I know my monster anatomy, and I do because I was taught by Princess Celestia herself and I know more about monsters than anypony alive who isn’t immortal, those are from a dragon.”

“The dragon would have to be as big as Canterlot,” Night Light said.

“Yep, just about,” Sunset agreed. “I told you, the monsters that got buried were giants. There aren’t any dragons that size now, but I’ve seen skulls big enough to use as a house.”

“I bet that’s not originally part of the mine,” Velvet said, nodding ahead of them.

Nestled in the ribcage right where a heart should have been, a knot of coal hung down from the roof like a stalactite, the tip halfway between the surface of the underground sea and the roof overhead.

The coal stalactite was being worked on by the townsponies, the dazed miners and fisherponies slowly carving it into a familiar shape that Night Light couldn’t quite place right away.

“Look at the reflection in the water,” Velvet whispered.

The mirror image in the dark sea was almost identical to Canterlot Castle, at least in shape. The castle’s reflection vanished into ripples, something hitting the water hard right below the seam of black stone.

“I think that was a pony falling in!” Cadance gasped.

“I don’t think the pookas care much about safe working conditions,” Velvet said.

“Come on,” Sunset said, tossing the trowel aside and walking confidently to the front doors. “We’re here to fight monsters, not stand around.”

The path wound its way to the castle, the stumbling slaves ignoring the four ponies, all of the townsponies busy muttering to themselves and carving the stone, working in an obsessive, directionless way. Some of them worked on tiny details, chipping abstract art into the rock, while only a few paces away ponies tried to rough out whole chambers from the coal. Some parts of the castle looked almost finished, others hadn’t even been started yet, and there was no rhyme or reason to the pattern at all.

A voice rang out, echoing through the vast space. “Welcome. It’s been a while. Why don’t you come inside?”

Behind the group, the townsponies closed ranks, blocking off the only way out.

“So much for going undetected,” Sunset muttered.

“I thought you wanted to fight them?” Velvet asked, calculating their chances of getting back to the tunnel and not liking the odds.

“I wanted to get the drop on them,” Sunset said. “I can’t believe I was dumb enough to think one of your plans would work when literally every single one has failed! It’s like your stupidity is contagious!”

Cadance tried to whisper something encouraging but Sunset ignored her and stomped inside, following the path through the only finished hallway to the one place the slaves had been forced to finish first.

The throne room.

Two black thrones loomed over the room. On the right, Coldplay lounged, looking triumphant. On the left, Breathless stood next to her throne, detached and obviously not invested in the pomp and circumstance.

“You know, I was upset before when you tried to burn me alive,” Coldplay said. “But you just keep playing into my hooves. You killed my most dangerous rival, Danger Zone, you find the alicorn we’ve been looking for, and you come into my house and deliver her to my door. If you weren’t my enemy, I’d almost call you my dearest friends.”

“Let my people go!” Cadance demanded, tearing off her cloak.

“I think, instead, you’ll all be staying here,” Coldplay said. It raised its chin, and the doorway behind them froze over, a solid wall of ice forming in a heartbeat, the temperature of the room falling to arctic winter. “Probably for the rest of your lives, not that it will be very long.”

Author's Note

We All Lift Together

22 - Free Fallin'

The one good thing about being trapped underground with two monsters that could kill her just by being in the same room for long enough was, Velvet thought, that it wasn’t three monsters. Even so, she was starting to miss the sweltering heat of the volcano.

“When my sister suggested we work together, I almost said no,” Coldplay said, laughing. “But here we are, surrounded by servants and with the thing we wanted most coming right to us while we wait in comfort!”

“I was… inspired by the teamwork you all showed me,” Breathless sighed. “It let you win even though I was… and am… superior to you in every way.”

“And you’ve even replaced the pony you lost in Veneighs!” Coldplay grinned. “I hope the alicorn is as skilled as your batpony friend.”

“I came here to save the ponies you enslaved, not to fight,” Cadance said.

“You’ll have to do both,” Coldplay said. The pooka waved a hoof, and Velvet grabbed for Cadance with her magic, pulling the alicorn back, only strong enough to move her an inch, but it was an important inch.

A throwing knife flew past Cadance’s face, hitting the wall hard enough to stick in the coal.

“No way,” Night Light gasped.

A pony stepped out of the darkness behind the thrones. A batpony, in ragged clothing and blank white eyes.

“Clearwater?” Sunset asked. “I thought she died in Veneighs! You two told me she was dead!”

“I thought she was dead,” Velvet said, backing away.

“I have a feeling that this isn’t gonna be a really happy reunion,” Night Light said, backing away until his flank hit the back wall.

“You left her behind, and I’m not too proud to eat leftovers,” Coldplay said, with a cruelly fanged smile. “Be a dear and show your former friends how you feel about that, my pet.”

Clearwater roared and charged, throwing herself at Twilight Velvet.

Velvet was still holding a shovel. Without thinking, she held it up, trying to ward off the attack. She closed her eyes. There was a deep, heavy impact.

Twilight Velvet opened her eyes. Just out of hoof’s reach, the batpony was hissing and grabbing for her, the sharp edge of the shovel impaled deep in her chest and apparently not causing her any difficulties. It definitely didn’t seem to be hurting her, since she continued to press forwards onto it, the shovel sliding deeper into her chest cavity.

“It’s worse than I thought it would be!” Velvet yelled. Ice crawled up the handle of the shovel towards her hooves, the wood turning brittle.

“Maybe we just need to heat things up!” Sunset yelled, her horn blazing.

“Sunset, think about what you’re doing!” Cadance shouted. It was too late to stop her, but in all fairness even if they’d had an hour to have a meeting complete with a powerpoint presentation on the many reasons why Sunset shouldn’t set everything on fire, she’d still have done it, especially if Cadance was the one telling her not to.

She launched a fireball at the pookas, a wall of ice snapping into place between them.

The spell exploded on the ice, the barrier blocking it before shattering under the impact, flames splashing onto the walls and floor. If it had been a normal castle made out of granite or marble, it wouldn’t have immediately set everything in the room on fire. Unfortunately, everything was made of coal, so everything was now on fire.

“Why would you do that?” Cadance yelled.

“It seemed like a good idea, okay?!” Sunset snapped. “It’s freezing cold, so you fight it with fire! What else am I supposed to do?!”

The frost was already starting to retreat, the flames spreading through the stone like they were finding veins of tinder hidden in the coal.

“I could use some help here!” Velvet yelled, letting go of the shovel and ducking to the side. Clearwater stumbled past her into the wall, the shovel all the way through her chest now. She grabbed for the handle, and the brittle wood shattered in the batpony’s hooves, leaving the tool impaled through her ribs.

“It’s getting a little too warm for comfort,” Coldplay said. The pooka waved a hoof, trying to extinguish the flames. The coal cooled for a moment, then the flame came roaring back, the temperature climbing. “A little help, sister?”

“Hm?” Breathless tilted her head, sounding like she was smiling behind the veil of her mane. “Help with what? I rather like the... ambiance.”

“I can’t put it out myself,” Coldplay hissed through his teeth. “It’s fire and earth together!”

“A pity,” Breathless shrugged. “I didn’t think you were so weak.”

“I am not weak!” Coldplay yelled. The ice pooka redoubled its efforts, the air around it twisting and shimmering. The castle shook as the temperature difference started cracking rock, a fissure opening up in the ceiling.

“Brother, you completely lack subtlety,” Breathless sighed. “You’re going to destroy our new home before it’s even finished.”

“You could try helping,” Coldplay growled.

“I suppose I must,” Breathless sighed. Her long, shaggy coat rippled, and the smoke rising from the burning coal redoubled, starting to fill the room. “I was looking forward to watching your servant fight for us.”

“It’s poison gas!” Sunset warned. “She did this before!”

“And you don’t have a way to just blow it away this time,” Breathless said.

“I thought this might happen,” Night Light said. He pulled something out of the rags he’d been wearing to disguise himself as one of the enslaved townsponies. “They had a crate full of breath masks for the miners when they were working around gas pockets!”

He pulled the mask over his muzzle and tossed others to Velvet, Cadance, and Sunset.

“I remembered to bring enough for everypony,” he added.

“Annoying,” Breathless muttered. “I thought you were the useless one.”

Night Light winked at Velvet. “I can’t see the future but I do learn from my mistakes.”

Cadance helped Sunset with her mask before putting her own on, the masks immediately making it easier to breathe, the burning feeling from each breath turning into nothing more than a sharp, acidic smell.

“You’re a lifesaver, Nighty,” Velvet sighed.

Clearwater used her wings to grab the shovel by the blade protruding from her back and pull it the rest of the way through her body, tossing it aside and hissing in pain.

Around Coldplay, a half-dozen spears of ice formed in the air. The pooka launched them rapid-fire at the group, and each one was blasted out of the air with a precise bolt of fire from Sunset.

“I’m not that impressed,” Sunset said. “No wonder Princess Celestia was able to beat all of you so easily.”

“I’ll show you!” Coldplay yelled. The temperature plunged, the castle rumbling again, the cracks in the foundation widening.

Clearwater lunged at Velvet again, swiping at her face. Velvet’s mask was torn away, noxious gas filling her lungs and sending her into a coughing fit.

“You fool, you’re going to--” Breathless hissed. Unfortunately, Coldplay was just as stubborn as Sunset. Half of the floor dropped an inch, Velvet and Night Light on one side, Cadance and Sunset on the other.

There was a stillness for just a moment, then the half with Velvet and Night Light dropped like a rock. A very large rock, with a few rooms carved into it and several ponies screaming in fear trapped within.

“No!” Cadance shouted, reaching for them as they fell out of sight, watching helplessly as Coldplay jumped after them.

Velvet grabbed onto Night Light, trying to levitate both of them. Their fall slowed but didn’t stop. Night Light closed his eyes and forced as much energy as he could into a shield around them.

The broken part of the castle hit the water below, throwing up a huge splash that froze in place before the waves could break against the walls of the chamber, forming a deep crater of ice all the way down to the lakebed, the black castle nestled at the center.

Velvet and Night Light bounced, his shield less like a steel wall and more like rubber. They bounded three times before coming to a stop, Night Light’s shield collapsing and dumping them on top of the rubble. Velvet gasped for breath, her eyes bleary and chest still burning from her exposure to the gas.

“That’s better,” Coldplay said, sighing, stepping lightly on the rubble. “Hopefully by the time I finish killing you, my sister will have managed to finish off that annoying filly.”

“What, you couldn’t handle her yourself?” Velvet asked, her voice rough.

“I’d just rather take care of you two,” Coldplay said.

“I don’t suppose you have any ideas?” Night Light whispered.

Clearwater dragged herself out of the rubble, scattering hot coals. She growled at Velvet and Night Light, blind eyes turning to them.

“You monsters sure have a talent for causing a lot of collateral damage,” Sunset said, her voice muffled by her mask. “You’re even breaking all my records.”

“Unlike my brother, none of the damage I cause is collateral,” Breathless corrected. “What I do is intentional.”

Sunset fired a spell at Breathless, the magic launching right through the pooka, not even touching her.

“Without the Sun’s Heart, you’re going to have a little more trouble dealing with me,” Breathless said. “Maybe when I’m done… I’ll leave you alive, and put you in a burlap bag… and throw you into the ocean. I’ll let you see how it feels.”

“No thanks,” Sunset said. “After I beat you, Princess Celestia is finally gonna realize I deserve more.”

“Is that what this is all about?” Breathless asked, shaking her head. “You are an impressive mortal, but you are only a mortal.”

Breathless reared up like a cobra and exhaled a cone of gas, Sunset’s mask immediately starting to degrade, her exposed skin breaking out into hives and starting to blister. The filly cried out in pain, backing away.

A spray of fine crystals hit Breathless, the pooka’s cone of gas cutting off as she backed up, shrieking in pain, her body letting off gas.

Cadance panted, hovering above the layer of dense gas on the floor, holding her mask and Velvet’s. She’d broken open the filters, revealing layers of crushed, glittering minerals.

“These filters use special chemicals to turn smoke and gas into clean air,” Cadance said. “I don’t think they’re very good for you.”

Breathless backed away as Cadance threw the rest, the chemicals in the filter crackling and reacting with the noxious gas.

“So annoying,” Breathless growled.

“I have a plan,” Velvet nodded. “You remember the prophecy I had back in Cadance’s town, with the broken castle and all the destruction?”

“Oh no,” Night Light groaned.

“Are you two muttering last words to each other?” Coldplay asked. “Touching, really.”

Clearwater circled them like a predatory cat, hissing and apparently not feeling any of the wounds across her body, every cut bloodless, frozen in her veins.

“When we fought last, I’d just woken up and I was still starving. Now, I’ve nearly had my fill.” Coldplay grinned. “What you faced before was just a brisk chill compared to this.”

The air became heavy and still, like the quiet of a winter night.

“I can freeze the air itself,” Coldplay said. Dry ice started forming around its hooves as it stepped towards them, voice quieting and air rushing towards the pooka, the atmosphere beginning to precipitate out around it, liquid oxygen dripping from it like pale blue sweatdrops.

There was a flash like glass for a moment, and Velvet ducked to the side, pulling Night Light with her. Invisible blades of ice became visible as they hit the ground and cracked, Velvet dodging one after another, having to trust entirely to her precognition, totally unable to see them in midair.

The pooka tried to anticipate her movement, and Velvet slid on the ice at just the right moment, dropping down to the ground.

Transparent ice blades soared over her and hit the prowling batpony that had been preparing to lunge at them from their blind spot. Coldplay recoiling in surprise.

“The frozen air is blinding her sonar,” Velvet explained, as she stood, brushing herself off. “Not that you care. See, you already made a fatal mistake.”

“And what mistake is that?” Coldplay asked, the voice seeming to come from a great distance.

“You can’t smell it because you’re freezing the air, but when the castle crashed into the lakebed, it broke open a pocket of natural gas.” Velvet waved her hoof in front of her face. Night Light removed his mask and coughed at the smell. “And the thing about natural gas is, it’s highly flammable. Especially when it liquifies.”

Coldplay looked down to his hooves. The liquid oxygen pouring down his body dripped onto the burning magical coal, almost extinguished. Almost. The flame flared up and caught the natural gas hanging in the air.

Everything exploded.

Author's Note

Free Fallin'

23 - Final Countdown

“Stay down,” Cadance warned, circling around Breathless so she could check on Sunset. The pooka curled in the corner of the room like an angry cat, hissing either in anger or simply because that’s the sound that the smoke-neutralizing crystals made as they burned on its skin like embers.

Sunset groaned, her skin red and burned from the acidic steam the pooka had breathed at her.

“Sunset? Are you okay?” Cadance took off the filly’s mask, the rubber crumbling in her hooves from the exposure to the toxic miasma.

“I feel like butts smell,” Sunset muttered, her voice rough. She blinked through watery, red eyes like she’d been crying. Not that she ever cried.

“So not great,” Cadance concluded, smiling a little. “Don’t worry. You’re going to be okay.”

“Not until we beat the monsters,” Sunset said. “Ugh. I can’t see anything. Did you kill the smoke monster?”

“She couldn’t kill me even if she tried,” Breathless said. “...Not that she tried very hard. She’s much… softer than the Sun Pony.”

“She uses conditioner,” Sunset mumbled.

Breathless chuckled, a genuine, almost warm, laugh at the small joke. “I think… after I conquer this land… I’ll leave most of you ponies alive. You’re amusing.”

“I don’t see what you’re laughing at,” Sunset said. “We’ve got you cornered.”

“I’m about to win,” Breathless said. “But don’t take me… at my word. See for yourself.”

The sound hit them an instant before the shockwave, getting their attention and then throwing Sunset and Cadance into the far wall from the broken-open side of the throne room. Cadance twisted in the air, holding Sunset to her chest and taking the brunt of the impact with her own body. Hot air rushed in, blowing away the smoke lingering along the smoldering coal of the floor for a moment.

“What was that?!” Cadance gasped, her ribs sore.

“Unless I’m mistaken, my brother found some way to get himself killed,” Breathless said.

The heat and smoke rose from below, a spreading cloud of destruction and shattered ice slowly falling to the cavern floor. Before the final echoes of the explosion faded, a ragged-looking Coldplay struggled to climb through the gaping wound in the castle, hooves slipping until it finally caught itself and managed to struggle over to the twin thrones, using them for support.

The pooka took a deep breath, most of its body looking shredded and cracked, like an ice sculpture attacked by a blacksmith’s hammer.

“Sister, you have to help me,” Coldplay gasped.

“Of course, brother,” Breathless assured him. She stepped closer, looking less wounded than she should have been as she walked over to him. “Look at you. I’ve never seen you so... badly hurt.”

“Those ponies tricked me,” Coldplay mumbled, leaning into the other pooka’s embrace. “I don’t understand how they did it again.”

“Oh, brother…” Breathless sighed. “It’s because you’re such an idiot. You rely on your own power when you should be taking advantage of the things around you. Just look at this room. What do you see?”

“Our throne room?” Coldplay asked, confused and probably more than a little concussed.

Breathless put her forehooves on either side of his head and directed his gaze around the broken, burning room. “It’s an entire castle made of burning stone. Fire and earth together, brother… your antithesis, a whole fortress carved out by your minions, with you watching and nodding approval, and I built it to be your grave.”

“What?” Coldplay asked.

Breathless sighed and twisted, wrenching his head and snapping his neck.

Cadance stumbled back, falling over Sunset in shock and landing on her flank.

The last pooka opened her mouth, drawing a stream of multicolored, flickering light out of Coldplay, gulping it down like a mare dying in the desert who had finally been offered water. Coldplay twitched and gurgled and finally collapsed, his body collapsing into a puddle and steaming on the hot floor.

“All that power and not a single thought on how he should use it,” Breathless sighed, her body darkening, the monster visibly growing larger and more solid. “I let him have nearly half of the ponies in town to keep him playing along, but if he’d actually stopped to think about what we set out to do, he’d realize that only one of us could have the real prize.”

Breathless turned to look at Cadance, the pooka’s eyes blazing like embers.

“Are you okay?” Night Light asked.

Velvet groaned and took the hoof he offered. Night Light helped her to her hooves, and she looked around. They’d taken cover behind one of the few fairly intact parts of the fallen castle, most of which had burned away, been blown away, or had simply vanished in the shock of the methane explosion.

“I’m just happy to be alive,” Velvet admitted. “I can’t believe that worked. Maybe if my ears eventually stop ringing I’ll feel a little better.”

“I don’t know if it worked all the way,” Night Light said. “I think I saw the monster limping away while we waited for the fire to die down.”

“If it had to limp we did something right,” Velvet said. “We just need to find a way to get back up there.”

She looked up to where the rest of the castle was, hanging above them and glowing faintly.

A dark shape swooped over them.

Clearwater slammed into the ground between them, the batpony ragged and blackened around the edges like somepony who’d flown through a dragon migration with a target on their back.

“If it’s not one thing, it’s another,” Velvet whispered, taking a step back.

Clearwater coughed, falling to her knees. She forced herself up, then stumbled a few steps to Velvet, grabbing her.

“You have to keep the princess safe,” Clearwater rasped, her blind eyes meeting Velvet’s. Her hoof was like ice, so cold it almost burned against Velvet’s skin.

Velvet froze in shock. “Are you--”

“I can’t… protect her…” Clearwater said. “The monster is gone but…” She growled and shuddered, the monster inside her surging forth for a moment, that chilly grasp turning hard and arctic until she fought it back.

“You can’t keep control,” Velvet finished.

Clearwater nodded sharply.

“We’ll do everything we can to keep her safe,” Velvet promised. “Can you get us up there?”

Clearwater nodded again, then surged into the air, grabbing Night Light with her other forehoof and flapping hard.

It shouldn’t have been possible for the batpony, her body wrecked and only animated now by some combination of duty and fading chaotic magic, to actually fly. She definitely shouldn’t have been able to fly while carrying two more ponies. Clearwater did it anyway, ragged wings somehow catching the air enough to pull them up through the broken wall of the castle’s throne room.

Breathless looked up at the sound.

“Oh? One of my brother’s little toys is still around?” She smiled, and a tendril of smoke lashed out, freezing in midair into a bladed whip.

Clearwater tossed Velvet and Night Light into the room before it hit her, throwing the batpony out into the air, vanishing into the gloom of the cave.

“Having my brother’s magic feels so nice,” Breathless sighed. She stretched, growing another few inches in height. “I’ll have to find whatever’s left of my other siblings and eat them, too.”

Velvet kept her distance, edging her way over to Cadance and helping the princess up. She pulled Night Light closer and whispered in his ear before tending to the alicorn.

“Keep her busy,” she hissed.

Night Light nodded and took a few steps closer to Breathless.

“What are you planning, anyway?” Night Light asked. “Are you going to smother everypony?”

Breathless walked over to the broken wall, looking down at the lake directly below. “Don’t be silly. If I killed all of you, what would I do with my time? No, once I get rid of the Sun Pony, I’ll just take my rightful place as your ruler.”

“Like you ruled over the ponies in this town?” Night Light asked.

“Tartarus, no,” Breathless sighed. “They were dreadful, weren’t they? I’ll need a few ponies like that to serve as my servants, but most ponies will be allowed to live their lives as they like, as long as they remember who rules them. I shouldn’t need to eat more than a few dozen a year.”

“Princess Celestia doesn’t eat anypony, and we still complain about taxes,” Night Light said. “Ponies aren’t just going to let you get away with it.”

“Good,” Breathless said. “I’d prefer if they gave me a few rebellions to put down. It would be exciting. Just like this little exercise.”

The pooka turned to look at them again.

“You all gave me such a wonderful performance. I was… touched. You even helped me deal with one of my idiot siblings. If we weren’t enemies, we would be dear friends.”

“Now I know this is a nightmare,” Sunset groaned, the filly getting up. “I get stupid speeches about friendship enough from Princess Celestia, and now monsters are doing the same thing? Next somepony is gonna tell me I have homework due today and I totally forgot about it.”

Breathless chuckled, laughing again.

“I want you to pay attention to me,” Sunset said. “You think you’re so great because you went and stole power from a bunch of ponies. Well, guess what? That’s not great! Greatness is something you’re born with, and I was born with more than anypony else ever was!”

Sunset’s horn blazed brightly, as if a tiny sun had bloomed in the black throne room. The flames licking along the floor and walls flared up in that light, like the aura of her magic was feeding it.

“Take this!” Sunset yelled. Runes spiraled around her for a moment, visible hanging in the air for a moment before collapsing into what a scholar would term a ‘death ray’.

Breathless turned into a cloud, the beam ripping through the puff of black smoke and leaving a hole hanging in the air, continuing on to crash through the coal behind the pooka, drilling into the rock before eventually stopping.

The cloud swirled and reformed, Breathless looking no worse for the attack.

“You’re almost as dull as my brother was,” Breathless said. “Haven’t you learned yet that you can’t hit me with a spell like that?”

“Velvet, you have to run,” Cadance whispered. “She only wants me. If you can get away, you can get to Princess Celestia. She’s the only one who can save Equestria.”

“You can save Equestria too,” Velvet said, putting a hoof on her shoulder. “Celestia’s not here right now, but you are. You can’t give up on yourself.”

“I can’t fight like everypony else,” Cadance said. “I’ve got all this power and I don’t even know how to use it properly. If Sunset can’t beat her, how can I do it? All I am is a big tasty snack for monsters to fight over.”

“And maybe that’s all we need right now,” Velvet said. Her horn lit up and she touched it to Cadance’s, a wave of magic connecting them for a moment.

“What did you do?” Cadance asked.

“Don’t worry,” Velvet said. Then she shoved Cadance forward, throwing the alicorn Princess right into the pooka’s grasp.

“It’s my lucky day,” Breathless said, grinning.

Author's Note

It's the FINAL COUNTDOWN

24 - I Feel Fine

Breathless curled around Cadance, smoke turning into frozen ash around her that sapped the warmth from her body as it closed around her hooves.

“I’ve waited for this for so long,” Breathless hissed. “You can’t imagine what it was like, stuck in one place, staring into the light and unable to even scream. Death would have been better.”

“Maybe it’s not exactly the same, but I went to grad school,” Twilight Velvet said.

Cadance looked at Velvet with something between betrayal and shock.

Velvet winked. It would have been more reassuring to know that she had a plan if her plans hadn’t so often gone poorly and literally explosively. Among the many things Cadance did not want to do today, being eaten by a monster and/or exploding as a result of her teammate being clever.

“You know, for all the time I spent thinking about this moment….” Breathless sighed happily. “I never prepared a speech. I’ll have to come up with one before I destroy the Sun Pony. I want to really… savor that moment.”

“I don’t mind waiting for a while and not being eaten!” Cadance blurted out. “I should get a speech too, right? How about we all sleep on it?”

Breathless laughed. “Oh, little alicorn filly, you were never worth the words. My victory will be sweet but… a toast is for the pony drinking it, not for the drink.”

The pooka’s mouth dropped open like a snake’s, everything unhinging and revealing a terrible black void ringed with clouds, like looking down the throat of a hungry tornado.

Cadance screamed, her coat paling as a stream of pale blue magic was drawn out of her body, the pooka gulping it down, tearing it away from the alicorn until it finally sputtered out, Cadance slumping.

Breathless let her go, the ash around her crumbling and flaking away like a sandcastle being consumed by the tide, Cadance falling back into Velvet’s hooves.

“It was all worth it,” Breathless sighed, her jaw folding back to something approaching normal. “Now with this, I don’t have to fear the sun. I don’t have to fear anything!”

“Your brother probably thought the same thing when he came up with this little timeshare hideaway with you,” Velvet said. “You know, my father once fell for a timeshare scheme.”

“I am trying to enjoy the moment of my victory,” Breathless growled.

“No, this is important, you’ll like this,” Velvet assured her. “You see, the thing about a timeshare is, they lure you in with a promise of a vacation or a prize or at least a free meal, and all you have to do is listen to their little pitch. A quick little thing and then you’re free to go.”

“I am beginning to see how having to listen to somepony could be annoying,” Breathless muttered, raising her chin, enjoying the feel of the power surging inside her.

“The thing is, though, once you’ve agreed to their terms, they have you as a captive audience. Ponies will sit there for hours listening to them prattle on and try to convince them to buy a share of a second home in Las Pegasus that they can only use one weekend a year.”

“Is this going somewhere?”

“My father went to one of these little timeshare schemes because he thought we could get a good dinner out without me ruining it or him having to cook, and what happened? We sat there with the food on another table and we couldn’t go and eat it until the annoying stallion had finished his presentation. And you know what happened to the meal?”

“I’ve no doubt you’ll tell me. I hope you know these will be among your last words?”

“By the time we were able to actually eat, it had gone cold. We thought having to wait and suffer for the food would make it worth the cost of admission, but all that happened was we ate something that had been out too long and got food poisoning.”

“What a wonderful story,” Breathless said. “I’ll make sure not to buy property in Las Pegasus.” The pooka swelled up, doubling in size, ashen armor starting to form along its limbs. “Now, I think it’s time I tested out this power I gained. You’ll make the perfect targets until I can track down Danger Zone and eat what’s left of her.”

Velvet waggled a hoof.

“You didn’t learn the most important lesson of the story!” she admonished.

“Unless the moral involved how to survive the power of a goddess of death, I don’t think it applies very well to your situation.”

“The moral of the story was that anything somepony is just giving to you comes with a price,” Velvet said.

Breathless shook her head and took a step towards Velvet, trailing ash and soot behind her like she was consuming the clean air she walked through.

“And that price is all the trouble I had to go through to--” Breathless started, stumbling as a ripple of blue energy shot through its body, starting somewhere deep inside her and ringing like a bell. “--what?!”

“I suppose the other moral is that you should always be careful you don’t get indigestion when you eat strange food,” Velvet said, shrugging.

“What did you do?!” Breathless demanded, black spittle dribbling from her lips, another pulse of energy hitting her from within like a hammer.

“I’m a quick study,” Velvet said. “Back when we first met, Sunset showed me a spell that could cause a pony’s magic to get a connection to the core harmony of the world.”

“Oh right!” Night Light said. “She used it on me!”

“And it protected you for hours,” Velvet agreed, nodding. “Of course, Sunset is much stronger than I am. When I cast it on Cadance, there was no way it would last nearly that long, and it would take much longer to kick in.”

“What a stupid plan,” Sunset muttered.

“I had to make sure to use it right before you ate her magic, and then delay you until it started to kick in. I bet that can’t feel nice, all that alicorn magic inside you, tearing you apart.”

She looked down at the alicorn in her hooves.

“Sorry about using you as bait, Princess,” Velvet whispered.

“I’ll forgive you if we get out of here alive,” Cadance whispered, smiling through the pain she was in.

“It’s a good thing I never promised to spare you,” Breathless growled. “I’d hate to be a liar.”

The pooka reared up, nearly reaching the high ceiling of the room. Thick tendrils of smoke ripped out of her ribs, lashing at Velvet like a dozen whips made of rock-hard frozen cinders.

Night Light stepped in front of her, putting up his shield, tiny and woefully inadequate for the task.

“Out of the way!” Sunset yelled, shoving the stallion. Her horn crackled with potential, and a wall of magic like a tower of iron will erupted around the group, Breathless’ attack shattering on the buttress.

“What?!” Breathless hissed.

“You know, I finally figured out why I was getting so peeved with Velvet!” Sunset yelled. “She’s clever! Clever ponies can beat strong ones because they win with cheap tricks! It’s not playing fair!”

“Not all of us are as talented as you, Sunset,” Velvet admitted.

“Yeah, and you know what? Now that you used Cadance as bait I really respect you a lot more!” Breathless lashed out again, the attack rebounding from Sunset’s shield, octagonal patterns of runes shimmering where the absolute barrier deflected the attack.

“I’ll try not to take that personally,” Cadance whispered, still too weak to talk or stand.

“I’ve always been strong enough that I never had to trouble myself with taking a problem sideways! I’ve always used brute force!” Sunset pushed at her barrier, turning it into a bulldozer and knocking the ailing pooka back, toppling her black throne. “And when I do have to fight, I won’t lose to anypony!”

The room on the other side of Sunset’s barrier exploded, pressure waves rebounding from the solid stone walls and shattering the armor the pooka had formed, the monster’s body ripping apart like a used raincloud at a pegasus destruction derby.

“I set a bunch of delayed blast fireballs to go off at the same time,” Sunset explained. “It takes a while to set up, but you were talking so long I had all the time in the world.”

“Wouldn’t they have killed us if you hadn’t used a shield?” Night Light asked.

“They didn’t kill us, because I plan ahead,” Sunset said.

“She’s not dead!” Cadance warned, shouting as loudly as she could with her hoarse, drained voice.

The dark vapors in the room swirled and reformed, bursts and pulses of blue light making the gathering torrent bulge and swell, blasting whole chunks free to fly away as ashes. Breathless slowly reformed, her body hunched over and twisted in pain.

“You, you…” Breathless hissed.

“That’s right,” Sunset smirked. “Me, Sunset Shimmer!”

What was left of the castle shuddered, a block of stone falling from the ceiling to slam into and through the floor, which was continuing to slowly burn. Breathless looked up just as a boulder as big as Twilight Velvet’s whole body slammed through her head. A dozen thin, wavering lines of multicolored light tore out of the pooka, flying away like shooting stars.

“That must be the magic she took from the ponies here!” Velvet said, pointing.

“I think this would be a really great time to run away!” Night Light yelled, bucking the ice blocking the only door out. It was already melting from the heat of the burning coal, and long cracks had formed through the thick sheet from all the shaking.

“It’s not over!” Breathless screamed, reforming and scattering again as she took a step, unable to keep her form together, the pulses of magic coming faster and faster. More shooting stars of stolen magic ripped from her body like she was bleeding everything she’d stolen. “Not yet!”

“Come on, Princess,” Velvet said, lifting Cadance up and walking her to the door.

“We have to save the ponies here,” Cadance whispered.

“We will,” Velvet promised. “Sunset, some help with the door?”

“On it!” Sunset yelled, looking back and firing a blast of force that shattered the ice wall into pieces small enough for Night Light to clear out of the way.

“Let me give you a hoof with that,” Night Light said, taking Cadance’s other side and helping Velvet get her out of the castle.

Where they were immediately met with a mob of ponies carrying mining tools.

“This isn’t good,” Night Light whispered, taking a step back.

“Wait, look at their faces,” Velvet said.

They all looked confused like they’d woken up from a long nap and had no idea how they’d gotten down into a dark hole in the middle of nowhere.

“You need to get out of here!” Night Light yelled. The crowd ignored him, muttering in confusion.

“Princess?” One of them gasped when they spotted Cadance.

“Put me down,” Cadance whispered. “I need to stand on my own. They’ll only listen if it comes from a leader.”

Velvet nodded and eased the alicorn onto her own hooves.

“My little ponies,” Cadance said, in as strong a voice as she could manage. “You need to flee this mine. Anypony who knows the tunnels, take the lead and get the others to safety. Carry those that can’t run on their own! We will guard your back while you escape!”

The ponies started to run, some of them calling for others to follow, fleeing up towards the light.

Sunset came flying out of the doorway, bowling into Cadance and knocking her over.

“I don’t think she’s gonna let us just walk out,” the filly said, dazed.

Breathless roared, trying to force her larger frame through the doorway, slipping through inch by inch as her body tore apart into vapor and reformed between heartbeats.

“She seems upset,” Night Light understated.

“We need to keep her away from the villagers,” Cadance said.

“Well, if it helps, I’m pretty sure I really got her peeved when I turned her inside out with that explosion,” Sunset said.

“That’s the opposite of helping!” Night Light groaned.

“No, it’s perfect,” Cadance said. “She’ll chase us.”

“In most circumstances, we wouldn’t want a horrible monster chasing us,” Night Light pointed out.

“Especially since you can’t walk on your own,” Sunset pointed out. She tried to help Cadance up, the lanky alicorn almost collapsing under her own weight the moment Sunset’s telekinesis stopped supporting her.

“Perhaps I can offer you ponies a ride?” Velvet asked.

She motioned to a minecart, the rails leading off to a side tunnel.

“We don’t know where that goes,” Sunset said, even as she helped Cadance into it. “It could just go right into a rock wall!”

“They have to be using it to carry coal and debris out of the mine,” Night Light said. “They couldn’t have cleared those tunnels just by carrying buckets out. Right?”

“Sounds good to me,” Velvet said, pushing the cart and trying to get it moving.

The doorway to the inverted castle cracked and broke, the pooka shaking itself free of the destruction, gaze fixed on Cadance.

Sunset jumped in, almost landing on the pink alicorn. “You’re going too slow! Get in and I’ll give us a boost!”

Velvet looked back, then jumped into the minecart, helping Night Light get in. Breathless stormed towards them, building up speed like a locomotive.

“Hang on!” Sunset warned.

Night Light’s eyes widened, a lingering pain in his skull reminding him what happened the last time they let Sunset help propel a vessel. “Wait, we should--”

The cart jumped into motion, launching down the rails like an arrow shot from a bow. Velvet caught Night Light before he could hit his head.

“Careful,” she warned, smiling down at him. The smile didn’t last long, though, because unfortunately, their plan worked. The plan where they wanted a huge monster to chase them.

Breathless bounded through the tunnel after them, ignoring the rocks tearing at her as she forced her body through the tight passage, moving so quickly she was catching up with them. With every other step, she slammed through wooden supports holding the tunnel up.

“Well, she’s not going after the townsponies!” Night Light reported, just in case anypony in the minecart hadn’t noticed the howling horror.

“Can you go faster?” Velvet asked.

“This thing’s already skipping!” Sunset shouted. “If we go faster we’ll just derail! I learned my lesson with the boat, okay?”

The rails shook under them, almost throwing the cart, the tunnel starting to cave in behind them from the abuse the pooka was doing to the support beams. She roared, sharp shards of ash and ice hitting the minecart and sticking in like hail made of thorn and razor blades.

Velvet winced as a cut opened up on her brow, only an inch from her eye.

“There’s a light at the end of the tunnel!” Sunset yelled.

“I’m glad we’re finally using the power of positive thinking,” Night Light said, still watching the pooka, her snapping jaws growing close enough to almost touch.

Velvet looked forward. “No, she means literally! Hold onto something!”

The minecart shot out into the open at the same moment Breathless’ weight came down on the same section of track they were on, launching them high into the air. The pooka exploded into the sun and screamed, skin turning to stone before blue light exploded from its chest, ripping the petrified body apart.

The pale blue light shot back into Cadance, and the alicorn’s color returned, the pale pink becoming healthier in just a few heartbeats.

The minecart started falling, its momentum spent.

Cadance grabbed onto Velvet with one forehoof, Night Light with another, and resorted to grabbing Sunset’s mane with her teeth, spreading her wings and arresting their fall, the minecart continuing on like a cannon shot and slamming into the dirt hard enough to leave a crater.

Cadance landed a few moments later, much more softly.

The pooka’s remains blew away on the same wind that was carrying the last of the mist away from the town.

“Put me down!” Sunset demanded, ruining the moment.

Velvet sighed and closed her eyes, exhausted.

Author's Note

I Feel Fine

E1 - Stand By Me

“...carried her by the scruff of her neck all the way back to town!” Night Light said, laughing. “Anyway, the doctors say my eyebrows will eventually grow back.”

“It’s your own fault for teasing her,” Velvet said. “You had to know what would happen.”

Night Light shrugged “I was a little giddy since we actually managed to survive.”

“I didn’t think we’d manage it.” Velvet sighed and leaned back in the hospital bed, closing her eyes. “I still feel like I could sleep for a week.”

“Well, once you’re done, maybe we could go get something to eat?” Night Light asked.

Velvet looked at him, smiling. The stallion’s cheeks were burning red and he couldn’t quite look at her.

Somepony knocked at the door.

“Am I interrupting something?” Princess Celestia asked, one hoof in the room already, her expression difficult to read.

“Princess!” Night Light gasped, bowing. Velvet started to get up to do the same.

“No, please, there’s no need,” Celestia said. She stepped in and closed the door behind her. “I owe both of you a great debt. You defended Equestria when I wasn’t able to. For that, you have my eternal thanks.”

Celestia bowed her head.

“I had trouble beating them myself when I imprisoned them the first time. I can only imagine the kind of difficulty you had. Even my student admitted she couldn’t have done it without your help, which makes me think it must have been a nearly impossible task.”

“Sunset doesn’t seem like the type to shy away from taking credit,” Velvet agreed.

“Indeed. And she spoke highly of both of you.” Celestia paused. “Well, she said you ‘weren’t entirely useless’, which is perhaps the highest praise I’ve heard her give anypony. I’m still working on lessons about humility. She prefers being taught how to blow things up with her mind.”

“She’s very good at it,” Night Light said.

“Interestingly, Princess Cadance has agreed to move to Canterlot after this little mess. Apparently, she wants to be closer to her friends.” Princess Celestia smiled. “I hope you won’t mind that I added you to the guest list for her coronation.”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” Twilight Velvet said.

“Excellent.” Celestia nodded. “It will at least be a start in repaying everything Equestria owes you for your service.”

“O-oh, no,” Velvet sat up. “There’s no need, Princess. It was just what anypony would have done!”

“The day that anypony and everypony would put their lives on the line for others the way you did is the day that Equestria truly is a paradise,” Celestia said, quietly. “I am satisfied for now that there are ponies as brave as you four were.”

“What’s going to happen now?” Night Light asked.

“Whatever is left of the pookas and the damage they did is being dealt with. Within a few seasons, Veneighs will look just as it used to. Or it will finally decide to sink into the water.” Celestia shrugged. “I’m amazed it’s still standing after all this time.”

“Half of it is, anyway,” Velvet said, feeling a little guilty.

“Ah yes, that reminds me,” Celestia said. “Cadance wanted me to pass along a message. I believe it’s a list of ideas on how a mare and stallion could get to know each other, and some other advice that she felt compelled to pass along.”

Celestia passed a scroll over to Velvet.

“‘Don’t eat anything with a lot of garlic,’” Velvet read. “‘Strong odors are distracting when trying to kiss.’”

She groaned and put the scroll down without reading the rest.

“Princess Cadance takes romance very seriously,” Celestia noted, doing an amazing job of keeping a straight face.

“Too seriously,” Velvet mumbled.

“I’ll let you two get back to what you were doing,” Princess Celestia said. “Feel free to come by the palace whenever you wish as my guests. I know when Cadance arrives, she’ll be glad of the company.”

“Of course, your highness,” Velvet said.

Princess Celestia nodded and paused in the doorway.

“I’ll have reservations made at one of the better Canterlot restaurants for you,” Celestia said. “The bill will go to the palace. Consider it a token of my appreciation, Dame Velvet.”

The Princess smiled and left before either could say anything in return.

“Dame Velvet?” Twilight Velvet asked.

“I didn’t know you were nobility,” Night Light said, surprised.

“I’m not!”

“You might be now,” Night Light noted.

“Urgh…” Velvet groaned, lying back.

“You want me to go ask?”

“No! Just… stay here.” She grabbed his hoof, blushing. “Let’s go over that list Cadance sent us.”

“Right,” Night Light said, picking up the scroll. “Where did you leave off?”

“No garlic.”

“Okay, let’s see…” He leaned into Velvet so they could both see the scroll. “The next part is about how to show affection in public.”

“Let’s go over that in detail…”

Author's Note

Stand By Me

The End?

0 - Solar Sect of Mystic Wisdom

If a pony imagined a desert, they’d picture an expanse of yellow sand and blazing sun with the air dancing in the heat. That was a nice, scenic desert, the kind of place where you might find belly dancers and camels and an oasis or two. It was a nicer, much more pleasant desert than the reality of the Badlands.

Soft sand would have been far easier to dig in than the ancient dust and dry mud. The Badlands were like a salt flat and a boulder field had a baby with Tartarus and you arrived just as they put it in the kiln. The heat was deadly, the nearest river was a streak of silt that only flowed a few months out of the year, and the wildlife was venomous, poisonous, or most often both.

“Red and yellow stripes... “ Daring Do muttered, staring at the hissing danger rope that had found its way into her tent. “Hey, does anypony know if this snake is deadly? You know, like the last seven were?”

Somepony cleared their throat. Daring Do looked back at the donkey trying to get her attention. She’d hired him in town, and he’d saved her life a dozen times already on this trip. She was aware of precisely zero times her life had been in danger because unlike his employer the donkey wasn’t the type to boast.

“We’re gettin’ ready to move the slab,” the burro said. “When you’re done playing with yer little friend, you can come and watch.”

“You got it dug out?” Daring asked, forgetting entirely about the snake and flying over the broken ground to look, rushing through the small tent city that had been built around what was generously an excavation site but given a grad student’s budget, was little more than a hole in the ground. “Did you remember to brace the tunnel properly this time?”

“Properly?” The burro frowned. “That was a false entrance and designed to collapse. I was almost a donkey sandwich!”

“Yeah but that’s good!” Daring Do smiled and punched his shoulder playfully. “Traps like that can only be set off once. And you know what that means?”

“It had better not mean you want us moving a hundred tons of rock.”

“It means we’re the first ones to come here since it was sealed,” Daring Do said. “Most tombs end up wrecked by graverobbers. An undisturbed find like this is the most important discovery in the last century! They’ll be writing books about this!”

“If any of this junk ends up in a book I’ll eat my hat,” the burro muttered.

“Let’s go take a look at the slab,” Daring said. “You coming?”

“You first. I don’t feel like being flattened.”

Daring chuckled and touched down, carefully walking through the dark.

“A lot of sand still in here,” she noted. It was deep enough she could feel her hooves sinking in before hitting bottom.

“In a place like this you can’t really stop it,” the donkey replied. “Look.” He pointed to the wall. Sand trickled in a slow stream to the floor, the thin silt leaking in like it was water.

“I wonder if that’s intentional? Maybe the entrance seals itself, and that’s how it stayed hidden for so long.”

“I don’t like it. If a donkey made this, it’d be solid. Earth ponies would have put the stone together better. This kind of complicated junk is unicorn work, and you know what that means.”

“It probably cost too much and went over budget?” Daring joked.

“It means magic!”

“Oh, next you’ll go on about curses and nonsense like that,” Daring scoffed. “Archaeology is about detailed and careful work. And disarming traps. Curses are only an issue in ten or twenty percent of all digs.”

Before the donkey could comment on just how high that percentage really was, they’d arrived at the end of the tunnel, where a huge slab of granite, distinctly different from the sandstone walls, was being worked on by a half-dozen goats, torches flickering and casting wavering light over the crowded corridor.

“I can’t wait to see what’s on the other side,” Daring grinned. She grabbed one of the ropes. “Pull!”

The goats strained, Daring Do offering what strength she had. With a glacial pace and infinite, geological time, the door creaked and scraped, hot air escaping from the crack between it and the wall.

“That’s it!” Daring Do called out. “Just a little more!”

A chorus of strained gasps and groans echoed, and the team managed to pull it far enough for pry bars to do the rest of the work. The slab was moved to the side, revealing a corridor gently sloping down, not a trace of sand or dust inside, like it had been made yesterday instead of hundreds of years ago.

“It’s too hot,” the donkey said. “It’s even hotter in there than it is here.”

“If I’m right, that’s exactly what we should expect,” Daring Do said, rubbing her hooves together. “I’m going to go first. Stay behind me and don’t touch anything.”

She stepped lightly, her wings spread out for balance, scanning the floor and walls. It didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for.

“This part of the floor is designed to collapse,” she announced. She ushered everyone back, then took one of the crowbars they’d used to move the slab and thew it. It landed on stone tile that looked the same as the rest of the corridor to a casual observer.

The floor fell like it had been supported only by cobwebs and tissue paper, going dozens of feet down to steel spikes like the teeth in a dragon’s hungry maw.

“Spared no expenses,” Daring Do noted.

“It’s a big sun,” the donkey said, looking at the granite and copper door.

“It’s not just any sun,” Daring Do said. “That’s Celestia’s cutie mark.” She touched it gently. “I don’t see any tool marks. This had to be carved purely using magic.”

“That or they used sandpaper to clean up the work. Is this a pony tomb?” the donkey asked.

“Not a tomb, more like a vault.” Daring Do said. “I think it was deliberately hidden, like a pirate’s buried treasure.”

“I like the sound of treasure. Means we might get paid.”

“I’m paying you!” Daring huffed.

“Barely,” the donkey grumbled. “Last time I work for a grad student with a budget as thin as my starving children.”

“You don’t have children.”

“Good thing too, or they’d go hungry with pay like this.”

“We’ll have to find a way to get this door back,” Daring muttered. “We’ll remove the hinges to avoid damaging it.”

“Did you forget the pit full of spikes?”

“The goats are filling it with sand and rubble. In a few hours we can walk right over it. Until then, care to take a look inside with me? I’ll even make sure you get mentioned when I write papers on this discovery!”

“Fine,” the donkey said. “Just make sure you get my name right.”

When they pulled the door open, the hinges were smooth and silent, taking the weight of the stone door and swinging gracefully like it was no more than a feather. Light poured from the other side, blinding after the gloom.

“What in the--” the donkey, whose name Daring Do never did remember to write down, stepped back in shock.

“The legends were true!” Daring Do whispered, once her eyes adjusted.

Beyond the door was a circular room with a dome high overhead, thin trails of gold forming a framework like a spiderweb supporting a gem the size of a chicken’s egg and glowing too bright to look directly at. The light was steady, but looking at it gave an impression of pulsing life like the sun itself.

“The Temple of the Sun’s Heart,” Daring Do said. “And that’s the Sun’s Heart itself.”

“Fancy rock,” the donkey said. “What about the statues?”

“Hm?” Daring looked away from the light. Arranged around it like they were cowering from the Sun’s Heart, four horrible creatures had been carved out of stone. They looked almost like ponies, but stretched out and smooth-skinned like androgynous combinations of pony, giraffe, and salamander, with all the worst aspects of each. All four were uniquely repellent in their own way. She stepped closer to look. “Interesting. I’m not sure what these are made of. Not quite marble, but some sort of metamorphic rock…”

“Worth anything?”

“Ah, here we are,” Daring Do said, trotting over to a wall. “Look at these pictograms.”

The donkey sighed and followed. “Are you even listening or am I just an audience while you talk?”

“They’re not in any language at all. They’re just sort of universal and general symbols. This is what you would want to use if you needed a message to be understood over extremely long periods of time when languages might be forgotten.”

“That’s what I thought,” the donkey muttered.

“I believe this is an abbreviated form of an ancient legend about chaos spirits called Pookas,” Daring Do said. “They were supposedly a race of quasi-elemental creatures of chaos that survived the Discordant era, similar to, say, windigos or the Smooze.”

The donkey took out a flask and took a long drag.

“I suppose this lends at least some credence to the idea that the creatures existed,” Daring Do continued. “I believe that this details Princess Celestia defeating them with the power of the sun and putting some sort of curse on them to keep them from ever tormenting ponies again.”

“And?”

“And this temple was built to commemorate her victory!” Daring Do smiled. “It’s from an era where Celestia was still establishing her rule, so they told all sorts of stories about her to sort of advertise her as a winner. The Sun’s Heart is a diamond containing pure solar magic. It’s a beautiful artifact.”

“Did you say diamond?” The donkey stood up, very interested now. “I like the sound of that! A diamond that size could be worth a lot of bits.”

“The Veneighs Museum is going to be getting that gem for its collection,” Daring Do said. “It’s not going to be sold. Something like that is part of the world’s cultural heritage! It needs to be somewhere ponies can come to admire it and learn about the past.”

“What you really mean is, we’re grave robbing and we don’t even get a cut of it.”

“Isn’t the excitement of discovery enough?”

“I dig holes for money.”

“And this is a much more exciting hole than your usual ditches!” Daring assured him. “I might be willing to give everypony a bonus for our good fortune. I expect Veneighs will be generous with grants. There are a few items in Canterlot they’re rather sore about not having in their collection, and this will even the score quite nicely.”

“I just don’t like the looks of them statues. Got a bad feeling about this whole thing.”

“They’re rather ugly, aren’t they?” Daring agreed. “The technique is amazing. Almost as good as the door, practically life-like. It was the style of the time that mythical creatures representing chaos and disharmony should be as ugly as the concepts they embodied.”

“Did you ever notice how many pony legends are about some kind of horrible monster?”

“Eh, most of them are just made up to scare foals,” Daring Do said. “My father used to tell me if I wasn’t home before dark, Nightmare Moon would gobble me up.”

“There some pithy pony moral with these things?”

Daring Do hovered in place, thinking. “Nah. Pretty sure they’re just ugly monsters. Let’s get some rubbings of the pictograms before anything is moved and risks damaging them.”

Busy directing the donkey with how to properly hold soft paper against the engravings and the art of rubbing charcoal just so to bring out the details, she quickly forgot about the statues as more than an item on a list of finds.

Not paying any mind to them, Daring Do didn’t notice the way their eyes gleamed in the dark, and dismissed the concerns of her workers as superstition.

Author's Note

For today's musical reference: A Horse With No Name

1 - Innervision

“Maybe that one? No, no, that won’t do…” Twilight Velvet was sweating, and not entirely because of the hot summer day. She was trying to make one of the most important decisions of her life, and there was incredible pressure on her to make it perfect.

“Lady, just pick something,” the pony on the other side of the cart sighed. “There’s a line!”

“I know there’s a line!” Velvet looked up to glare at him.

“Do you want a suggestion?” He offered her a smile. She hadn’t been happy with anything else, so it wasn’t a surprise that this didn’t work either.

“Listen here,” Velvet said. “I need to pick the right flavor or else the rest of my day will be thrown off! What if I get vanilla but what I really needed was pistachio?”

“You could buy two,” the vendor suggested. “They’re only five bits each! Or you could let somepony else go ahead of you while you decide.”

Velvet closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. “Mmph. Fine, get me chocolate.”

The tension was released and the ice cream vendor started scooping.

“No, wait! Not chocolate! Make it rocky road!”

“Fine. Rocky road.” He started scooping again.

“Wait!” Velvet gasped. “Maybe it should be chocolate peanut butter instead!”

“Lady, I ain’t even got that!”

“You don’t?” Velvet paused, as if going over a mental checklist. Before she could say anything else, he quickly scooped it up into a cone and thrust it into her hooves.

“Here! Five bits!”

Velvet huffed and tossed the bits onto the cart, taking the cone and stomping away.

“Mares,” the ice-cream vendor said. He shook his head and looked down to grab the bits, pausing in surprise. All of them had landed heads-up. “Huh. What are the odds of that?”

It was good ice cream. Not great, very little sold out of a cart like that would ever be great, not even in Canterlot where the price was a few bits higher than anywhere else. It was good enough, though, to satisfy the urge for something made of chocolate to smooth over a headache that’d been plaguing Velvet since she woke up.

Her grip on the ice cream was tenuous, her telekinetic field wobbling with the same pulse as her heart and the migraine she’d been nursing for the last few days. It would have been easy to blame her dad for the headache, but he’d at least made an effort to make her comfortable in the short time each day he wasn’t at the Canterlot History Museum.

She walked out into the street without looking. Her first few steps took her through a crowd, slipping between ponies without breaking stride. She licked at dark chocolate and marshmallow and tried to find walnuts in the melting treat, too focused to even notice as one cart rushed by inches from her face and another nearly brushed her tail as she stepped into and past a line of rushing cargo carriages.

A pony bumped into her, and the ice cream cone tumbled out of her weakened grip. This was exactly what she’d feared, the terrible fate she’d tried to avoid!

She grabbed the rocky road barely a hoof-width from the real road, breathing a sigh of relief.

“That was close.” Velvet sighed in relief and stood up. “Now listen here, how dare you run right into a delicate mare like me!”

“Sorry!” The thin grey stallion backed up, looking intimidated. “I wasn’t watching where I was going. You’re not hurt, are you?” He helped Velvet up, brushing dirt off her shoulders. “I’m just so clumsy sometimes. Really didn’t mean any harm.”

“Uh-huh.” Velvet frowned.

“Anyway, I’ve got to get going, hopefully we won’t run into each other again! Haha, that’s a little joke I like to tell when I’m clumsy.”

He started backing away before turning and almost running, pushing through the crowd. Velvet took a step, and felt a yawning emptiness where the reassuring weight of her bits had been.

“That little…” she growled. He turned like he could feel her gaze boring into the back of his head. “You’re not getting away!”

He bolted. Velvet’s horn lit up, and the world dropped away.

Precognition was more of an art than a science. Every choice a pony could make branched out, some of them dark, leading to disaster, most of them flat grey, just going from one place to another. A very few shone with possibility. Seeing the future was about spotting the light at the end of the tunnel before it passed you by.

Twilight Velvet kicked a loose cobblestone free and threw it in a high arc, sailing past the thief. He laughed, and she could see on his face that he thought she’d meant to hit him and missed.

The rock hit the ground in front of him, and his hoof came down on it, the old, loose stone worn smooth and slippery. He cried out in alarm, tumbling into the street, crashing through the ponies around him.

Somepony shouted a warning, but it was far too late. He fell into the lane of oncoming carriages just as a cart rounded the corner, too late for the pony pulling it to come to a stop.

Velvet licked her ice cream cone and smiled as wood crunched and cabbages sailed into the sky in an explosion of green and purple leaves.

“Hm. Definitely the right flavor,” she decided, giving her cone a few more licks, the marshmallow swirl finally releasing a crunchy walnut. She started pushing her way through the crowd that had stopped to watch the spectacle.

The thief was half-buried under what had to be hundreds of cabbages, and an earth pony had him by the ear and was well on his way to helping him go deaf by shouting right into it.

“My whole harvest is ruined! Do you know how hard it is to grow cabbage and cart it up a mountain?! They don’t grow on trees!”

“No,” Velvet agreed, stepping through the crowd. “I think they grow on the ground. Sorry, I’ll just be a second.”

She tugged her pouch of bits free from where the thief had stashed it.

“Let this be a lesson to you about trying to steal from a young lady,” Twilight Velvet said. “Especially one who can fight back.”

“You’re no lady,” the crook muttered. Unfortunately for him, Velvet had seen that coming, too. Her hoof cracked across his cheek with a report like thunder.

“Say that to my face!” she demanded. “Do you know who I am?”

“No!” the crook said.

“Unfortunately, yes,” came a voice from above. One that Velvet recognized instantly.

“Great,” she muttered. “Of all the things to miss…”

She forced a smile to her face and turned to the Royal Guard that was flying over the crowd, the big white pegasus meeting the small grin with a grimace.

“It’s been so long, Sergeant Sky,” Velvet said. “So nice to see you.”

“Twilight Velvet, your mother would be ashamed,” the gold-armored guard said as he touched down. “What kind of mess have you made this time?”

“There’s no mess,” she said.

Sergeant Sky looked past her to the overturned cart, the ruined pile of produce, and the pony buried under it all.

“No mess. So what do you call that?”

“Well, you see, this gentleman - and I’m using that term very generously only because nopony has gotten angry enough at him to turn him into a gelding--”

The guard coughed, interrupting her. “Just the facts, please. I’m being generous enough letting you try to explain this.”

“He stole my bits!”

“He stole your bits,” the pegasus nodded. “Okay. So you attacked him?”

“I didn’t do anything!” Velvet protested. “Why, you there-” she pointed at the cabbage merchant. “-you saw everything. You tell him!”

“Well, uh,” the farmer swallowed. “I was just following the line to market like usual and this feller jumped out in front of me. He didn’t look like he were pushed or nothin, just like he was runnin’ too fast and slipped. Probably needs better shoes. You Canterlot types all wear them slippery thin ones that wear out too fast.”

“I wasn’t even there,” Velvet said. “I was down the street shouting for the guards. Of course, you only decided to show up now and accuse me, the victim!” She pretended to swoon, letting the farmer catch her. She tried to ignore just what a diet of nothing but cabbage made a pony smell like.

“I don’t remember hearin’ anypony callin’ for the guards…” the farmer said, slowly.

“Well of course not. I was all the way over there.” Velvet motioned vaguely. “You were still coming down the street while I was yelling.”

A few more guards had started pushing the crowd back, the herd of ponies slowly getting back into motion as they were gently convinced to go about their business. The excitement seemed to be over anyway.

“We need to get this street clear so we stop causing a traffic jam,” Sergeant Sky said, after a few silent moments watching Velvet’s playacting. “Sir, if it’s alright, I’ll assign two privates to help you dig this gentleman out of your produce. We’ll move the cart to the side and assess the damage.”

“That’d be a big help,” the farmer agreed.

“As for you,” Sky turned to Velvet. “A word, please?”

“Just one?” Velvet asked. “I do have places to be.”

“The more you sass, the more words there are going to be,” Sergeant Sky said. “Rack up enough and you’ll end up making statements at the Guard post until your father comes to get you.”

“That could be a week,” Velvet muttered.

Sky took her over to the side, a quiet space between two storefronts, the kind of place that would have been an alleyway if Canterlot had been allowed to have such a crass locale. Instead, it was a scenic walking path lined with wastebins.

“You can’t keep getting into trouble,” Sergeant Sky said. “And before you tell me you absolutely can, I am well aware you are physically capable of getting into trouble. You’ve proven that time and time again.”

“None of it is real trouble,” Velvet retorted. “That stallion is a cutpurse!”

“And that’s why he’s going to be paying for the greenery instead of you. But if he decides to press charges, and you have to stand in a Circle of Truth, are you going to be able to look me in the eyes and tell me you didn’t do anything to make him land in those cabbages?”

“...no,” Velvet admitted, her ears folding down. She couldn’t even look him in the eyes now when she was telling the truth. It was too much like the look somepony else had given her.

“Your mom was a great Guard. I know things have been rough, but you need to work through them. We all did.”

“You just got over it in a day and went back to work!” Velvet snapped.

“That’s part of the job. What happened was tragic but she made her choice and I respect her for it. You’ll understand when you’re older.”

“I doubt that.”

“Some days, I doubt it too, but she was a good mare and there’s a lot of her in you. Once you get this chip off your shoulder you might even decide to join the Royal Guard yourself. We’re always recruiting.”

“Hah! Yeah right.” Velvet’s horn pulsed for a moment, and she smiled. “I don’t think I can ever see myself in armor like that.”

She tapped his breastplate with her ice cream cone for emphasis. Since it was almost entirely melted at this point, it left a few sticky drips of chocolate.

Sergeant Sky looked down and frowned.

“Sorry,” she said. “I guess there’s no point eating this.”

She started to toss it, and Sergeant Sky cleared his throat.

“No littering,” he reminded her.

Velvet rolled her eyes, then opened a bin and put the cone in it with deliberate care before closing the lid.

“I’m going to let you go this time,” Sky said. “Just at least try to keep out of trouble, will you? Eventually you’ll do something we can’t ignore or call self-defense.”

He rubbed the streaks of chocolate off his armor, buffing hard with his hoof. He didn’t notice a tiny metallic ting as something fell to the cobblestones.

“I’ll be good,” Velvet promised, waving and starting to walk away, counting down in her head.

Sergeant Sky nodded and spread his wings, taking to the air. A strap popped under the strain of his flexing muscles, the rivet having come loose and fallen a few moments ago. The breastplate swung to the side, suddenly free. Sky made a sound like a confused chicken as his wings tangled and he slammed back to the earth, overturning a bin full of trash.

An ice cream cone landed squarely on his forehead, sticking there like a unicorn’s horn.

“Velvet!” he yelled.

Author's Note

Today's Music Ref: Innervision

2 - Clair de Lune

The Canterlot History Museum had a long and storied history, as long as you didn’t look into it too closely. A careful eye revealed that the museum’s founder, Plastic Beach, inherited more money than sense and stuffed his manor full of treasures - most of which had been collecting dust in attics and basements around Canterlot and sold for many times their real value to the young Beach. He obsessively studied and wrote about the oddities that came into his hooves with total fixation until he found his fortune had stopped being liquid and had rather solidified around him, trapping him like a fly in amber.

As his wine and cheese cellar ran dry, and he found himself looking at a fish preserved in ether and wondering if it was still edible, he realized he needed to find a way to bring money in if he wanted to keep his treasure from deteriorating. Also, he preferred not to starve to death. He opened his house to the scholars and curiosity-seekers who had been asking to see the more interesting and unique specimens in his collection and charged them a modest fee for the experience.

Things had refined slowly over time since then. The dusty and crowded rooms had been cleaned, displays set up, plaques placed next to the items so he didn’t have to explain the historical significance of the pottery fragments on his table for the fiftieth time, and the modern museum was invented.

The current museum wasn’t Plastic Beach’s original home, of course - that was old enough now that it was an exhibit itself with guided tours of Beach’s original notes and displays.

The new Museum building was a granite fortress nearly the size of Princess Celestia’s castle and twice as well guarded. Even now, in the middle of the day when most ponies were at work or school, Twilight Velvet had to walk through a small crowd to get to the reception desk.

“Excuse me?” She pushed her way to the front of the line and leaned against the desk. Her patience lasted almost ten whole seconds before she started ringing the bell. “Hello? Anypony there?”

The pony working the desk, only a few feet away and clearly trying to do paperwork, did her best to ignore the bell. “I’m helping somepony else, ma’am. It’ll be just a moment.”

Velvet frowned. “This is important.”

“Please get in line, Ma’am. I assure you I’ll be happy to help as soon as it’s your turn.”

Velvet considered that option and looked at the line of unhappy ponies, then behind the counter. Her horn pulsed for a heartbeat’s time.

“I think I’ll wait here,” she decided.

“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you--”

The door to the back office opened, a pale pink pony stepping out and looking at Twilight in surprise. “Velvet, what are you doing here?”

“Good morning, Miss Rose. My father forgot his lunch again,” she sighed. “He didn’t come home last night either, so if I don’t bring it to him, he’ll probably end up working himself into the hospital again.”

Amber Rose rolled her eyes. “I thought he looked like he hadn’t slept. Why don’t you come in, Velvet? It might be good to remind him there’s a world outside the museum.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Velvet said, glancing to the sour pony working the counter. “Somepony here thinks I need to wait in line.”

“Oh come now, you’re practically part of the staff with how often you’re here.” Amber Rose opened a door in the counter to let Velvet in. Velvet smiled a little more as the sour pony slammed a stamp down on the paper with more force than needed.

“Let me guess, my father’s been busy with the new exhibit,” Velvet said.

“So you saw the banners?” Amber Rose asked.

Velvet tilted her head, looking up at the huge, brightly-colored displays hanging on every wall. “Coming soon, relics from the Temple of the Sun’s Heart,” she read. “And in much smaller letters it mentions Veneighs, but I think anypony without perfect eyesight is going to miss that part.”

“Well, the Director is a bit miffed that they found the Temple,” Amber said, leading Velvet away from the public corridors to the quieter staff area. “Apparently some grad student found it all by herself. The worst part is, she came to us for a grant first, and we turned her down. We’ll be eating crow about that for a bit.”

“Maybe I’ll remind my father about that the next time I ask for an advance on my allowance.”

Amber Rose laughed. “It might just work. While you’re here, you should take a look at what he’s been working on.” She opened a door, and they walked into an atrium large enough for a hoofball pitch.

Glass cases had been set up along the walls, lights already positioned for most of them.

“Charcoal rubbings?” Velvet asked, looking at the pictograms. “I didn’t think the Museum displayed children’s art.”

“We’ve got a team working on clay replicas based on the rubbings, but we were lucky to even get these,” Amber said. “It’s a complete set, at least. From what Mr. Moonlight has said, he’s planning on making the room as close to a reproduction of the original as possible.”

“Dad always did like details. What’s this in the middle?” At the center of the room, a huge shape was shrouded by a dusty tarpaulin.

“That’s our prize exhibit,” Amber said. “Here, let me.”

Amber’s magic aura shone around the tarp, and when she pulled it free, Velvet immediately wished she hadn’t asked about it.

“That’s hideous!” Velvet gasped, taking a step back. The statue was twice the size of a normal pony, stretched out and almost skeletally thin, but somehow boneless at the same time, the stone so smooth it almost looked wet and segmented like the skin of an annelid. The face was the worst part, a ridged face like a seahorse surrounded by rudimentary gills and a mane like a filthy and matted mass of seaweed.

“It is rather unpleasant,” Amber agreed. “You can see why they usually leave the tarp on it while they’re working.”

“It sends chills down my spine just looking at it.”

“But there’s something effective about that, isn’t there?” Amber asked. “You have to admit that it’s a powerful work of art, to have inspired that kind of emotion.”

“The artist was a genius,” Velvet agreed. “Though he probably should have gotten professional help if this was lurking in his imagination.”

“Your father has been working hard getting everything ready,” Amber explained. “We want to have it ready for when the Princess comes back from her negotiations in Saddle Arabia. She’ll be the first to get a look at this.”

“So I get to sneak a peek even before Princess Celestia?” Velvet smiled.

“Mr. Moonlight always did say you were his little princess, so I’m sure he won’t mind,” Amber said. “And I think I see him now!”

Past a few hanging curtains sectioning things off, Velvet spotted her father, the older stallion wearing the same tweed jacket he always seemed to have on. She rushed over, her pace slowing to a trot as she neared. He wasn’t alone.

“...you’ll regret it if you don’t follow our advice,” the dark blue pony he was speaking to said in hushed tones. He didn’t look particularly frightening but the shirt he was wearing, black and white checkerboard, implied he at least had a deadly fashion sense. He couldn’t have been much older than Velvet was, and she didn’t remember seeing him around the museum.

“And thank you for your concern but we are not going to close down the exhibit because of threats,” Velvet’s father said, adjusting his glasses and looking annoyed.

“It’s dangerous,” the blue pony hissed. “If you don’t shut this all down--”

Velvet cleared her throat and the blue pony shut up so quickly he nearly swallowed his throat. She gave him a stern look.

“Dad, I didn’t know you were hiring any new assistants,” she said. “We haven’t been introduced.”

“I’m--” the stallion started.

“Just. Leaving.” Velvet’s father said, firmly. “He’s just a, ah, a concerned friend. He had some safety concerns about the exhibit and I’ve been reassuring him that nothing will go wrong.”

The blue stallion looked like he wanted to argue until he looked at Velvet. He nodded after seeing the look on her face.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said. As he walked past Velvet, her eyes fell to a silver pin shining on his lapel, a tiny crescent moon with wings.

She tried to remember where she’d seen it before as the stallion left.

“It’s good to see you, Velvet,” her father said, sweeping her up in a hug and derailing her train of thought. “What are you doing here, pumpkin? You’re not in any kind of trouble, are you?”

“Dad, you know I don’t get into trouble,” she said, lamely.

“When you say it like that it makes me really worry,” he joked.

“I came here because you didn’t have lunch,” Velvet said. She pulled a wrapped bundle out of her saddlebags. “Here. It’s just leftover pizza, so don’t get too excited. If you want a hot meal you have to cook it. I had to order out last night.”

“Your mother made me do all the cooking too,” he sighed.

“It takes too long for me to tell in advance if I’m doing it right,” Velvet complained. “By the time I know the food is going to burn, it’s already too late.”

“Velvet, you don’t need to see the future to make dinner.”

“I’m not going to cook just for myself,” she countered.

Her father snorted. “I know that tone. When your mother used it, it meant she’d already decided she’d won the argument. I promise I’ll be home tonight, and we’ll find something you can cook without burning the house down, hm?”

“Thanks, Dad,” she said, hugging him.

“And then you can tell me what kind of trouble you got into.”

“...and he slipped and fell,” Velvet said. “It was really embarrassing for Sergeant Sky. He should take better care of his armor.”

“It sounds like you’ll have to write him an apology letter,” her father said, while he cut a carrot into thin matchsticks. Their kitchen was large enough that she could sit and watch him cook without getting in the way, which both of them agreed was the safest thing for her to do.

“I didn’t do anything to him,” she said.

“Both of us know that even if that was true, you still should have warned him about what was going to happen.” He moved the carrot to the side and sliced a few cloves of garlic. “Don’t forget to stir that pot, honey.”

“Sorry,” Velvet said, quickly spinning a spoon around in a pot of crushed tomatoes. “I don’t see why it matters. He’s a jerk.”

“He was your mother’s superior officer. He’s practically family.”

“If he was such a good officer, she’d still be…” Velvet huffed, dropping the spoon. Her father pulled her into a hug.

“I miss her too.”

He held her for a long moment, then let go and ruffled her mane.

“Now, let’s get dinner going so you don’t have to yell at me for not having a hot meal!”

“What’s next?” Velvet asked.

“Next you’re going to do some of the work. I got everything cut up, and the rest is going to be easy. Don’t give me that look, you can do it.”

“Fine,” Velvet sighed.

“First, get a pan and put it over a high heat, then put some olive oil and butter in there,” he directed. “We’re going to get the celery and onion fried up and soft.”

Velvet followed his directions and kept the tough vegetables moving while they cooked. Once they’d turned transparent and soft, she added mushrooms, carrots, and garlic to the mix.

“We add the garlic just before the liquid so we won’t end up burning it,” her father explained. “Your mother always threw it all in at the start and the garlic would be little, burned bits by the time the celery was done.”

He picked up the small pot of tomatoes stewing. “Hmm… were you scraping the bottom of this while you were stirring?”

“Uh…” Velvet hesitated.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” he sighed.

“I can get it now!” She grabbed the wooden spoon.

“No, that’s burned on there now. If you scrape it, you just get that burned flavor in everything. When you’re in a situation like this, the best thing to do is to be careful not to touch the bottom and try to save the rest.”

He ladled the tomatoes out and into the pan with the rest of the vegetables, exposing a layer of burned paste at the bottom of the pot.

“Sorry,” Velvet muttered. “I told you I wasn’t good at this.”

“Everypony has to start somewhere. The most important part of cooking is learning how to fix mistakes. Anypony can try to avoid them, but a great cook can salvage a bad situation. We’ll just add a little extra broth before we put the beans and pasta in.”

“I’ll clean the pot,” Velvet offered, taking it over to the sink.

“There’s a trick to cleaning burned-on messes like that,” her father said, after turning down the heat so he could step away safely, pulling a few things out of the cupboard.

“Vinegar and baking soda?” Velvet asked.

“That’s right. First, we scrub with the baking soda. It’s abrasive and helps dislodge things.” He poured a little in, scrubbing in small circles. “You don’t have to worry about using too much elbow grease, just make sure it’s rubbed into the mess. Once you’ve done that, you pour in the vinegar and…”

The vinegar foamed up as soon as it hit the baking soda paste, the little bit he’d put in almost overflowing the pot entirely. He swirled it around a few times, then poured it out.

“The reaction neutralizes the baking soda and vinegar and you end up with just water and some salts, but all the foam and energy in it breaks up the clumps so now…”

He revealed the bottom of the pot. There was only a little bit of black stubbornly clinging to the metal.

“You’ll have an easier time scrubbing the rest.”

“Can you show me how to do that, too?” Velvet asked.

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out. I’m not going to do all the work for you!”

“It was worth a shot,” she sighed.

Author's Note

Mr. Moonlight

3 - Amber Rose

Amber Rose hummed a tune to herself as she polished the fittings on the door they’d been given by the Veneighs museum. It was the one thing the Director had been willing to bow and scrape and beg to get for the Canterlot museum, owing to the perfect replica of Celestia’s cutie mark in the stone.

“It really is beautiful,” Amber sighed, as she finished what she’d been doing and stepped back to admire it. The door had been placed near the entrance in its own place of honor, ponies having to walk around it and finding displays of steel spikes on one side and poison darts on the other, like they were confronting the traps themselves.

The clock chimed the late hour, and she sighed. There was so much more to do and so little time. Unlike Mr. Moonlight, she wasn’t planning on spending the rest of the night there, but there was still time for one last thing before she clocked off and headed home to get a few hours of sleep in her own bed.

The hideous statue made for a striking centerpiece to the exhibition, but even the finest art would look terrible in the wrong context. She flipped on the overhead lights and started adjusting them, her magic just barely reaching them on the vaulted ceiling of the museum hall.

Spotlight shifted, shadows crawled across the seamless stone, and something glittered as the angle changed.

“What was that?” Amber blinked, rubbing her blurry, tired eyes.

The glimmer came from the dark again. Amber couldn’t ignore it this time, moving closer to look. Embedded in the smooth stone was something brighter, a pale nodule somewhere between a pearl and an opal, set into the stone seamlessly. Something about the color and shape gave an impression less like a jewel and more like a boil, like the stone itself had an impossible blemish.

“I hope that’s not some kind of damage from transporting it,” Amber whispered, trying to decide if she should hide it in shadow or position one of the lights to catch that bubble of unlikely color.

She moved one of the smaller lamps to shine directly on it, and something in the swirling colors seemed to call out to her. Amber reached out to touch it, and that was the last mistake she ever made.

Velvet stared at the newspaper. She’d been staring since it came in that morning, and the headline hadn’t gotten any better.

“Murder at Canterlot History Museum,” she read aloud. The whole thing felt like a dream. Just yesterday Amber Rose had been alive. One of the few mares she considered a friend, if a little distant. And just like that, she was gone.

“I have to go in and… arrange things,” her father said, quietly. “The Guards came around this morning already to talk to me.”

“Did they say what happened?” Velvet whispered.

“They’re not sure yet. It was… they wouldn’t tell me the details, but from what I understand, what happened wasn’t… it wasn’t pleasant,” her father said. “I’m going to see if there’s damage to the exhibition and clean out her desk.”

“If you’d been there late last night…”

“It’s best not to think about it,” he advised. “I’m not going to be there long. I’m going to be back tonight, alright honey?”

Velvet nodded, and her father kissed her forehead.

“Be safe, honey,” he whispered. “I’ve got a bad feeling about all this. The last thing I need is for you to get hurt on top of everything else.”

Hours went by, and Velvet’s anxiety turned to boredom and nervous energy. She started pacing, her hooves taking her from one room to another until she found herself staring at the bookcase in her father’s study.

It was the kind of bookcase that held tomes instead of paperbacks, first editions, rare works, and books measured using inches and centuries. Velvet rarely had cause to even glance at them, but something had drawn her here.

“Alright, what is it I need to see?” Velvet whispered. She closed her eyes and let magic flow gently towards the future. She could feel the frustration of a thousand possible selves as they picked books off the shelf at random, most of them finding nothing as they flipped through dusty pages.

In one future, she picked the right book.

Velvet opened her eyes and grabbed it from the shelf. She wasn’t sure what she’d find but whatever it was had excited that version of her enough to pick it out from all the background noise like one bright note in a symphony of sour ones.

“Let’s see what we have here..”

The pages were yellowed with age, the kind of thick stock that wasn’t used for books anymore. Something almost immediately caught her eye. A crescent moon, framed by wings, just like the pin she’d seen the strange pony at the museum wearing.

“The Children of the Night…” she read, skimming the page. “They’re some kind of Nightmare cult. I thought those cults were just made up to scare ponies away from rock music and children’s card games!”

She flipped through the pages, stopping at a woodcut picture showing dozens of ponies bowing down before a terrifying, black pony.

“It can’t be a coincidence that my dad has an argument with a freaking cult member and then his assistant winds up dead,” Velvet decided. “I bet the cult wants something from the museum. And it’s got to be with the new exhibit.”

She started pacing and grabbed a bit from the desk.

“Dad always said, if you don’t know what you want to do, flip a coin. It doesn’t matter what the result is, because once the choice is out of your hooves you’ll know what you were hoping for in the first place. So, heads I go after him, tails I stay here.”

She flipped the coin, and was running out the door before it even hit the floor.

Ponies tend to be very law-abiding creatures. There were crimes, certainly, but murder was rare enough that even in Canterlot, law enforcement wasn’t truly prepared to handle it. The museum had been closed but unlike in a society more accustomed to such terrible tragedy, the lingering Guard presence was there to reassure ponies that things would return to normal rather than truly establish a perimeter or keep determined ponies away from the museum.

Consequently, Velvet found it rather easy to slip inside.

Empty of ponies, the Canterlot History Museum had the same echoing gravitas that all sacred ground held. Velvet felt like she didn’t belong, and crept along the wall, feeling too exposed in the middle of the wide corridors and vast rooms. Even if she didn’t remember where the new exhibition was, the museum had signs helpfully showing the way. And pointing out the nearest bathroom, if the tension really started to get to her.

A pony walked out into the hallway ahead of her, and she froze.

It was the blue pony she’d seen before. The one that had been arguing with her father. He was sneaking along, careful to make as little noise as possible. It was only luck that she’d spotted him first.

Velvet surrounded herself in her own aura, nearly able to support her own weight with telekinesis. It wouldn’t get her into the air, but it was enough to make her steps feather-light, gaining on him with quick bounds.

He turned, hearing her hoot tap against the floor, just before she barreled into him, knocking him head over hooves into the wall.

“Hah! I got you now!” Velvet said.

“What are you doing?!” He got up, shaking his head, dazed. “What are you doing here?”

“That should be obvious. I’m here to make sure you don’t attack my dad, cultist.”

“Cultist?” He looked confused, which either meant he had a concussion or he was a great actor.

“I know you’re part of a Nightmare cult.” She pointed to the pin on his lapel. “So don’t pretend you came here because you were just aching to get a look at the exhibits while there wasn’t a crowd.”

“I think there’s some kind of misunderstanding,” the stallion said. “My name’s Night Light. I’m a friend of your father’s. I came here to check up on him because I was worried!”

“That’s a likely story. You came here to get rid of him!”

Night Light backed up a step. “What?! I’d never hurt another pony!”

“Then you better have a better explanation than ‘you were worried.’”

“I’ve done research on the Temple of the Sun’s Heart,” Night Light said. “I have reason to believe that it’s extremely dangerous to have those artifacts here. It shouldn’t have been disturbed!”

“See, that sounds like crazy cultist talk to me,” Velvet said. “And since I already know you’re a cultist you’re not making a great case.”

“I just want to check on your dad, then I’ll leave,” Night Light said. “If it makes you feel better, we can go and get one of the Guards to come with us, and I’ll turn myself in for trespassing.”

“I, um…” Technically speaking Velvet was also trespassing. And by technically speaking it was actually more like she’d evaded the authorities to prowl around an active crime scene. She had a sneaking suspicion that was frowned upon even if the pony in question had the best of intentions.

“...You’re not supposed to be here either,” Night Light said.

“That’s besides the point!” Velvet blushed and looked away. She couldn’t believe a cultist could see right through her poker face! “Fine, we’ll go see my father, and he can decide what to do with you.”

Night Light nodded. Velvet pushed him ahead of her, not wanting to take her eyes off the stallion, and not because he had a nice butt.

“I really didn’t have anything to do with what happened,” Night Light said, quietly, as they walked past the police tape and museum rope blocking off the exhibition hall. “I was trying to stop it.”

“Then you should have gone to the Royal Guard if you knew something,” Velvet retorted.

“They wouldn’t have believed me,” Night Light muttered.

“Dad?” Velvet called out, her voice echoing on the stone. “Are you in here?” She couldn’t see him among the charcoal rubbings, the empty plinth in the center of the exhibit leaving nowhere to hide.

There was a struggling sound, and her father pushed through the curtains at the side of the hall. “Honey?” He asked, confused, looking like he’d just gotten out of bed, that same half-sleeping slowness to his expression.

“Thank Celestia,” Velvet whispered. She’d almost expected to find something terrible had happened to him. “I was worried about you, Dad.”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” he said. “Everything’s fine honey. Just fine.”

“Mr. Moonlight, we need to talk,” Night Light said, stepping between him and Velvet. “You have to see that the artifacts are dangerous now. We need to turn them over to the Night Guard along with my research.”

“The Night Guard?” Velvet asked.

“My research suggests all this is too dangerous to have out in public,” Night Light explained. “I was trying to tell your father yesterday but he didn’t listen. I think the… the…”

“Murder,” Velvet’s father supplied, his voice oddly low.

“I think it was because of the exhibition,” Night Light said.

“But nothing here is dangerous,” Velvet said. “Well, I guess the poison darts and stuff are dangerous, but they’re in locked cases. The only other things here are the door and the statue.” She motioned to the empty plinth.

It took her a moment to realize why the empty plinth was significant.

“Dad, where’s the statue?” she asked.

“Everything’s just fine,” Mr. Moonlight said. The skin on one side of his face slumped like it was disconnected from the rest of his body. There was a huge sense of motion from the curtains around him.

Velvet’s horn lit up. Almost every path towards the future led to an abrupt dead end, with an emphasis on dead. She seized on the slim chance she saw through the dark, shining like a sunbeam through a stormcloud.

She grabbed Night Light and pulled him behind the empty plinth where the statue had been just as tendrils launched from the curtains like harpoons, slapping down on the stone floor and leaving hissing, smoking trails as they retracted.

“Good instinct,” her father said, his voice burbling. He sounded like his lungs were full of liquid. “You always were a smart pony, Velvet.”

“What’s going on?” Velvet demanded. “What was that?”

“Unfortunately, I think it’s proof I was right,” Night Light said, his voice on the edge of breaking.

The curtains turned black as they started to burn and melt, falling to the floor in a heap as something stepped out of the cover they’d offered.

“You two look delicious,” the pooka said, the statue come to life and even more unpleasant in motion. “Just the kind of snack I need after a long nap.”

Author's Note

Amber Rose