Dog's Best Friends

Chapters

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V

Part I

“And so,” Pinkie Pie concluded as she finished sketching the complicated drawing onto the chalkboard, “that’s why you shouldn’t lose track of the fault lines on a rock farm, or else you could find yourself suddenly underground like my sister, Marble Pie, did.” She turned to face her class. “Any questions?”

The class stared back at her, all in various states of bemusement. But as this was often the case in any class Pinkie Pie taught in the School of Friendship, thanks to her very rambling method of teaching, this was widely accepted as the accustomed norm. After a moment though, a set of talons rose into the air from about midway in the room, where a certain six of the school’s students sat in a group.

“I’ve got one,” Gallus asked, the young griffon’s brow slightly furrowed. “Why does Equestria have rock farms?”

Pinkie took a deep breath before starting what Gallus hoped would be a lengthy reply. “Well…” But her line of thought jumped tracks again as she glanced at the clock hanging on the wall. “Actually, hold that thought, Gallus—real quick before the class ends, I want to tell you all about a little project you guys get to do over the weekend!”

There were a variety of groans throughout the classroom at this undesired homework announcement. But Pinkie remained oblivious while opening a drawer to her desk and, after tossing out several party-related things, withdrew a stack of papers and gave them to the closest student to pass out.

“So we’re going to be making rock candy next week!” she cheerily announced while watching the class mumble to themselves as each received a handout. “Because there’s nothing more friendly than making and sharing rock candy with your friends! My sister Maud and I have been doing it for years…though what we’ll be making in class isn’t quiiiiiite as special a recipe as the one me and Maud use when we’re making rock candy, but I can’t tell you about that one.” She leaned forward to speak in an exaggerated whisper. “It’s a secret!” She then snapped back to her original position and tone. “But we’re going to need to get allllllllll the ingredients to make them first! So your guys’s job this weekend is to go out and collect up the ingredients listed on these handouts. You can go wherever you want to do it, but if you need help, I can give you a few tips to find the absolutely best spots!”

By this point Silverstream had gotten a handout and was tilting it around as she studied it, looking puzzled. “Professor,” the hippogriff asked aloud, “am I reading this right? Some of these ingredients seem to be…well…kinda actually rock-based.”

“Nope! You’re reading it right!” Pinkie answered brightly but without elaborating. She then surveyed her students. “Any other questions?”

Gallus had also gotten a paper, but after giving it a brief glance over, he set it aside and raised his talons again. “Yeah, so getting back to my earlier question,” he began quickly. “Why does Equestria have rock farms?”

“Oh well, the answer’s actually super simple,” Pinkie replied with a beaming grin. “It’s because—” But then the school bell tolled, immediately distracting Pinkie. “Whoop! The bell has officially donged! Bye everybody, see you next time!”

She then zipped out the door before anyone could say or do anything. Gallus let his raised talons thump onto his desk, frustrated. “Well, darn it.”

Nevertheless, everyone packed up and soon he was walking through the hallways with the rest of his friends. With Pinkie’s class being the last of the day, they headed towards their dorms for the evening, assessing their latest assignment along the way.

Yona regarded her paper critically as the yak walked with her friends. “Yona not sure yaks best at eating rocks,” she admitted, skeptical about the apparently higher than normal rock content the candy seemed to require. “Rocks don’t seem best for yak tummy.”

“I think it’s great,” Smolder praised with a big grin, the dragon’s strong approval for the assignment clear in her cheery strut. “Finally, a school assignment focusing on the things that are really important in life.”

“Like filling your stomach?” Sandbar quipped with a light smirk, the earth pony more than aware of his friend’s gemmavorous diet.

“Darn straight!” Smolder proudly confirmed without hesitation.

“Well, so long as it’s for friendship, I’m totally still on board with it!” Silverstream said. “I mean, I think I can eat a rock or two for that, if it came right down to it.”

“To be fair though,” Ocellus piped in, holding her handout before her with her magic as they rounded a corner, “looking at the list of ingredients here, I don’t think this rock candy is really all rock. The recipe seems to call for a hefty amount of sugar, as well as some caramel and flour, I assume as a sort of glue to hold it all together, all of which are things we routinely eat anyway.” The changeling slipped the paper into her saddlebags and glanced at the others. “And what rocks are listed are mostly base minerals typically found in most foods anyway…just not always in such a pure state.”

“Edibility aside, it’s still homework, so like it or not, we’re going to have to do it,” Gallus pointed out, laying down the line. “So…how we wanna go about doing this?”

“It shouldn’t be hard,” Smolder reasoned. “We just need to figure out the best place to find the rock ingredients. The rest we can just raid the school stores for.”

“I’ve recently read that Ghastly Gorge is very rich in rocks and minerals,” Ocellus offered politely. “We could probably find everything we need there with a bit of looking.”

“Uh, you sure we really wanna do that?” Silverstream asked, hesitant. “Any gorge calling itself ‘ghastly’ seems like a place you’d want to stay away from.”

“Yeah, isn’t Ghastly Gorge supposed to be a little bit…dangerous?” Sandbar agreed, sharing Silverstream’s apprehension.

“I suppose what I meant is that the whole area Ghastly Gorge sits in is rich in rocks and minerals,” Ocellus sheepishly clarified. “So we should be safe so long as we just stay to the areas immediately surrounding the gorge.”

The others considered this for a second. “Yona thinks this fine,” Yona remarked in approval of this plan.

“Yeah, we could all probably go down this Saturday, make a day of it rock hunting,” Smolder suggested, agreeing as well. “We just have to get there.”

“Sounds like we’ll need train tickets then,” Gallus reasoned. He stopped in the middle of the hallway so to pull out his coin pouch. “Let’s see here, I think I still have enough I can buy a ticket with,” he mumbled as he counted out the bits he currently possessed, “tickets usually cost about three bits, so…”

But while he did that, Silverstream had started to sniff the air. “Woo!” she cried, wrinkling her nose. “Anybody else smell that?”

The others all start sampling the air and pulled displeased faces at the invading odor.

“Yuck!” Smolder groaned. “It smells like Gallus after he’s ran a few laps around the school track—”

“Hey,” Gallus objected.

“—but worse,” Smolder kept going without pause, “like he kept on running a few more laps around the track every day for a whole week without showering even once in-between.”

“Eww!” Silverstream squealed.

“Hey,” Gallus objected again, shooting the dragoness a glare.

But before any further discussion could be made, a nearby door opened and out strolled Princess Twilight Sparkle. Accompanying her was clearly the source of the pungent smell, a young Diamond Dog roughly about their same age. As Diamond Dogs go, he seemed innocent enough, though looking nervous to be there. But he was also far from clean, his fur so matted with filth it was hard to tell if the dark grey color it presently appeared as was its actual color, and his feet tracked light dust prints with every step he took. He wore a gem-studded collar like most Diamond Dogs, as well as a maroon-colored and somewhat threadbare vest, but both were just as smudged and dirtied as the rest of him. And, of course, there was the unfriendly odor he was putting off, which only strengthened in power now that there wasn’t a closed door dividing them. But as their headmare was present, the six students wisely withheld any complaints, attempting to appear like they hadn’t noticed anything.

Twilight was already speaking with the attentive Diamond Dog as she exited the room. “…I mean, it is all a bit sudden and last minute,” she was saying. “But otherwise everything seems to be in order, and of course we’ll be happy to have you. There’s just a few more things we need to sort out first, and then—oh!” Twilight perked up as she noticed the others standing nearby and turned to greet them. “Hello everyone! I didn’t notice you there, but since you are, come meet Woofus!” She motioned with one hoof to her escort, who sheepishly waved. “He’ll be our latest student to join the school.” She then cheerily motioned Woofus towards the other six. “Woofus, these are some of the other students here at the school, Ocellus, Silverstream, Smolder, Sandbar, Gallus, and Yona.” She pointed out each of the students in turn.

“…Hello,” Woofus timidly greeted them in a gravelly voice, but managing a small smile.

“Hiya Woofie!” Silverstream greeted enthusiastically, already deciding on a friendly nickname for him and offered him a set of talons to shake. “Can I call you Woofie?”

“Um…yes?” Woofus responded uncertainly as he shook the hippogriff’s proffered paw.

Doing so left a notable layer of dark grit on Silverstream’s talons. She winced briefly, but then remembering Woofus and not wanting to offend him, she quickly put on a smile. “That’s great!” she said as she blindly tried to find something to wipe her dirtied talons off on. Yona, being the closest, quickly put some more distance between them. “Welcome to the School of Friendship!”

“Yeah, welcome,” Gallus added as the others started to chip in their own greetings (though they all learned from Silverstream and opted not to come in contact with Woofus). He nudged Sandbar with his elbow. “It’ll be nice to have a bit more male representation around here, wouldn’t it, Sandy?”

Sandbar merely chuckled, but Smolder rolled her eyes, smirking. “Not like it changes much, you guys would still be outnumbered,” she pointed out.

“Shush and let me savor the victory,” Gallus quipped back.

“Ignore them, they’re just being silly,” Ocellus advised Woofus, rolling her own eyes before giving him a friendly grin. “Anyway, we’ll be happy to have you, Woofus. It’s always a pleasure to know another student is joining the school.”

“I know, isn’t it great?” Twilight cheered, quite excited. “I was hoping I could eventually get a bit of Diamond Dog representation here at the school, so when Woofus came in today asking to register for classes, of course I couldn’t turn him down! Now if I can just get King Aspen to enroll a deer student, then we’ll have representation from every race of creature throughout this entire region of Equestria!”

Yona, however, tilted her head at Woofus. “Diamond Dog only join school today?”

Woofus nodded sheepishly, rubbing the fur on one arm. “It is kind of last minute…”

“Normally I would’ve expected a bit more talk and delegation from the relevant Diamond Dog pack leaders first,” Twilight admitted, but was just as quickly waving the matter aside. “But Woofus came bearing all the needed paperwork already, so everything is basically in order to have him start classes tomorrow, we just need to get him settled in.” At this point, Woofus’s attention became focused on a gem decoration hanging near the door and reached his arms up to examine it better. Though Twilight managed to keep wearing a genuine-looking grin, she still had to tilt her head away from the dog’s exposed and smelly armpit. “Actually, since you’re here,” she continued, “Sandbar, Gallus? Can I ask you to show him the boys showers while I go arrange a dormitory for him to stay in?”

“Tell you what, Teach, we’ll make it our next stop,” Gallus promised. The others all nodded in agreement perhaps a bit too quickly.

“Wonderful!” Twilight said and turned to go. “I’ll leave you all to it, then.”

“C’mon Woofus,” Gallus said to the Diamond Dog, motioning him to follow while the others strategically took positions upwind from him. “To the showers we go.”

“Um, okay,” Woofus said, hesitantly falling in step with the others. “But…if I may ask…what are showers?”

“You know, at this point, I’m not at all surprised you don’t already know,” Gallus quipped with a sigh.

“Don’t worry, Woofus,” Sandbar assured as he came to walk on Woofus’s other side. “I’m sure you’ll like it.”

“I don’t like this!” Woofus cried as he scampered, trying to dig his feet into the smooth tile floor.

“C’mon Woofus,” Gallus grunted as he and Sandbar pushed him towards the shower, already spewing a warm spray of cleansing liquid. “It’s just water!”

“But-but-but…” Woofus objected as he resisted coming into contact with the water any way he could. “I’ll get all wet!”

“That’s the idea,” Gallus stressed, getting frustrated. He was starting to feel glad they were the only ones in the school showers currently, otherwise they’d certainly be getting a whole lot of stares over this.

“But I’ll drown!” Woofus continued to protest.

“You won’t drown, Woofus, promise!” Sandbar assured, taking a more encouraging approach than his griffon friend. “It’s perfectly safe—we’re just going to help clean you up a bit. All the water will do is wash away the gunk.”

“But why?” Woofus argued, clearly not understanding as he still fought to enter the shower’s spraying range. “Why do I need to do this?”

“Um…” Sandbar hesitated, not sure how he could explain nicely. “Well, you see…the thing is…”

Gallus, however, had no issues with saying it. “Dude, look, there’s no polite way to say it,” he told the Diamond Dog. “You stink. Like, seriously bad.”

“…so?” Woofus inquired back innocently.

“Think of it like this, Woofus,” Sandbar reasoned quickly, getting an idea. “This is your first lesson to help you be a better friend!”

“Yeah, because friends love it when they can be around their other friends without burning their nostrils off,” Gallus added, more or less catching on.

“Besides, it’s healthier! All that dirt and gunk can’t be good for you.”

“Or anyone else around you, for that matter.”

“Really?” Woofus considered this for a second then sighed, regarding the stream of shower water. Seeing he was considering it, Sandbar motioned Gallus to wait a moment. Finally, he held out a claw towards the running water, only to jerk it back the second it came in contact with it. “Ah! It’s hot!”

“Well, yeah!” Gallus declared in annoyance. “What, did you really want it to be cold?”

“I think he’s saying it’s too hot, Gallus,” Sandbar patiently clarified.

When Woofus nodded, Gallus sighed and reached over to the hot water knob, giving it a quick twist. “There, try it now.”

Woofus skeptically regarded the shower for a second, but he again reached out with the same claw, only to again whisk it back. “Ah! It’s lukewarm!”

“Oh, for crying out loud!” Gallus finally snapped and shoved Woofus into the spray.

Woofus yelped the moment the pelting water flowed over him and curled up into a ball on the floor, arms thrown over his head to vainly shield himself. Sandbar and Gallus, however, looked at how the water running off him had immediately turned black as tar. They exchanged grimaces, but nonetheless, they bent down to dig through a basket of cleaning supplies they had brought in. When they straightened again, they were wearing dust masks, rubber gloves, and both were equipped with a specific cleaning tool. For Sandbar, he held scrubbing brushes in both forehooves, while Gallus had armed himself with bars of soap.

“Ready?” Gallus asked the pony.

“Ready,” Sandbar responded.

They then dove, and soon Woofus yelped again as he went down under their scrubbing.

Meanwhile, the girls were outside, awaiting the results. The longer it dragged on though, the more anxious they seemed to get. Silverstream was particularly tense and had taken to pacing impatiently back and forth in front of the showers door.

“What if he’s actually nothing but dirt?” she asked the others at one point, worried. “And they just scrub him away into oblivion?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Sil,” Smolder replied. She sat on a bench on the other side of the hallway with Ocellus and Yona. Ocellus had pulled out a textbook to flip through and Yona had begun to play with her braids, but the dragoness was getting bored, propping her head up with one arm while wearily watching the hippogriff pace. “There’s a living and breathing creature under all that dirt and gunk, there’s gotta be.”

Silverstream didn’t seem too convinced though and bit her lip as she kept pacing, letting her mind devise even crazier worst-case scenarios to ponder. But at last, the door opened, and stepping out of the billowing cloud of steam was a slightly ruffled Gallus.

Silverstream was before him instantly. “Well?” she anxiously asked. “What’s the news? Is he going to make it?”

Gallus solemnly pulled off his dust mask. “There were a few complications, and it got to be a bit touch and go there for a bit,” he admitted seriously. He paused for dramatic effect, causing Silverstream to tense up, but then he smirked. “But yeah, I think he’s going to make it.”

He then stood to one side as Sandbar led the dazed but significantly cleaner Woofus out of the showers, a towel draped over his shoulders. Silverstream squeed loudly as the other girls rose to join them, grinning at the visible improvement.

“Hey, that’s loads better,” Smolder declared happily as she looked the Diamond Dog up and down. “How do ya feel, Woofus?”

Woofus looked himself over uncertainly. “…Floofy,” he decided. He sniffed his arm tentatively. “And now I smell so…” he sniffed it again, “…so…”

“…Clean?” Yona offered with a smile.

“…I guess,” Woofus admitted. He frowned as he continued looking himself over. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this…er…clean…before.”

“Well, I think it can only be a good thing,” Ocellus offered encouragingly, taking him in herself. “Your fur looks much healthier now, at the very least.”

“Yeah, I can’t quite recall, was it always that shade of grey?” Gallus asked, tilting his head. “Wasn’t it darker earlier? Or am I just imagining it?”

“Ooh!” Silverstream squealed as she circled around the Diamond Dog. “He’s also got spots going down his back! You couldn’t see that earlier!”

Ocellus moved around to look at the lighter-grey markings too. “Hmm, don’t such markings bear some sort of significance to Diamond Dogs? I seem to recall reading something like that once…”

“Uh…not in my pack,” Woofus offered quickly, looking uncomfortable. He pulled the towel tighter around his shoulders. “Can I have my collar and vest back now?”

“Oh yes, of course,” Ocellus said, remembering the dog’s only articles of clothing that he’d removed before showering. She floated Woofus’s collar over with her magic. “If you don’t mind, I did take the liberty of cleaning this for you.”

“Oh,” Woofus simply replied, examining it before fastening it around his neck again. “What about my vest?”

The girls all glanced at Smolder, who shuffled her feet sheepishly. “So, uh,” she began to explain, “I took your vest to Professor Rarity to see what she could do to…you know…touch it up a bit, since she’s the seamstress and all, but she said it was in such a state we might as well burn it. But then, after she had put out the flames and told me she hadn’t quite meant that literally, she was able to salvage enough to get the right measurements and quickly make a replacement.” She then offered this vest to Woofus. It appeared identical, except new, clean, and with tidier stitching. “Hope you don’t mind.”

Woofus examined the vest briefly then slipped it on, trading the towel out for it. “Well…it’ll do for now,” he conceded. He looked the group over. “You’re all doing an awful lot for someone you’ve never met before today.”

“That’s what friends do, Woofus,” Sandbar assured. “As we hope you’ll quickly learn here at the school.”

“That…is the hope,” Woofus admitted, making a small grin.

“Well then,” Gallus said as he clapped a pair of talons on the dog’s shoulder. “How about we all get to know each other more by showing you the school before we go back to the headmare, huh?”

The brief tour of the school went on from there without much event, but most of it was spent idly chatting. By the end, and once Woofus was turned back over to Twilight’s care (who was well-pleased by how much cleaner he was now), the Diamond Dog had become quite friendly with the other six students.

The following morning, while everyone was gathered for breakfast in the school’s dining hall, Twilight Sparkle formally introduced Woofus to the rest of the student body by making him stand and publically announce he would be joining classes today. Afterwards, as Woofus thankfully walked away from that daunting experience with his breakfast, seeking a place to sit, he was instead waved over by six familiar faces.

“Hey Woofie!” Silverstream called, being the most enthusiastic of the wavers. “Hey! We’re over here! Come sit here! Hey! HEY!”

Feeling compelled then, Woofus maneuvered his way over to their table. Upon arriving, Gallus patted the empty seat beside him. “Have a seat here, Woofus,” he suggested.

“Okay,” Woofus agreed and sat at the designated place.

“Well, you don’t have to sit there if you don’t want to, of course,” Ocellus added from where she and the other girls sat on the other side of the table.

“Diamond Dog could sit on this side!” Yona suggested as she munched on a bowl of oatmeal.

“Well, he’s already sitting on the guys’ side, so that’s settled,” Gallus stated.

“Doesn’t mean we can’t mix it up a bit,” Smolder reasoned. “Why do you guys always sit on the opposite side of the table from us?”

“Aw, lay off, Smolder,” Gallus urged. “You’re just sore the guys have one more to their side now.”

“Besides, it’s up to Woofus to sit wherever he likes,” Ocellus placated, and nodded to the dog. “And I’m sure he has a perfectly good reason to sit where he did.”

Woofus glanced blankly about as they looked to him. He then pointed at the girls’ side of the table. “There aren’t any more empty seats on that side of the table.”

They all glanced about and realized he was right. Then, abruptly, they all started laughing at their silliness. “Like I said,” Ocellus stated in-between her giggles, “A perfectly good reason.”

Woofus smiled and chuckled a little too.

Their first class was Professor Rarity’s generosity class, and today she set them about crafting a simple garment—ranging from scarves to hoof warmers to even a simple vest or jacket—to give to someone else in the class. Rarity even pulled out a box of gemstones they could use for decorations. When Silverstream went to the box for some though, she found the Diamond Dog rooting through it, stuffing gems into the nook of his other arm. He had already amassed a sizeable armful. “Boy, your garment is going to be more gem than garment at this point, Woofie!” she noted brightly.

Woofus stopped and looked at her blankly. “Huh?”

Silverstream pointed a talon at the gems in his arms. “You’ve just gathered up an awful lot of gems, is all. Are you planning to make a sequin-type thing?”

Woofus regarded the gems and started to blush. “Oh…um…” he admitted sheepishly, realizing that perhaps this wasn’t wise. Reluctantly, he started putting a few back. “Sorry…it’s a…Diamond Dog thing. When you’re offered gems with no strings attached, the tendency is to just sort of…grab and run…”

“Oh, that’s okay, the gems are here to be used, after all,” Silverstream stated, waving off the matter before sticking her head into the box to look. “What do Diamond Dogs do with all those gems, anyway?”

Woofus looked blank again. “We keep them,” he said, like it was the obvious thing.

“And then what do you do with them?”

“That’s it. We just…keep them.”

“Why?”

“…because they’re gems. Why else?”

“Oh.” Silverstream hummed to herself. “I thought it might because you’re like Smolder and eat them or something.”

Woofus went wide-eyed. “Smolder eats gems?”

Silverstream chose not to answer. “Anyway, I’m looking for some gems to decorate the hair bows I’m making for Yona,” she explained as she rooted through the box. She wasn’t immediately finding anything catching her eye though and sat up, rubbing her beak. “Maybe something that goes with her eyes…” she then spied a pair of gems out of the corner of her eye. “Like those!” she said, pointing at the pale-colored emeralds Woofus was still holding onto.

Woofus glanced down at them. “These?” he asked and instinctively tightened his grip on them. “But…”

“Well, if you already got plans for them, that’s okay too,” Silverstream assured happily, not missing a beat. “I’ll come up with something else, I’m sure.”

She resumed rooting, considering the matter settled. But Woofus hesitated for a moment, looking between the hippogriff and the gems in his arms. Finally he sighed, and set the gems down before Silverstream, looking up in mild surprise.

“Here,” he murmured sheepishly. “You need them more than I do.”

“Oh!” Silverstream remarked, scooping up the gems. “Thank you, Woofus! That’s rather generous of you…which of course is the whole point of this class, so…way to go!” She gave him a thumbs-up.

Woofus chuckled a little and grinned all the way back to his own workspace.

“Professor Fluttershy!” Yona shouted as she pushed Woofus into the classroom. “Meet new yak friend, Woofus! He new!”

Fluttershy turned from the bag of animal feed she was setting up and smiled gently. “Oh!” she said as the Diamond Dog was all but pressed into her face. “Well hello, Woofus, and welcome! Twilight told me you were going to be joining our classes.”

“Um…yes, hello,” Woofus replied sheepishly, feeling put on the spot while Yona beamed beside him, pleased with herself. “I’m…pleased to be here, too.”

“I’m glad,” Fluttershy said. She tilted her head at Woofus thoughtfully. “Diamond Dogs hail from differing packs, right? May I ask which pack you are from?”

Woofus froze at this. “Uh…”

“My friend Rarity met a few Diamond Dogs once some years back, and they live in the area of Rambling Rock Ridge,” Fluttershy continued. She bit her lip. “They weren’t…the friendliest bunch, I’m afraid, but, um…are you part of their pack?”

“Uh, no, uh…”

“Rainbow Dash once helped Starlight Glimmer’s friend Trixie at Dimondia, a Diamond Dog city that exists up north…are you possibly from there?”

“Dimondia? Uh, we do some trading with them, but no, my pack isn’t…”

“Then perhaps the Appaloosan Mountains? I’ve heard a pack exists up there.”

“No, no, uh, not there either…”

“Then perhaps in the Ghastly Gorge area? I believe Pinkie mentioned recently that her sister Maud found evidence of a pack out there…”

“NO!” The volume of his exclamation seemed to surprise even Woofus as Fluttershy reeled back, startled. Realizing this, the dog quickly started backtracking. “I mean, uh…”

Then Yona unwittingly came to his rescue. “Professor Fluttershy!” the yak declared as she peered into a carrier placed in the center of the classroom. “Yona work with snakes today? Yona loves snakes!” She stuck her hoof into the carrier and giggled as one of the snakes gently wrapped itself around her leg. “Snakes give hugs!”

“Oh, of course, Yona!” Fluttershy agreed as she stepped over, breaking off her conversation with Woofus, to his relief. “I just ask you keep a lookout for Twilight. She’s going to be dropping by to deliver new roll charts, but she’s just a teensy bit afraid of snakes, so…”

“AHH!”

All heads whipped around to see Twilight standing in the doorway, roll charts dropped and forgotten as her terrified eyes locked onto the snake around Yona’s leg.

“Too late,” Woofus couldn’t help but remark.

“Snakes!?” Twilight cried in fear as Fluttershy hurried over to calm her. “Why did it have to be snakes?!”

“Could you stop doing that?” Smolder grumbled to Woofus while munching on her lunch.

“Stop doing what?” Woofus asked back from across the table.

“Wincing every time I bite into my lunch,” Smolder replied, motioning to the selection of gems she was eating.

“But I’m not doing that.”

Smolder wearily gazed at him for a moment, then took ahold of an emerald and raised it up. She waved it back and forth, watching as Woofus’s eyes followed it like it was the most interesting thing in the world. She then brought it to her mouth to take a slow bite. The same time she did, Woofus’s face clearly twisted into a wince. Silverstream, watching from beside the dragoness, chuckled to herself. Smolder rolled her eyes at them both.

“Look, I get Diamond Dogs have this thing for gems,” she reasoned as she chewed. “But a dragon’s still gotta eat, kid.”

“I know,” Woofus conceded. He gazed longingly at the remaining gems. “It’s just…do you have to eat all of them?”

Smolder didn’t respond, instead keeping her eyes locked on him and popping the rest of the emerald into her mouth. Woofus winced again the moment her teeth were heard crunching into it, leading her to make a throaty growl. “Just what would you do with it, assuming I gave you one?”

“Keep it,” Woofus responded simply, like this answered everything.

Smolder waited for him to elaborate, but turned blank when he didn’t. “That’s it?”

“It’s a Diamond Dog thing,” Silverstream explained on Woofus’s behalf, munching on some sushi rolls.

Smolder frowned and gazed down at her gems, not convinced. “Keeping it but then not doing anything with it is like…wasting food,” she argued.

“By that logic, wouldn’t that mean Gallus collecting coins but then not doing anything with them is wasting money?” Silverstream reasoned. “Would that mean that Ocellus collecting quills in case she needs them but never actually uses are a waste of writing utensils? Would that mean the toothpicks Sandbar uses to make the odd toothpick model mean it’s a waste of things to pick your teeth with? Would that mean the erasers Yona collects because…actually, I don’t know why she hangs on to those, but she does, so does that mean it’s a waste of…whatever erasers are made out of? Would that mean—”

“I get it, Sil,” Smolder interrupted in a grumble.

“Look, it’s okay,” Woofus interjected, trying to defuse the situation. “They’re her gems, so…they’re hers to decide what to do with.” He turned back to focusing on his own food instead of Smolder’s.

“Exactly!” Smolder agreed, and happily considering it settled, she picked up a small round opal and popped it into her mouth. But she sighed wearily when she saw Woofus still flinch, despite his clear attempts to not let it bother him. She surveyed her gems again before silently glancing at Silverstream. The hippogriff merely shrugged, but gave her an encouraging smile. She looked back over her gems and at last selected one to reluctantly slide over to Woofus. “All right, you can have that one. It’s got an impurity in it anyway…even though the impurities give it a bit of kick, but…”

“Oh,” Woofus said, scooping up the gem and holding it up to the light to examine. “Thank you, Smolder. You…didn’t actually have to do that, you know…”

“Yeah, but I was tired of seeing you wince and it’s what friends do,” Smolder said, half-grinning. “Just don’t make a habit of this, mmkay?”

Woofus grinned a little back. “Okay,” he said, nodding, and turned back to examining the gem.

Smolder watched him for a bit before turning back to her lunch. Silverstream then leaned over, holding out a sushi roll. “Here, you can have some of my lunch to compensate!” she offered. “They’ve got watershrimp in them that I caught myself!”

“I’ll pass, thank you, Sil,” Smolder replied with a grin, more satisfied Woofus was content now.

“Right then, welcome, everyone!” Applejack greeted, addressing her class. “Got us some big plans t’ do t’day, and it all should be plenty of fun! But first, Ah wanna git our new student introduced t’ y’all.” She motioned a hoof at Woofus, who stiffened at the attention. “This here is Woofus. Now say hello to everybody, Woofus.”

Woofus blinked for a second, appearing confused. “Uh…hello to everybody, then?” he repeated uncertainly.

Applejack smirked. “Close enough,” she said before pressing on. “Now Woofus, it’s my tradition here t’ git new students t’ tell everyone a bit ’bout themselves. That way we all know ’bout each other an’ nobody needs t’ be a stranger, y’hear?” Woofus nodded, so Applejack nodded back, pleased. “All right then, let’s start with where ya’re from.”

Woofus, however, only froze and didn’t reply.

Applejack waited patiently for a second, but when he kept silent, she frowned. “Uh…are ya gonna tell us, Woofus?”

Woofus hesitated. “…no offense, but I’d prefer not to.”

Applejack’s frown deepened as she tilted her head at him. “Any particular reason why?”

“Um…no.”

“Look, iffen ya’re feelin’ shy or anythin’…”

“It’s not that. I just…don’t think it’s something important to tell.”

Applejack’s eyes turned slightly suspicious. “Where are ya from, Woofus?” she repeated.

Woofus again hesitated. “Nowhere of consequence.”

“Ah’d really like t’ know.”

“Um…get used to disappointment, then?” Woofus winced to himself.

Applejack studied the dog long and hard for a second, watching him wilt under her stern gaze. At last, she broke off the stare to address the class. “Ya know wut?” she said. “Ah changed my mind on wut we’re doin’. Everyone pull out some parchment, ’cuz we’re gunna do some quizzin’. Ah’m thinkin’ we all need a bit of a review on honesty t’day.”

The rest of the class groaned but did as instructed. Woofus, meanwhile, nervously kept his teacher in the corner of his gaze, not missing why she made this abrupt change in plans.

The next class went better for him, but as it was Pinkie Pie’s class and the general theme almost always involved sweets, it wasn’t hard to see why. Today, Pinkie had split the class into pairs to work together creating a dessert of their own choosing. Woofus was assigned to work with Gallus, and together they had combined a simple but flat and heavy Diamond Dog cake Woofus happened to know the recipe for with a fudge-type icing that Gallus claimed to have “invented” once during a previous class. This combination seemed to work well.

It at least got Pinkie’s approval. “Mmm!” she cooed after tasting a sample. “This is very good, you two! I just might have to get you both into the baking business.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Woofus said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head. “I’m…really not much of a cook. The cake part is really the only dessert I know how to make.”

“Hey, don’t sell yourself short,” Gallus said, giving him a nudge before addressing their teacher again. “Woofus was all over baking the cake part, leaving it simple to mix with my icing, which was what I was all over.”

“I can tell,” Pinkie remarked with a grin, shooting a glance at the griffon’s frosting flecked talons, clearly used to steal swipes from the fudgy frosting throughout making it. “But either way, you two both made a great team, and there’s nothing more fun than baking together with a friend! Used to do that all the time with my sisters back on the ol’ rock farm!”

Gallus perked up suddenly, remembering. “Speaking of which!” he interjected quickly before Pinkie could walk off. “Why does Equestria need rock farms?”

“Well, it’s really because…” Pinkie began to explain, but was interrupted by a sudden bang across the room.

They turned to see that the dish Smolder and Sandbar had been preparing had somehow exploded in a burst of flames, setting itself, part of the counter, and more importantly Smolder, aflame, leaving Sandbar in an absolute panic.

“Stop drop and roll, stop drop and roll!” he cried as he fumbled about, looking for something—anything—that would extinguish the flames.

“Dude! Dragon!” Smolder exclaimed back, frustrated but otherwise completely calm. She threw out her flaming arms. “Fireproof!”

“Oops! Sorry, Gallus, gotta run!” Pinkie declared as she rushed towards the scene.

Gallus didn’t reply as he was too busy banging his head on the counter while Woofus watched, with fascination, Pinkie grabbing a fire extinguisher and spraying Smolder down with off-white foam.

“So…all in all, how was your first day at the school, Woofus?” Sandbar asked that evening as he and the Diamond Dog both walked for their respective dorms.

Woofus reflected back on the day. “…eventful,” he conceded.

“In a good or bad way?”

“…good, I think.” Woofus considered it for a second longer and smiled. “Yeah. Good.” He shrugged. “Not entirely what I was expecting, but…”

Sandbar laughed. “Yeah, this school isn’t exactly like any other…but I think that’s part of the point. I guess you can’t teach friendship any other way.” They walked on for a moment. “So…I know it’s not really any of my business, but…why didn’t you want to tell Professor Applejack where you’re from earlier?”

Woofus winced and averted his gaze, feeling guilty. “It’s…just not something I really want to talk about,” he explained, shirking a direct answer.

Fortunately, Sandbar didn’t pry. “I guess I can understand that,” he said. “I just hope it’s both for a good reason and not because of anything…bad.”

Woofus gritted his teeth. “It’s sort of why I am here at all.”

“And…why are you here?”

Woofus paused, gazing around at the vaulted ceilings decorating most of the school’s corridors. “I’m hoping learning a bit more friendship will…help me build a better future.”

Sandbar went quiet as he pondered what Woofus meant by that. “Well…you’re at the right place, then.”

Woofus’s grin returned. “I hope so.”

Soon they arrived at the door of Woofus’s spartan dorm room. Before parting ways, Sandbar turned to the Diamond Dog. “Is there anything you need, Woofus?” he asked.

Woofus considered it. “…just some friends,” he answered simply.

Sandbar grinned and patted him on the shoulder. “Well, you’re already plenty covered there.” He then had a thought. “Hey, me and the others are going rock-hunting for an assignment tomorrow. You should come with.”

Woofus shrugged. “All right.”

“All right then,” Sandbar said back and turned to go. “Have a good night, and see you tomorrow morning!”

“Yeah,” Woofus replied and slipped into his room. He didn’t go straight to bed though, and instead stared out the window, lost in thought.

The following morning arrived without event, and after getting a good breakfast at the school cafeteria, the now-seven friends, with their bags all packed for their day trip, gathered at the Ponyville train station, ready to leave.

Woofus, who followed Sandbar here, was surprised. “We’re taking the train?” he asked, having not realized this in advance.

“Yeah, but not far, just a couple of miles to the south,” Sandbar assured. “It’ll be a short trip.”

“I hope so,” Gallus grumbled as he milled about, waiting for the train to arrive. “Admittedly, this isn’t exactly the greatest thing I could be doing this weekend.”

“Homework’s homework,” Smolder reminded with a shrug. “The sooner we get it over with, the sooner we can get to other things.”

“Speaking of,” Gallus said and turned to Woofus. “I imagine because you’re a Diamond Dog, you probably know a thing or two about rocks, right?”

Woofus shrugged modestly. “I know some geology, yes,” he confirmed.

“Good, so does Ocellus,” Gallus said, pointing at the changeling, currently with her snout buried in a book. “With the both of you helping, that’ll mean we can get this done in half the time.”

“Here comes train!” Yona suddenly exclaimed, standing at the other end of the platform, leaning her head over the tracks to watch its approach.

And sure enough, the train eased into the station, hissing steam as it halted before them. Woofus took a step back to take it all in, which prompted Silverstream to ask, “You ever been on a train before, Woofie?”

“I’ve been on something similar,” Woofus replied, thinking of mine cart trains. “Not as big as this, but…worked on the same principle.” He gazed down the train’s length. “Just…a little taken aback seeing it up close like this.”

“Heh, you should’ve seen when I first got to ride a train,” Silverstream giggled as she and the others lined up to board. “It was a new experience, so I was so excited!”

“I’m sure the squeals could be heard from miles around,” Smolder quipped with a grin.

“All aboard!” the conductor pony called as he stepped out the passenger car entrance and motioned for those waiting (which were few) to proceed. One by one, the group of seven entered the train with Woofus coming last. When his turn came, though, he realized the others had all been turning over tickets to ride, and now the conductor turned to the Diamond Dog. “Ticket please?” he asked politely.

Woofus, however, had no ticket, and as he patted his pockets, he found he had brought no money to pay for one. He was just starting to think the worst when Gallus poked his head back into view. “No worries, Woofus, I’ve gotcha,” the griffon said, handing over a few bits to the conductor for the fare then adding, “He’s with us.”

The conductor nodded and allowed Woofus aboard. “Have a nice trip,” he said.

And in good spirits thanks to Gallus looking out for him like this, Woofus found he did indeed have a good trip on the train, most of which was spent learning to play a hippogriff card game Silverstream had taught the others. After a couple rounds to familiarize himself, he started to successfully win a few. But as promised, the ride was relatively short and a half hour later they were stepping off again onto a new station platform…if one could call it that. It was really more a large, elevated, rectangle of wood than anything. There was no ticket stand, or even a bench to sit on, just a small water tower and a sign identifying the train platform. It was clear the platform didn’t see many visitors.

A fact Sandbar decided to point out. “You know, we’re probably the most creatures who’ve been here at one time in weeks,” he remarked, gazing around at the lonely region.

“True, but it’s also understandable,” Ocellus conceded. “Ghastly Gorge isn’t known to be the most…hospitable…of locations.”

Woofus, who had been watching the train leave, abruptly spun around. “Wait, what did you say?”

“Well, there are several things keeping everyone from trying to populate the region,” Ocellus explained, misinterpreting Woofus’s question while the grey dog started taking in the land for the first time. “The sparse vegetation, the high winds, the rocky terrain…”

“…the quarray eels…” Gallus added.

“Yeah, but those are in the gorge itself, and we agreed not to go anywhere near there,” Smolder said, hopping off the platform and onto the dusty ground surrounding it.

“No, no, no!” Woofus clarified as he raced ahead to block the paths of the others. “I mean—no one said we were going to Ghastly Gorge!”

“I didn’t tell you?” Sandbar remarked, surprised. “I could’ve sworn I did…”

“We can’t stay here!” Woofus stressed, looking around nervously, as if something would sneak up on them.

“Dude, chill,” Gallus said, moving to step around Woofus. “If we work quick, this hopefully won’t take long, and we still need to finish our homework, so…”

“No, we need to leave, right now!” Woofus pressed, hurriedly moving to stop Gallus. “What if we get caught? We could—”

“Get caught by who?” Silverstream inquired, confused. “The quarray eels?”

“Dude, I just said those live in the gorge itself,” Smolder repeated. “And we’re not stupid, we know better than to wander into there. We’re just going to stay out here, outside the gorge, keeping a respectable distance. We probably won’t even wander too far from the train platform.” She motioned to the wooden platform before drawing herself up proudly. “Besides, even if we do run into trouble, they’ll have to get through me first.”

“Yona help stop trouble too!” Yona volunteered happily, clapping Woofus on the shoulder with enough force that it felt like it should’ve driven him waist-deep into the ground. “Nothing harm yak friends! This yak promise!”

“Besides, we can’t leave, not unless you intend to walk back to Ponyville,” Gallus added with an apologetic shrug. “The next train isn’t due to come by for…how long is it again, Sandbar?”

Sandbar pulled out a pocket watch from his saddlebag and consulted it. “About another hour.” Then upon putting it away again, the earth pony approached Woofus reassuringly. “Look, Woofus, if you’re too nervous, that’s okay. We just asked you to come because you’re a friend, but you don’t have to participate if you don’t want.”

“If you’d prefer, you can stay here at the platform and wait until we’re ready to go or the next train arrives, whichever comes first,” Ocellus added, trying to compromise.

“But seriously, there’s no danger,” Smolder also added. “If there was, you can bet your last gem that we sure as heck wouldn’t be out here doing this.” She also patted Woofus on the shoulder. “Everything will go okay, you’ll see.”

Seeing that none of this seemed to be reassuring him, though, Sandbar studied the Diamond Dog for a second, concerned. “Is there something else bothering you, Woofus?” he asked.

Woofus fidgeted to himself then shook his head. “…no.” He met the gazes of the others. “I…guess if you do just stay near here, then…”

“Look, we’ll be just over there,” Ocellus promised, pointing with one hoof at a line of shrubbery about a hundred meters from the platform. “If you’re up for it, you can come join us, or if you don’t, you can wait for us to come back here to the platform, okay?”

Woofus hesitated, sitting down. “Well…I guess…”

He didn’t speak further, so eventually the others looked to one another and started to walk off . It was clear they weren’t really thrilled leaving Woofus behind like this though, so much so that Sandbar hesitated, then doubled back to remain with the dog.

“Look, I don’t want to leave you alone like this,” Sandbar began.

But Woofus shook his head. “No, no,” he said and unconvincingly waved the pony on. “Don’t let me stand in your way.”

Sandbar still hesitated. “But we’re still friends, aren’t we? And friends don’t leave other friends behind.”

Woofus sighed, hanging his head. “I suppose I don’t want to fail to show support a second time…” he mumbled under his breath.

Sandbar, not sure he heard the dog’s mumbling clearly, tilted his head at him. “…what?”

Woofus didn’t clarify. “Okay,” he said, standing up to join Sandbar. “I’ll come with.” He looked back at the train platform. “It’d…probably be boring sitting there alone, anyway.”

Sandbar grinned. “I’d imagine so,” he said, then nodded his head towards the others, already gone on without them. “C’mon, before the others get too far ahead.”

Once they had caught up with the others, Woofus proved useful in locating likely spots to find rocks for their assignment, and he’d happily team up with Smolder, their other best digger, to scrape away at the dirt when needed. Nonetheless, the Diamond Dog seemed no more at ease than when they first arrived, constantly looking over his shoulder in dread and jumping at every little noise.

“Honestly, Woofie, what’s got you so on edge?” Silverstream asked finally, tilting up the brim of the sunhat she was wearing so to see him better. “Do the quarray eels really make you that nervous, even though we’re nowhere near where they live?”

“It’s not the eels that I’m worried about,” Woofus admitted, nervously scanning the terrain.

Meanwhile, Yona was getting frustrated by another problem. “Yona not finding right rocks!” she grumbled, throwing down another rock that didn’t match their list. “Rocks being annoying! Yak smash!” She angrily stomped on the unyielding rock a couple times.

Ocellus was consulting one of her textbooks, trying to find a solution. “We might have to move to another spot, try our luck there,” the changeling admitted. She turned her gaze to their surroundings. “I’m just not sure where might be the best place to look.”

“Anybody got any ideas, then?” Sandbar hazarded to ask.

“Betcha we’d find plenty thattaway,” Smolder suggested as she dusted off her claws, pointing east towards a nearby plain of jagged rock outcroppings. It lay closer to the rim of the gorge, but still far enough away to not be concerning. “I’ve got a feeling in my gut that’d be the place to look.”

“Smolder may be right,” Ocellus reasoned, looking in the same direction. “That area looks like it could be more geologically diverse.”

Woofus, however, disagreed. “I think we should go that way,” he suggested, pointing in the almost completely opposite direction, further away from the gorge where a few more trees grew.

Gallus, wiping his brow, studied the alternate spot. “It would be a bit shadier at least,” he noted wistfully.

“Yona think it be as good a place as any,” Yona reasoned. She glanced towards Smolder’s proposed spot. “So could other spot.”

“Well, we can’t go to both spots,” Smolder grumbled, folding her arms. “Not with the time we have left.”

“Actually we might be able to, if we split up,” Sandbar suggested.

Woofus seemed appalled by this idea. “Spilt-up? Are you certain?”

“Only into two groups, of course, so there’d still a good number to either group,” Sandbar clarified. “But that way we’d double our odds of finding the remaining rocks we need.”

“So…we could finish faster that way?” Gallus asked, perking up.

“Maybe,” Ocellus stressed.

“Maybe’s good enough for me, so let’s do it!”

“Okay, so I was thinking we’d just have the girls in one group and the guys in the other,” Sandbar suggested.

“Aw, but that doesn’t seem fair, we outnumber you four to three!” Silverstream pointed out.

“Counting Woofus means we have an uneven seven in our group anyway, so it’s never going to be an even split,” Ocellus pointed out.

“So how about this, then?” Silverstream removed her sunhat and, flipping it over, handed it to Woofus. She then reached into her bag and pulled out a smaller bag of marbles.

“Why do you have those?” Sandbar asked.

“In case of marble emergency,” Silverstream answered while selecting out seven distinctly colored marbles from within.

“You’ve been hanging around Professor Pinkie Pie too much,” Gallus quipped with a smirk.

Silverstream held out the marbles. “Everybody pick one and remember what color it is,” she said. “Then drop it into the sunhat.” Everybody did so, at which point Silverstream took the overturned hat back from Woofus, shaking the marbles within. “Now I’ll have Woofus start picking marbles out at random. First one will go in the group heading east, the second will go in the group heading west, and so on, alternating until we run out. Deal?”

“Deal,” her friends repeated almost as one, with exception for Woofus, clearly still having misgivings.

But he didn’t stop them either, so with Silverstream holding the hat and comically keeping her eyes closed so to not accidentally peek, Woofus reached into the hat and pulled out the marbles one by one, determining who would go where. By the time they had finished, Gallus, Woofus, and Yona were all in the group to head west, while the rest were in the group heading east.

As this meant Sandbar would be the only male in his group though, it didn’t take long before he started taking flak for it. “C’mon Sandbar,” Smolder teased, wrapping an arm around the pony as they started off. “Looks like we’ve got you all to ourselves.”

Sandbar’s ears turned red. “Uh…” he faltered uncertainly, twisting his head around to pleadingly look at Gallus.

Gallus, however, merely smirked. “Hey, you’re the lucky one here, Sandy,” the griffon remarked. “You’re getting all the ladies, but me and Woofus are just stuck with Yona.”

Yona swatted him on the back for this, but hit him harder than intended and ended up bowling him over.

Woofus helped the griffon up. “I still do not like the idea of splitting up like this,” he protested softly.

“Aw, don’t sweat it, Woofus,” Gallus assured, turning to lead him and Yona to the west. “Nothing will happen, we’ll head home happy, and our homework completed. You’ll see.”

Woofus, lagging behind, kept glancing back at the others. “I hope you are right,” he mumbled, worried what would happen if his fears instead came to pass.

Heading east proved fruitful for Sandbar, Ocellus, Silverstream, and Smolder, and were soon uncovering plenty of samples of rocks they needed, with exception of two still eluding them. However, their progress was hampered slightly by the fact that Smolder, who was doing all the digging, kept realizing she was about to dig into some kind of hollow space directly underneath. As she didn’t know how big or deep this cavity might be, she’d stop short and move to a new location for everyone’s safety, only to face the same problem again a few minutes later.

“There must be some sort of cave network sitting right under us or something,” she muttered as she clambered out of her latest hole, again having to stop short before digging into this cavity. “Whatever it is, it has to be pretty sizeable.”

“I suppose it’d make sense, though,” Ocellus commented as she surveyed for a new spot to dig. “The quarray eels are obviously a burrowing species, and they’re said to have tunnels all throughout Ghastly Gorge.” She frowned, turning to gaze towards said gorge, still several hundred feet away, and looking puzzled. “But…I didn’t think they’d have tunnels this far from the gorge’s rim or this close to the surface.”

“Maybe we should call it off and go join up with the others,” Silverstream suggested, as she and Sandbar gathered up their things in preparation to move again. “If these tunnels really are made by quarray eels, what happens if one suddenly came along?”

Smolder shrugged. “Well, we either beat it to a pulp…”

“…or we all get swallowed alive?” Sandbar offered knowingly, who like Silverstream, didn’t relish the idea of facing any of the eels. “I think Sil’s got a point. It might be smarter to go join the others, see if we can have just as good luck there.”

“You just don’t want to be stuck alone with all of us girls,” Smolder teased, and after smirking as the sight of the pony’s ears turning red yet again, nudged Ocellus to follow her. “C’mon Ocellus, let’s try digging by that big boulder. I’m feeling lucky about it.”

“We’ll catch up in just a second!” Silverstream promised as she and Sandbar continued gathering up their things.

But they scarcely had finished before they heard Ocellus suddenly shout in alarm and both turned in time to see Smolder and Ocellus vanish into a hole that opened up in the ground where they were digging. Alarmed, both darted towards it only to skid a halt as they saw, to their great surprise, two big, burly, and armored Diamond Dogs brandishing spears clamber out. A third then appeared part way out of the hole, trying to pin down Ocellus as she struggled to get free.

“Sandbar, Silverstream!” Ocellus shouted at the pair. “Run!”

She was then dragged back out of view. Hundreds of questions were already springing to mind, but there wasn’t time to ask them as the remaining two dogs were already rapidly approaching to catch them too. Panicked, Sandbar and Silverstream quickly fled, but did so in time to see two more Diamond Dogs, dressed and armed similarly to the first, racing towards them from the other direction. Outnumbered and not sure where they had come from, Sandbar darted to one side of the dog closest to him, slipping around him and quickly galloping west as fast as he could go. Silverstream attempted to do the same, but the other Diamond Dog moved to block her, brandishing his spear. With a yelp, Silverstream dodged the crystal spearhead then, in a panic, slapped the spear’s staff downwards and away from her. In so doing, she inadvertently caused the butt end to swing upwards right between the dog’s legs.

As he yelped and doubled over in pain, Silverstream jumped up and used the dog’s back as a springboard, spreading her wings. Once airborne, she saw Sandbar attempting to flee the other guard and quickly swooped to the rescue, grabbing him around the middle and carrying him off. The pursuing Diamond Dogs attempted to give chase from the ground—one even threw his spear at them—but even though Sandbar’s weight was keeping her altitude low, Silverstream successfully kept out of reach. Lacking any other ideas, she then turned to fly off for help, soon outrunning the dogs.

Author's Note

I see FIMFiction's altered how the formatting is automatically handled and majorly changed the amount of prep I have to do for one chapter yet since the last time I uploaded a chapter again...

Anyway, welcome to this, a new story! As stated in the description, this was a collaborative effort with Rated Ponystar, who first approached me about doing a project something like this about halfway to two-thirds of the way through my last fic, and after we batted around a whole number of different ideas, eventually settled on this one. He came up with the initial premise and various input and ideas about how the plot might run, and I...well, I guess I did basically everything else, BUT his input and support throughout the whole thing was invaluable, so I was insistent that he get his share of the credit. :twilightsmile:

This fic was originally supposed to be a oneshot, but, in typical Scyphi fashion, ended up being way longer than any reasonable length for a oneshot, so instead it's getting broken up into five parts. As the fic is already fully written, these will be uploaded daily, so come back this time tomorrow for Part II!

Part II

“…I’m just saying, why would anyone ever need a rock farm, let alone all of Equestria?” Gallus remarked skeptically as he examined a chunk of rock.

“I suppose they must need all the rocks they…er…grow for something,” Woofus reasoned as he sorted through some other rocks they had dug up.

“Yeah, but I’m just at a loss as to why, and I can’t seem to get anyone to tell me,” Gallus mumbled before dumping the clump into his bag with a sigh.

“Silly Gallus!” Yona declared faithfully, checking off an item on their list. “Ponies grow rocks so to build mountains!” She pointed her hoof at such a mountain standing on the horizon.

“I’m…pretty sure it’s not the ponies who make the mountains, Yona,” Gallus mumbled.

Yona stomped her hoof in disapproval. “Yes it is!” she declared. “Unicorn ponies make magic, pegasus ponies make clouds, and earth ponies make mountains!” She again jabbed her hoof at the distant mountain.

Woofus frowned, uncertain. “I…thought earth ponies grew plants or something like that…” he mumbled uncertainly, knowing he was no expert. “Maybe we should ask an earth pony…like Sandbar!”

Gallus snorted as he bent down to scoop up another rock from the Diamond Dog. “Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, Sandy’s not here to ask right now. So unless he’s going to just suddenly drop by, you’ll have to wait and pose that question to him on the way back.”

That was when Sandbar abruptly dropped out of the sky with a yell, landing in Yona’s thick fur before rolling off and flopping onto the ground with a groan.

“Greetings, Sandbar pony!” Yona welcomed cheerily, completely unfazed as Gallus and Woofus both spun around to stare.

“Hi, Yona,” Sandbar mumbled, off-kilter as he shakily attempted to stand up again. “Head spinning…talk later…”

Silverstream then swooped down into the middle of the group in a complete tizzy. “Others! East! Diamond Dogs! Spears! Help! Go! Must!” she gasped in bursts as she gulped down air at the same time, trying to soothe her burning lungs.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, calm down, Sil!” Gallus urged anxiously, not following but clearly seeing it was urgent. “Take a deep breath, then, using complete sentences, tell us what the heck’s going on!”

Silverstream paused to draw in a comically deep inhale before trying again. “We were attacked by Diamond Dogs! They got Smolder and Ocellus!”

“Diamond Dogs?” Gallus repeated in shock, exchanging bewildered expressions with Yona.

However, Woofus’s expression was one of dread. “Oh no,” he mumbled darkly, and without waiting, abruptly about faced and raced off.

“Wait, Woofus!” Gallus called after him. He started to give chase, the others following. “What’s going on?”

“Just follow me!” Woofus commanded as he ran. “I will explain later!”

“Yona hopes he does,” Yona mumbled as they galloped off to help their friends. “Because Yona has no clue what going on.”

In the meantime, things hadn’t gone so well for Ocellus and Smolder. When the ground collapsed out from under them, it dropped them into a tunnel right in front of a group of Diamond Dogs. From the armor, they were likely some kind of patrol, but whoever they were, they didn’t take kindly to intruders. Ocellus and Smolder both tried to escape, but they were caught unprepared. Though Ocellus was slippery to restrain thanks to her changeling nature, one dog pinned her by throwing himself atop of her and knocking her head in the process, stunning her. Smolder, meanwhile, fought back like any good dragon would. But being outnumbered, she was eventually overpowered too, realizing she probably should’ve made use of her wings and flown away when she had the chance like Silverstream.

Now, tied up back to back on the surface next to the cave-in, what stuff they had with them confiscated, and under guard by three of the Diamond Dogs while the fourth went looking for Sandbar and Silverstream and the fifth to fetch additional help, the changeling and dragon could only sit, wait, and look for some way out of this mess.

Smolder kept wrinkling her nose. “These guys smell worse than Woofus first did,” she observed aloud.

“Ooh,” Ocellus mumbled, the back of her head still throbbing.

“You okay?” Smolder asked, trying to twist around to see her friend.

“I think so,” Ocellus replied. “I have quite a headache, though…I’m not bleeding, am I?”

Smolder tried to get a good look. “Not that I can tell…but I bet you’re going to have a wicked good bump back there.”

“No talking!” one of the Diamond Dogs commanded, brandishing his spear at them.

“Oh, put a sock in it!” Smolder snapped back.

“Smolder,” Ocellus hissed, not wanting to make their situation worse.

“I’ll talk as much as I want to, Ocellus!” Smolder persisted before looking back at the Diamond Dog, moving his spear to focus on her. Her eyes took in the gemstone spearhead. “Hey, wait—is that diamond you’ve made the head of that thing out of?”

“Yeah,” the Diamond Dog growled, poking Smolder in the snout with it. “And you keep this up, you just might get a taste of it too!”

Smolder grinned cheekily. “Well, why didn’t you just say so?” She then took a hearty bite right out of the diamond spearhead. She crunched on it thoughtfully for a moment while the dog stared at her, flabbergast. “Mm…you haven’t aged this diamond very well. You know, it’d be more resilient if you did.”

“Smolder, please don’t give them tips on how to better assault us,” Ocellus muttered.

Smolder swallowed. “That’s okay, all this digging in the dirt has worked up my appetite anyway,” she smirked as the dog helplessly regarded the now half a spearhead he held.

But further antagonizing of their guards was halted when their other friends appeared, running onto the scene. “Hey, let them go, you creeps!” Sandbar shouted as they ran up.

“There you all are, what kept you?” Smolder shouted back at them.

The guards didn’t back off though, and instead encircled their prisoners, holding their spears (whole or not) threateningly at their throats. “No closer, or else!” one of the three shouted, and the fourth was seen hurrying onto the scene to assist.

As this still left the dogs outnumbered, they slowed but didn’t halt their approach…until Woofus hurried ahead to stand between the two sides, motioning for both to stop.

His presence clearly surprised the guards. “Sir Woofus!” one of them declared in surprise.

Silverstream’s eyes went wide. “They know him?” she whispered to her friends, stunned.

“Stand down!” Woofus ordered the other Diamond Dogs. “They’re with me, and they meant no harm!”

But the other Diamond Dogs only looked to one another, clearly conflicted. “Sir, with respect, they caused a tunnel collapse, and we already have standing orders to capture and detain any potential troublemakers, therefore, with your departure…”

Woofus sighed, nodding. “I see,” he remarked, slowly closing the gap between them, with the others cautiously following. “Then if you agree that you will not harm them or any of my cohorts here, we will voluntarily surrender and ask to come before the administrative staff, so to work it out with them.”

“Wait, surrender?” Gallus hissed to Woofus.

“Trust me, Gallus,” Woofus hissed back. “It will all work out.”

The Diamond Dogs looked to one another, then one by one, nodded their heads. “Agreed!” their chosen speaker said, “But they must be kept under our guard.”

“Understood, I am sure they will not cause trouble,” Woofus said, giving the others a knowing look.

Reluctantly, they silently nodded in agreement too, allowing the Diamond Dogs to reposition themselves so to encircle them all. Rather than untie Ocellus and Smolder, one of the burlier of the dogs simply picked them up and threw them over a shoulder to carry like a sack of potatoes.

Smolder took issue with this. “Hey, I am NOT a knapsack!” she complained, squirming against her bonds, ineffectively bouncing her body off the dog’s back. Then later, almost like an afterthought, she added, “and neither’s Ocellus!…though I suppose she could become one if she really wanted to, being a changeling and all…”

“I think it’d better to be cooperative for the moment, Smolder,” Ocellus reasoned gently as the dogs started to lead the whole group away.

“You two are okay, right?” Silverstream asked the captured pair as they went. “Any serious injuries?”

“Well, nothing but my pride,” Smolder replied, Ocellus nodding in support of this remark. “And hopefully it’ll stay that way.”

Nobody could argue with that.

As it was apparently the closest way in now, they were all filed through the small cave-in going underground. Once inside, they found themselves in a decently sized tunnel leading steadily downward. There wasn’t too much to note about it except it clearly saw infrequent use, and once the light from the opening faded from view, it was lit by a series of magically glowing gemstones embedded at periodic places in the walls. Most important though was that the tunnel was clearly artificially made, and it wasn’t hard to figure out who had dug it. But this only intensified the growing mystery.

“I was right, there are caves down here,” Smolder muttered quietly, taking the time to look around as they marched. She glanced at an adjoining tunnel as they passed. “A whole network of them, just like I thought. We were just unlucky enough to stumble across one running too close to the surface.”

“But…why Diamond Dogs make tunnels?” Yona asked her friends in a soft whisper. “Do they live here?”

Puzzled, but suspecting he already knew the answers, Sandbar navigated himself a bit closer to Woofus. “Woofus, what is going on?” he asked seriously.

“Shush,” Woofus quietly hushed, but he was sympathetic. “I know you have questions, and I promise to explain…but later, after we’ve got this sorted.”

Silverstream had been silently pondering upon all of this for a few moments. “Woofus,” she began delicately, “these Diamond Dogs…are they part of your pack? Is your pack living here, at Ghastly Gorge?”

Woofus’s hesitation was clear. “Just please keep quiet and follow my lead,” he answered instead. “Now’s not the time to be discussing this.”

They continued silently marching down the winding tunnel for some time. They had been going for long enough that it was starting to become difficult to tell how far they had journeyed and just how deep underground they now were. But then their captors led them around a sharp turn and the tunnel suddenly opened up into a much more massive chamber, in which snugly sat a veritable Diamond Dog town, perhaps of similar size to that of Ponyville. The outskirts contained a random collection of huts and small fields farming basic crops, which it appeared could grow thanks to the use of glowing gemstones mounted on poles. These were similar to the gemstones that largely lit the cavern except they looked and felt like they more closely simulated natural sunlight.

Further inward the population grew denser, the modest fields giving way to a collection of stone-built buildings simplistic in design except decorated with blue sapphires for trim, all serving the same variety of purposes you’d expect to find in a typical small town. These structures ran on until it met with and ran partway up the sides of a massive naturally formed stone pillar roughly near the center of the chamber, providing its support. On the side of the pillar facing them was a roughly castle-shaped structure built right into it, running up about half its length. Behind the pillar, a dainty but noteworthy waterfall could be seen gushing out an adjoining cavern and into the chamber, pouring into a small river than ran from one side of the chamber, behind the pillar, and to the other side where it emptied into a small underground lake. More cavern openings could be seen lining the walls of the chamber, some appearing lightly guarded, and suggesting that this massive chamber served as the nexus point. All in all, it was quite a sight, and the group of friends were taken aback. Gallus even let out a low whistle.

“Okay, this isn’t quite like anything else I’ve heard other Diamond Dogs achieving,” Sandbar noted aloud.

Woofus quietly glanced back at them for a second, an internal debate taking place behind his eyes. Finally, he spoke as he looked ahead again. “Welcome to Sapphiria, then.”

Their guards led them right through the middle of the town, giving them plenty of opportunity to take it in, but it also made them aware of the strong scent of Diamond Dogs well overdue for baths hanging thick in the chamber. Clearly, this was something of a trend with the inhabitants, so much so it was starting to become clear why Woofus had been in such a similar state when he first arrived at the school. But they otherwise proceeded to the castle structure without incident, and before long were slipping inside it. They entered through its bottommost level, but promptly started to climb a long staircase leading to the castle’s upper levels.

Yona was getting winded by the time they reached the top. “Yona there yet?” she panted, then shooting a glare back at one of the guards when he poked her with his spear to keep her moving.

“Almost,” Woofus promised, but at the same time he had begun to frown. “Though why they’re taking us specifically to the throne room when we asked to meet with the administrative staff…”

At last, they arrived at a pair of sapphire-rimmed double doors, guarded by a pair of burly Diamond Dogs similar to their escorts, except these were adorned with gold-colored armor. Their lead escort quickly whispered an explanation to the closest royal guard, who nodded and he and his companion pushed open the doors for them, following the visitors inside.

“Your majesty, forgive the interruption, but these creatures have requested your audience,” one of the royal guards proclaimed as they entered.

As throne rooms went, this one wasn’t especially fancy, but placed on a raised podium just before a balcony entrance was a magnificent throne appearing to be carved straight out of pure sapphire. Seated in it was a slender male Diamond Dog, only a little older than Woofus. His fur was predominately a black-grey mixture except for his belly and most of his face which was colored a pure white, especially around the eyes and snout. He was dressed in a gold-colored gem-studded collar and an overcoat-like jacket studded with sapphires along the hems. He regarded his visitors with disinterest and annoyance as he rose to meet them. Gallus, Ocellus, Smolder, Sandbar, Yona, and Silverstream all regarded him back with fairly neutral expressions, unsure what to make of him.

But not Woofus. The moment he set eyes on this dog, his eyes went wide with shock and recognition. “…Husky?” he breathed in astonishment.

The dog, Husky, locked eyes with him and immediately they darkened. “Woofus,” he growled back. He stepped down from the podium and started to approach. “You have a lot of nerve to come back here.”

Woofus, however, was still attempting to process this apparently unexpected twist. “Husky?” he repeated again. “How…what are you doing on the throne?”

“Well, when you chose to leave it vacant, that left me free to fill it,” Husky growled back. Catching on to the implications of this statement, the others all looked to Woofus in surprise. Neither dog offered any sort of explanation though as Husky looked Woofus over. “You smell weird.”

“It is called ‘clean,’” Woofus explained patiently.

“What’s…‘clean?’”

“It’s something the Equestrians seem to be very big on.”

“This explains so much,” Gallus mumbled under his breath.

Husky heard, drawing his attention onto the others, and he idly nodded his head at them. “Who are these outsiders you’ve brought with you, anyway?”

“They were stalking around outside, being suspicious,” one of the guards offered. “Two of them caused a small cave-in in one of the entry tunnels, and we suspect the others were trying to do something similar.”

“They’re innocent,” Woofus quickly interjected, remembering why he was here in the first place, and moved to stand protectively before his new friends. “They didn’t know Sapphiria was here, they are just students working on a school project. They’re no threat to you, Husky.”

“Is that why you’re here?” Husky asked. “Pleading for their mercy?”

“…yes.”

“What really makes you think I’ll listen to you any more than them?”

“Husky, I didn’t know you’d be here. I was expecting to meet before the administrative staff because…”

“…because you thought they’d still be filling in for you, after you left?”

Woofus was quiet for a moment. “Please let them go free, Husky.”

“And why should I?” Husky eyed him again. “Who are they to you?”

Woofus lowered his gaze a little. “They’re friends.”

Husky laughed a single, cold, mocking laugh as he turned to a small table, pouring himself a drink. “Friends…that’s rich, Woofus, it really is.” He gulped down some of his drink before addressing the others. “A word to the not-so wise then,” he remarked coldly. “Ditch Woofus sooner rather than later. He’ll only disappoint you.”

Offended by that, Silverstream started to speak up, but Sandbar quickly put a hoof over her beak, thinking it’d be better they kept quiet.

“Please leave them out of this, Husky,” Woofus pleaded again when Husky still didn’t show any favor. “I could ask you who are they to you too, after all.”

Husky suddenly slammed down his cup, temper rising, and whirled onto Woofus. “Who is anyone to you, Woofus?” he demanded. “You aren’t there for anyone.”

Woofus’s gaze was a mix between apologetic, ashamed, and stern. “I’m sorry for what happened, Husky,” he said slowly. “If there was a way I could change it…”

“Oh, don’t even!” Husky growled, advancing. “You weren’t there when I needed you, Woofus! You were too busy trying to run the land, and then you decided you couldn’t even do THAT, and you just left! If I hadn’t taken it upon myself to fill the spot you vacated and showed to our pack that I could do the job, what do you think would’ve happened to Sapphiria then?” He shook his head. “I don’t owe you anything right now, so why should I be doing you any favors?”

“This is about me, Husky,” Woofus implored, trying to strike a deal. “Not them. Don’t punish innocent creatures from lands beyond our own whose leaders might take issue over their disappearance! If you let them go, I promise I’ll stay here, and then you can punish me however you see fit.”

“Woofus—” Ocellus started to object, having to twist in her bindings to try and see what was happening.

Husky interrupted her. “Are you really trying to say that they actually mean something to you, Woofus?” he asked, pointing a claw at the dog’s friends. “That they are actually your friends?”

Woofus nodded. “Yes,” he answered simply. “And I want to spare them having to suffer for my mistakes that they had nothing to do with.”

Husky debated for a moment, then snorted and turned away, heading back for his throne. “Too bad,” he grumbled as he walked off before addressing the guards. “Lock them all away.”

The four guards didn’t waste any time and roughly moved in front of the group to start herding them out. The others, alarmed, all looked to Woofus for guidance, but he wasn’t sure what else to do but dig his paws into the floor and protest. “No, wait, Husky!” he called to the other dog. “Husky! Husky!”

But Husky paid him no further attention, sitting back down on his throne and turning his attention back to what appeared to be paperwork. He completely ignored Woofus’s shouts as they were ushered out of the room, the doors closing behind them.

This didn’t stop Woofus from trying though, struggling to force his way past the restraining guards. “Husky! Don’t do this! You don’t need to imprison anyone! Husky! Please, hear me out!” One of the guards gave Woofus a shove so to silence him, but he shoved back. “Let me go! Let me back in there! Let me talk this out with him!”

Silverstream gently reached out to take him by the shoulder. “Woofus, I don’t think it’s going to matter now,” she observed sadly.

Woofus glanced back at her, dejected, but as the guards moved them further away, he kept trying to press his way back. “No,” he declared. “No, I’m not letting him just lock you all up for no reason other than he’s trying to take it out on me! This wasn’t at all what I was expecting to happen! He must listen to me!” But his struggles proved mostly fruitless—the guards barring his path stood firm and only continued to herd them away without any real effort exerted.

Then Gallus took Silverstream’s spot at Woofus’s shoulder. “Speaking of,” he said in a surprisingly wily tone. “That deal you struck with these guys so to get down here, about surrendering if we didn’t resist? I assume that’s all off now and we’re all free to, well, resist?”

Woofus hesitated, not following. “…yes?”

It was answer enough. “All right then,” Gallus said, and smugly turned. “Yona?”

Yona, who had mostly been following the group idly and without resistance up to now, buckled down with a smirk. “Yak smash!” she declared before promptly headbutting the nearest guard, bowling him over.

The others then proceeded to jump, tackle, and occupy the remaining three guards, breaking up them almost immediately. His path now suddenly clear, Woofus exploited the chaos and ran for the throne room again, only to skid to a halt as he found the two royal guards charging to join the fray with more rushing in to blockade the doors. Realizing only more still would be coming as the alarm was raised, Woofus instead decided that since they were about to be outnumbered anyway, they should flee and try to escape while they still held an advantage.

He raced back to the others, motioning to come with. “Follow me, quickly!” he urged, picking up a fallen spear as he did.

Gallus twirled a spear he had also snagged and tucked it under his wing. “Right behind you!” he said, pushing Sandbar and Silverstream in the direction Woofus was running.

Smolder and Ocellus were, up to now, still tied up and dandling from the back of the Diamond Dog carrying them. But Smolder changed this by blowing a stream of firebreath down at the bindings, burning right through them. Almost immediately she sprung free as the rope snapped. The rope binding Ocellus remained in place, spared from the flames, but she too broke free from the part their guard was using as a handle and flopped onto the floor. Alarmed and fearing he was on fire, the guard didn’t immediately notice as he tried (and failed) to pat-down his back, so Smolder used the distraction to shove him into a group of other guards racing up, tumbling into a heap.

Ocellus immediately began to wiggle in her bindings. “Great, now just give me a second to shapeshift and—”

But Smolder simply lifted the bound changeling up over her head to carry. “No time!” she declared as she raced after the others, only a few paces behind them.

As the group raced through the castle hallways, Yona caught up with Woofus. “Diamond Dog have plan?” she asked urgently.

Woofus nodded. “We get out of the castle and race for the nearest tunnel out of Sapphiria,” he explained as they ran. “If we can do that before the guards can catch us or barricade the city…”

“…then we can just race back up to the surface, back to the train station, and then we’re home free!” Sandbar finished with a grin, catching on.

“You’re leading us to an exit, then?” Smolder called from the back.

“The nearest one to here, yes!” Woofus called back.

“They’re starting to catch up with us!” Ocellus shouted, having a view of the guards chasing behind them as Smolder carried her. They heard the staccato cry of a horn at the same time, echoing throughout the building. There was little need to ask Woofus what it was—the horn was clearly sounding the alarm.

“This way!” Woofus called as they started down a new corridor to where it intersected another lined with windows. But when he arrived and proceeded to turn left, he found there were more guards racing towards them, blocking the path. “They’re cornering us!” he said as he stopped, knowing the guards already chasing them blocked the way back.

“We’re trapped!” Gallus declared as he and the others all skidded to a halt one-by-one. “We’ve got no way out!”

Yona, however, kept running. “Yona make way out!” she declared as she rushed past them.

“Yona, wait!” Silverstream objected.

But Yona raced on, smashing through the closest window and dropping onto the slanting roof just behind it. As the others watched, she skidded down this almost right to the edge before, with surprising agility for someone her size, the yak leapt from the roof onto the awning on the next building, bouncing her up just enough to clamber onto its roof. She then turned and cheerily waved at her friends still standing in the castle. The others looked at each other hesitantly, but with the guards closing in from all other directions, their choice was clear.

“You aren’t seriously…” Silverstream still started to protest.

“No choice!” Woofus said as he leapt out the opening and skidded after Yona.

Gallus and Silverstream leapt out the broken window too, but both opted to fly instead. Sandbar went to follow, but hesitated at the edge of the jump.

“There’s got to be a better way,” he muttered.

“Oh, just go!” Smolder snapped as she ran up and planted a kick to the pony’s rump, pushing him out. He scampered a bit as he skidded down the roof, about to tumble off the edge sideways and out of control, but was quickly snatched up by Gallus and carried the rest of the way.

Smolder barely had the chance to see this before the guards caught up with her. She tried to quickly flap out with the still-bound Ocellus in tow, but a guard stopped her short by grabbing her by the tail, and her attempt to bodily throw the changeling out instead was also thwarted when another guard tackled her in the side, instead sending Ocellus rolling along the hallway floor, helpless.

“Go!” Smolder shouted at the others, waving at them to get out of here while they still could. “Don’t wait for us, go get—” she was cut short as the guards pinning her down stuffed a muzzle over her mouth, learning from her firebreathing trick earlier.

With her and Ocellus rapidly restrained again, the remaining guards gathered at the broken window and soon one hopped out to give chase, skidding down the roof towards the others. Knowing more would only follow, Gallus acted instinctively and slashed the ropes holding up the awning with his captured spear. As it immediately collapsed against the side of the building, the pursuing guard to instead slammed into a brick wall before dropping into an overfull dumpster that happened to be sitting directly under him. This halted any more guards trying to give chase as well.

Taking that window of opportunity, Gallus started directing them to the other side of the building’s roof, where a set of stairs led into the street below. “C’mon, we need to go,” he said urgently.

While the others quickly followed, Woofus hesitated, lingering behind. “But we can’t just leave…” he began to object, motioning back at Smolder and Ocellus still in the castle.

“We aren’t,” Gallus promised resolutely as he gave Woofus’s paw an urgent tug. “We’ll go back for them, but we need to get more help first.”

Woofus still looked back at the castle, ashamed and dejected, but finally he followed too, bringing up the rear of their fleeing party.

Meanwhile, Smolder and Ocellus, bound once again but this time more tightly and separate from each other, were dragged down into the lowest levels of the castle where its dreary and more cavern-like dungeons lay. Smolder fought every step of the way, but her bindings kept her arms and wings pinned, the guards always kept her facing away so her legs couldn’t do much damage to any of them, and the muzzle they had put on her worked well to suppress her firebreath, keeping her mouth too tightly closed for anything but smoke and the odd spark from getting out—not enough to burn it off. Ocellus was likewise secured, except instead of a muzzle, they simply wrapped a rope tightly around her horn, the pressure it exerted keeping her from being able to form any useful spells, let alone shapeshift.

Thus they were both at the complete mercy of the Diamond Dogs until they were unceremoniously chucked into an empty cell and its barred door slammed shut behind them. As the guards walked off again, Smolder squirmed around a bit until she managed to get one of her claws under the ropes to cut it. Freed and ripping the muzzle off, she raced to the cell door.

“Hey!” she shouted at the departing guards. “Get back here! You have no right to imprison us! Hey!” Getting no response and the last guard vanishing from view, she slammed her fists against the metal bars in anger.

“Unfortunately, I do not think we are going to have much say in the matter,” Ocellus conceded with a sigh, squirming against her bonds too, but not having as much success in freeing herself.

Smolder, meanwhile, had turned her attention to the cell bars, breathing fire on them to try and melt them. She soon found that she could heat them up until they were glowing red, but not enough to melt, and after gnawing on the bars a bit, found that her teeth couldn’t bite through them whether they were hot or cold. Growling in frustration, she tried bending them with her arms, but had no further success and went back to banging her fists on them. “Rocks, these bars are sturdy!” she cursed. “I can’t break or force them open!”

“Well, that is the general idea of prison bars,” Ocellus intoned, rubbing her horn on the ground to try and get the rope off. She snorted as she wasn’t succeeding. “Can you help me get this rope off my horn? It’s keeping me from doing any magic.”

“Yeah, yeah, just a sec,” Smolder said with a dejected sigh and she leaned heavily on the bars for a moment before turning to her friend. She undid the rope with one slice of her claw then turned her attention to cutting the changeling’s other bonds too. While she was doing this, Ocellus tried to light her horn and cast any spells that could help, but only succeeded in casting ineffective cyan sparks. Smolder noticed and frowned. “What are you trying to do anyway?”

Ocellus grunted as she tried to cast a spell to no avail. She shook her head. “There must be some kind of magic dampening mineral in these walls,” she remarked, gazing at the rough-hewn stone walls of their cell. “I can’t seem to successfully form any spells, and as long as I can’t do that, I can’t shapeshift.” Freed now, she sat up and sighed, nodding her head at the cell bars. “Otherwise, I could just shift into something small enough to slip through those bars and open the door for you.” She dropped her gaze. “I guess it won’t be that easy.”

By now, though, Smolder had risen and was wandering the room, occasionally stomping her foot on the earthen floor. “Well, I wouldn’t give up just yet, because as we dragons say,” she smiled as she found a particular spot in one corner and knelt down over it, “when one door closes, you make your own.”

She then started digging with a furor using her claws. Ocellus stepped over to watch, catching on that the dragoness meant to dig them out. But after only getting a couple feet down, the sound of shifting dirt abruptly changed into a loud scraping noise soon followed by Smolder yelping in pain.

“AuuuggghhIbrokeaclaw!” she snarled all at once, sitting up with one paw wrapped around the pointer finger of the other. Sure enough, it was missing most of the pointed nail on the tip. Furious, she stomped her foot on the offender. “It’s all because of this crummy rock!”

Ocellus leaned over to peer at the dark layer of material the dragon had partly uncovered. “Oh my,” she said. “I think that’s vibranium.”

“Vibrawhat?”

“Vibranium. It’s a rather rare metal, but it’s a favorite for building things like shields and stuff because of its extreme durability.”

“Oh, well, lucky us.” Smolder stomped her foot on the deposit again in frustration.

Ocellus was still studying it though, tilting her head. “That appears to be a fairly sizeable deposit of it though.” She looked up at the cell walls again. “I’ve got a hunch it lines most if not all of this cell…I guess that would be why the Diamond Dogs built their dungeons here. It made for a good prison.”

“Yeah, but it also means we aren’t digging our way out of here any time soon,” Smolder growled, waving her sore claw back and forth in the air. “Not that it matters, because now my paw stings too much to even dig, thanks to that broken claw.”

Ocellus patted her on the shoulder. “Try to stay positive,” she advised. “I’m sure our friends are planning some way to rescue us as we speak.”

And they were. But they were also still trying to figure out how to rescue themselves too.

It was simple enough to slip through the streets of the underground city undetected. Woofus knew the city like the back of his paw, and thus knew all the shortcuts and back alleys they could duck into, remaining largely out of sight of the guards searching for them or from any citizens that would turn them in. It helped that the populace was rather dense in the center part of the city, leaving lots of nooks and crannies to hide in too. So navigating the city wasn’t the problem.

What was the problem was at the exit tunnels leading out of the chamber Sapphiria sat in. Even though they were able to move through the city at a fairly quick rate, never once really getting held up for any significant amount of time, they ultimately found that this still wasn’t fast enough. All of the three major exits in and out of the cavern were already cut off by at least a whole squad of guards, stationed at the exits and blocking access in and out. Any secondary and more indirect exits to the surface they found were similarly guarded soon thereafter. They were effectively sealed inside the city, leaving them no way to escape, and the number of guards at every exit consistently outnumbered them, so fighting their way out wasn’t an option either, especially as the group would prefer to not have to fight at all.

So after confirming that all of the exits were cut off, the group ducked into a row of bushes about a hundred feet from the main exit they had originally entered from, eyeing the group of guards stationed there.

“So,” Gallus summarized glumly, “this complicates things.”

“Yes it does,” Woofus replied, just as dejected. “I really hoped we would beat them to these exits to go get help, but these guards must have been sent straight here the moment the alarm sounded at Pillar Castle, probably so to catch us trying to escape.” They all quickly ducked deeper into the bushes as a patrol passed nearby, oblivious to their presence. “At least these bushes provide excellent cover.”

“What are these bushes, anyway?” Sandbar asked, examining the berry-loaded and somewhat thorny branches of the shrubs.

“Punchberry bushes,” Woofus replied.

“And…why are they called punchberries?”

They were interrupted by Silverstream popping one of the berries into her mouth and immediately starting to gasp and cough, clutching at her throat over its potency.

“Because they really pack a punch,” Woofus simply answered.

“You’re telling me,” Silverstream wheezed. She smacked her beak a few times, trying to clear her palette. “The aftertaste isn’t helping either.”

“But Yona still not understand,” Yona meanwhile mumbled aloud. “Why Diamond Dogs do this?”

“Yeah, Woofus,” Gallus said, his expression souring slightly as he shot a look at the Diamond Dog, who cowered. “You want to explain all that now? I mean, it’s already pretty clear that you’ve been in this place before…Sapphiria, wasn’t it?…because you know the terrain, just like you knew the tunnels leading to it were out here too, didn’t you? That’s why you were so nervous about being here, wasn’t it? Plus everybody here seems to know you, and you know them, but they don’t seem to like you too much, and we sure as hay don’t know why.”

“Well…we could speculate…” Silverstream began, feeling she could make an educated guess from what details they’d picked up.

“But…” Gallus interrupted, pointing a talon at her with a scowl, “…we don’t have to, because we’ve got Woofus here, who already knows everything.” He looked back at Woofus. “So how about you cut the secrets and fill us in now, huh?”

There was a beat as they all looked at the dog. “Please?” Yona added, attempting to sound polite.

Woofus dropped to sit on the ground and sighed. “Ocellus was right,” he began abruptly. “Earlier…when we all first met.” He reached around himself to rub his back. “The markings on my back do mean something…they mark me as royalty.”

Eyes widened at this, but Silverstream took it a step further with a loud gasp. “Say whaaaaaat?!” she squealed.

She was immediately elbowed in the ribs by Sandbar. “Shh!” he hushed, jabbing a hoof in the direction of the nearby guards. “We don’t want them to hear!”

“Right, right,” Silverstream said and repeated her exclamation again, but this time in a quiet whisper. “Say whaaaaaat?”

Yona scratched at her head with one hoof. “So…yak friend is royalty?” she asked. “Yona never had royal friend before.”

Silverstream playfully swatted the yak’s leg at this. “Yeah, you do! I’m royalty, remember?”

“Being a queen’s niece makes you royalty?” Gallus asked, half-heartedly.

“Of indirect lineage, but yeah,” Silverstream explained. She jabbed her thumb at her chest. “My official title is Lady Silverstream. But it’s more of a formality and not that big a deal, so I just don’t use it that often because I don’t want to make a big hullabaloo about it. Obviously.”

“Besides, Yona,” Sandbar continued. “Aren’t you friends with the leader of Yakyakistan, Prince Rutherford?”

Yona waved her hoof dismissively. “Prince Rutherford is prince! Not same as friend, more…” she rolled her eyes upwards as she sought the right word. “…lecturer.”

“Regardless,” Woofus interjected, bringing attention back to him, “my level of royalty would probably be more equivalent to Yona’s Prince Rutherford than to Silverstream’s, as I assume Silverstream is not the next in line to rule, am I correct?”

“Uh-huh,” Silverstream confirmed with a nod. “That honor actually goes to my cousin, Princess Skystar.”

“So you’re saying you’re next in line to rule this place, Woofus?” Gallus asked.

Woofus averted his gaze. “If things had gone as planned, I would already be ruling as pack leader by now, Gallus,” he replied, ashamed.

An awkward silence followed for a second as the others glanced at each other. “So…what happened?” Sandbar inquired finally. “Why is this Husky guy ruling instead?”

“Yeah, what’s up with that guy?” Gallus asked, frowning as he recalled the Diamond Dog. “Who rubbed him the wrong way?”

“Me,” Woofus replied and sighed again. “That’s what this is about.” He turned to face the others so to give them the full explanation. “Husky and I were friends, or at least I had always considered him one and I’d like to think he had too. I was always known to be the next leader since birth, so my life was always about preparing for that role. Husky, however, had aspirations to enter the royal guard. But the guard has high standards, and…Husky always had worries if he really could pass the entrance exam. Nevertheless, he’s long been working towards that goal, and I’ve tried to help and support him however I can along the way…promised him he could count on me for that.”

Woofus averted his eyes again, his shame growing. “This makes what happened so stupid…but around the time Husky was to take the entrance exam was about the same time I was making final preparations to become pack leader. I had already taken on many of the day to day duties managing pack’s affairs, making plans for my ruling agenda, and so forth. I was basically swamped, and couldn’t spare the time to be there for Husky as he geared up for the exam. When the day came for him to take it, I was preoccupied in other infrastructure-related affairs that I thought were more pressing for my attention, so…I wasn’t there to support him.”

He trailed off. “He didn’t pass the exam, did he?” Silverstream asked, catching on.

Woofus shook his head. “No,” he admitted. “I don’t know if he just wasn’t as ready as he thought, if he panicked, or if there was a legitimate reason for him to fail…but failed he did, and…he blamed me for it, because I wasn’t there to support him like I promised.”

“So wait,” Gallus interjected, turning incredulous. “You mean to tell me this is all just because of a failed exam?”

“Can’t he take it again?” Sandbar asked.

“Yes, next year,” Woofus confirmed, but waved it aside. “But that’s not the point. The point is that I failed to be the friend Husky needed, and worse, I didn’t even know about it until he came storming up to me that evening, ready to chew me out over it. And he did, it escalated into an argument, and…” he trailed off, looking pitiful as he stared, ashamed, at his feet.

“So…what this have to do with Woofus not ruling?” Yona asked.

“What happened with Husky rattled me,” Woofus admitted. “It made me second guess myself, my actions, my priorities, and if I was really ready to take on the task of keeping this place in order.” He motioned vaguely at the cavernous chamber the city sat in. “It sounds silly, but…if I failed to be there for someone I thought of as a friend…could I really expect to be there for every Diamond Dog counting on me to be their leader? My second-guessing soon started causing problems at the administrative level, and finally, I just…snapped. Chose not to take the throne, and…left. Eventually I heard about Princess Twilight’s friendship school and thought, maybe, I could go there, learn what I did wrong, and get a fresh, clean, start where I wouldn’t have my past mistakes weighing on me so much…hide from what happened.” He snorted and kicked at the dirt. “And look where that got all of us.” He hung his head sadly, blinking back tears. “Now we’re trapped and on the run and Ocellus and Smolder have probably been thrown into jail by now and it’s all my fault…I’m sorry for getting all of you dragged into this, and for not telling you any of this from the start.”

A heavy moment of silence hung over the group then Gallus patted the dog on the back reassuringly. “Well…at least you’re telling us now,” he said. “And it wouldn’t be fair to say this mess is entirely your fault. I think the blame can be shared all around today.”

This heartened Woofus slightly, enough that he made a small, thankful, grin.

“Here’s what I don’t understand though,” Sandbar spoke up. “If Woofus is supposed to be the next in line to rule because of his upbringing, why is Husky, who’s had none of that, now on the throne?”

“That I don’t entirely understand either,” Woofus admitted. He shrugged. “He must have done something to show the pack’s administrative staff he was the best dog for the job, but… I don’t know.” he shook his head. “Does it matter though? However he did it, he’s the one who currently rules, and thus every dog around here is going to answer to him. There’s no changing that now, and I’m not sure we have to. We just need to rescue our friends and escape.”

“Easier said than done,” Silverstream remarked, glancing again at the guards blocking their exit. “It’d be smarter if we could get back to Ponyville to get more help, but we can’t.”

“I’m not sure it’d matter at this point if we could get out of here anyway,” Sandbar remarked, pulling out a train schedule and his pocket watch from his saddlebags again. “We’ve already missed the train we were originally planning to take back, and the next isn’t going to be coming for another two hours.”

“What we do by ourselves, then?” Yona asked, somewhat uneasily.

Gallus tapped his tail on the ground as he thought, but he shook his head as he continued to draw a blank. “Woofus, you know this place better than we do,” he said, turning to the dog. “There must be something around here that can help us. Some back exit, or something we can use as a tool, or even someone who might be willing to hear us out, I don’t know…”

Woofus thought for a long moment. “Well…I guess there is Rottweiler…” he said uncertainly. He didn’t sound optimistic about this option. “But…”

“Who’s that?” Silverstream asked.

“Sapphiria’s chief security advisor,” Woofus explained. “He oversees all operations concerning the city’s security and advises the ruling pack leader on how to best proceed in such matters. Were I ruling, he would be the one I would turn to for advise on affairs such as this, and I have known him for a good while. But with Husky on the throne, he would be obligated to answer to him now, not me.” He sighed. “Still though…I can’t imagine Rottweiler will be happy with Husky’s order to arrest us, for fear of the unnecessary fallout it could create with other powers in Equestria, so…I don’t know. We might be able to sway him to help us at least escape, maybe even arrange to free Smolder and Ocellus if we’re really lucky, but…” he shrugged. “It’s hard to say with him. He can be a bit by-the-book at times, and he tends to stay loyal to the ruling pack leader regardless. So I really can’t say.”

“It still sounds like our best option,” Sandbar reasoned. “I mean, we don’t really have many others at the moment. And we could really use inside help at this point, cut off as we are from the outside.”

“He wouldn’t have to do much, either, would he?” Silverstream reasoned. “He’d just have to get at least one of us outside long enough to get, say, Princess Twilight to come and negotiate a better solution.”

“Sil’s right,” Gallus agreed. “If this Rottweiler guy can do at least that much, it’d still be a great step in the right direction.”

“But can Woofus Diamond Dog convince him?” Yona asked, and turned expectantly to Woofus to find out.

Woofus sighed, and it was clear from his body language that he wasn’t confident. But he also had nothing else to suggest. “I guess, like Sandbar said, we don’t have many other options…short of somehow putting me back on the throne, and I’d rather not do that right now.”

“Okay, so it’s settled,” Silverstream declared. “Now how do we find this Rottweiler guy?”

“Well, right now he’d be on-duty, and deep within Pillar Castle where it’s going to be hard to get to him without getting caught,” Woofus explained, sitting up. “But when he goes off-duty, he always heads down to the nearby watering hole to socialize with other off-duty security staff. That’ll probably be our best chance to talk it out with him.” He shook his head. “But he won’t be getting there for a couple of hours still.”

“Well, that’s okay,” Silverstream reasoned. “We can use that time to plan out how we’re going to do this.”

“It’s not like we’ve got much else to do except wait anyway,” Gallus added, shooting his own glance at the exit guards in the distance.

Despite their previous failures, Smolder didn’t stop looking for some way to escape their cell. She had no further luck of course, but clearly she wasn’t about to give up. As trying to dig their way out had proved fruitless, she turned her attention back to the bars locking them in, currently throwing her whole body weight into getting them to give, so much so she had her legs up and mounted on the adjacent bars for more leverage, leaving all of her limbs off the ground. Despite all the effort and grunting she was putting into it though, the bars remained unaffected as always.

Ocellus lay nearby, watching the dragoness strain. She sighed. “You might as well stop, Smolder, we’re not going to escape this cell,” she said, resigning.

“We…can’t…just…give up!” Smolder grunted with every tug. Her grip slipped and she suddenly toppled to the ground. Frustrated, she pounded the dirty floor with her fists for a moment.

“We aren’t,” Ocellus assured patiently. “Circumstances presently aren’t favorable for us, so we need to wait until that changes.”

“Who knows how long that’ll take?” Smolder barked as she picked herself up, intent on trying again. “It could be years before we get out of here.”

“Doubtful. Our other friends got away, and you know just as well as I do that they aren’t going to leave us behind.”

“Yeah, but what if they get caught too? Then we’re all stuck!” Smolder gripped the bars with her claws, trying to find the weak spot that was still eluding her. “And no offense to them, but what makes you think they’ll have any more luck than us?”

“They’ve got Woofus with them.”

“By the sound of it, Woofus was what got us into this mess!”

“Smolder, it was clear Woofus didn’t anticipate what happened any more than we did. But he knows the creatures and the terrain. He’ll help them think of something.”

Smolder heaved a heavy sigh, collapsing onto the bars. “I know,” she muttered dejectedly. “It’s just…I don’t like this one bit. And the fact Woofus got blindsided by it just as much as us…bugs me a lot.”

Ocellus nodded in agreement. “Something is definitely not right,” she agreed. “But we don’t know all the details, and right now there’s not a lot we can do about that.”

Smolder simply leaned against the bars in silence for a long moment, letting them smoosh the side of her face. But then hearing footsteps coming their way, she perked up. “Maybe he can tell us.”

“He” proved to be Husky, escorted by two royal guards, coming to stand outside the cell to peer through the bars at his two prisoners, but he didn’t seem particularly pleased.

Smolder ignored that though. “Hey!” she nodded at him. “Let us out?”

Husky folded his arms with a sigh, his regal overcoat fluttering. “Perhaps,” he conceded as Ocellus joined Smolder at the cell bars. “If you tell me where your cohorts are hiding.”

Smolder snorted. “Hay if we know.”

“Why would we tell you if we did know, anyway?” Ocellus reasoned. “What’s in it for us?”

“Like I already implied, your freedom,” Husky assured. “I’m willing to negotiate your release if you cooperate.”

Smolder wasn’t convinced. “And the catch?”

“You and the other outsiders leave under oath that you will never return to Sapphiria and tell no one of its existence,” Husky dictated. “And I keep Woofus here.”

Smolder snorted, but Ocellus thought it over. “But why? I don’t think Woofus really wants to cause you any trouble,” she observed. “He proposed earlier that he was more than happy to leave peacefully and not return with the rest of us if you will only permit it.”

“Yeah, you totally had the chance to clean your paws of this earlier, but you let it slip through your claws,” Smolder added. “So don’t go whining to us about it.”

“My point is that we don’t need to fight at all,” Ocellus stressed. “Why must you treat it as if it is?”

“Look, I’m trying to do you a favor here,” Husky repeated fretfully, ignoring the question. “By all accounts I should keep you outsiders locked up, but against my better judgment, I’m willing to let you go if you’ll just cooperate. As for Woofus, that is a personal affair between him and me.”

“It sounds to me you’re letting that personal affair cloud your judgment,” Ocellus observed, tilting her head.

Husky’s frown deepened and he changed the subject. “We’ve locked down the city,” he explained for their reference. “All of the exits are blocked and we’ve searched the land above ground. No one has gotten in or out, so your cohorts must still be in the city somewhere. Tell me where they could be hiding.”

“How are we supposed to know?” Smolder snapped. “Dude, we don’t know this place! They could be anywhere for all we know! All I could tell you is that you can bet your rump they aren’t going to take this lying down.”

Husky raised an eyebrow. “We’ll have to see about that.” Heaving another dejected sigh, he turned to go, adding, “But for the record, the offer stands…for now.”

And with that, he walked off again, taking his escort with. Smolder snorted and turned away. “What a jerk.”

Ocellus, however, watched him go. “Something’s not right,” she mumbled. “He seems…pressured. Uncertain.”

Smolder glanced at the changeling. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m not sure.” Ocellus’s brow furrowed. “But I’m getting the feeling it might be important…”

Author's Note

Come back for Part III this time tomorrow!

Part III

Were it more ideal circumstances, Woofus would meet with Rottweiler himself. But he also knew that, thanks to Husky, any other Diamond Dogs around would immediately recognize him and probably try to turn him in. There was also the problem of what would happen if Rottweiler, for whatever reason, chose not to cooperate and only turned Woofus in too. Therefore, Silverstream was quick to suggest an alternative.

“A couple of us will go in your place!” the hippogriff declared happily. “One to do the talking, and the other to look out for trouble!”

Sandbar quickly pointed out the obvious. “So how are we not going to get caught?” he asked. “I mean, being outsiders, we’re not exactly going to blend in.”

“We’ll make disguises!” Silverstream responded. “So which ones of us could be passed off as a Diamond Dog the best?”

“Ocellus,” Gallus immediately responded. “She could use her changeling magic to take the shape of one. But, you will note, she’s not here.”

“Truuuuuue, so…who’d be second best?”

“Probably Smolder,” Sandbar reasoned, “because she walks on two legs, like the Diamond Dogs.”

“Well, she’s not here either!” Silverstream frowned and put her claws on her hips. “So who could do it that is here?”

“Woofus,” Yona answered. “He’s Diamond Dog.”

Silverstream pinched the bridge of her beak for a moment. “Okay, never mind…Gallus, you and me are going to go meet Rottweiler.”

“What?” Gallus objected. “Why me?”

“Actually, it makes sense, because you’re big enough that, with the right disguise, you could be passed off as a Diamond Dog old enough to be allowed in,” Woofus reasoned, who had been thinking it through. “So’s Silverstream. Sandbar, however, would be too small and would look underage no matter what, and Yona is…well…”

“Yona is yak,” Yona finished. “Not Diamond Dog. And Yona okay with this.” She then rooted into her saddlebags. “Besides, Yona have supplies and know-how to make disguises!” she explained, pulling out fabric and craft supplies that were probably leftovers from their classes. “Yak best at disguises!”

“Yak not best at disguises,” Gallus grumbled later, skeptically holding up what was to be his finished disguise.

Yona scowled, snatching it back from him. “Yona not ask griffon’s opinion!”

“Do we really have time to be debating this?” Sandbar asked as Silverstream eagerly started to wiggle into her disguise without complaint. “We’ve got a very narrow window of opportunity here, and the longer we delay, the more complicated things are going to get, both here and elsewhere—we’re already past due to return to Ponyville, and I’m sure someone’s noticed we’re missing by now.”

“Either way, Rottweiler is off duty by now,” Woofus placated. “So if we’re doing this, now is the time.”

And so, moments later and wearing the prepared disguises, Gallus and Silverstream were walking up to the tavern while the rest monitored from a nearby hiding spot. Eyeing the heavyset and strapping bouncer that guarded the entrance, Gallus drew himself up, trying as hard as he could to act and look like a Diamond Dog. While he couldn’t rear up to walk on two legs fully, he could compromise halfway that kept him mostly upright but still striding on all fours. Silverstream, however, was much more calm and casual about it and walked normally. He couldn’t see because of her disguise, but he strongly suspected she was smiling.

“You ready for this?” he asked seriously, having doubts.

“Yup!” Silverstream instantly replied, utterly confident in what they were about to do.

Gallus wished he shared it, but nevertheless, he took a deep breath. “All right then,” he said as the strolled up to the bouncer. “Here goes nothing.”

The bouncer really was quite a hulk, perhaps the biggest and strongest looking Diamond Dog they had seen yet, and the musky body scent thick in the air around him didn’t help. He was definitely not someone you wanted to mess with, let alone anger. Fortunately for them, he seemed quite bored standing there and regarded the two approaching him with only a passing interest. Still, he was highly intimidating, and with him looming over them Gallus momentarily forgot to begin speaking until Silverstream elbowed him—they had agreed he would do the talking at his own insistence.

“Hello,” Gallus greeted, raising one disguised paw in a sheepish wave. “We’re here to meet with a friend.”

“IDs?” the bouncer grunted.

Gallus inwardly winced. According to Woofus, proof of identification in Sapphiria was really only required for Diamond Dogs below a certain age. It was his hope that Yona’s disguises would have them appear old enough that such identification would be unnecessary, but clearly this wasn’t the case. Fortunately, Woofus still chose not to risk it. While Yona was making the disguises, he had put together false IDs from scratch —a feat made easier by the fact Diamond Dog IDs did not bear photos—which Gallus and Silverstream handed over to the bouncer now.

Unfortunately, though Woofus obviously hoped these would pass for the real thing, it wasn’t hard to guess the dogs they identified were painfully fictional: Gallus’s was for a Diamond Dog named “Sir Gallium III” while Silverstream’s was for a “Silvery Silverton,” and listed them both being at ages far older than they clearly were. The bouncer squinted at the IDs for a moment, looking unconvinced, before back at their supposed owners, which brought up the other issue Gallus was sure was going to get them caught: Yona’s disguises. They were full body garments with shaped mask-like hoods covering their heads, and were they for something like a play, they’d be perfect as costumes. But as undercover disguises, the stitches were too visible and obvious, Yona’s attempts to replicate the patchy fur colors were far too boxy, and worse of all were the eyes. Yona had decided eyeholes weren’t convincing, so she used plastic and goofy-looking googly eyes instead. It didn’t help that when the bouncer glanced back at them again, Silverstream shook her head to make her googly eyes jiggle.

“Deedle-deedle-deedle,” she cooed to herself as she did this.

It took a gargantuan effort to stop Gallus from facepalming, certain the bouncer wasn’t buying any of this.

But instead the bouncer just shrugged his shoulders and handed back the IDs. “Works for me,” he mumbled and motioned them on through.

Gallus and Silverstream glanced at each other then quickly hurried inside before the bouncer changed his mind. Inside, the tavern was cramped and crowded with sweaty Diamond Dogs, leaving the air stuffy, smelly, and hard to breathe. A couple of dogs were starting to get rowdy, and Gallus feared a bar fight might break out soon. Eager to get this over with then, he pulled Silverstream to speak with the barkeeper, inquiring where they could find Rottweiler. Barely looking at them, the barkeeper pointed a claw over at a corner table where a slender-ish but still well-built middle-aged Diamond Dog sat alone.

“Okay then,” Gallus said, taking another breath and turned to Silverstream. “I’ll go talk to him. Sil, you stay here, keep an eye out for trouble, but above all else please…just try to blend in.”

“You got it, Sir Gallium!” Silverstream declared enthusiastically before immediately plopping herself onto a barstool and faced a particularly tough-looking Diamond Dog sitting beside her. “Hey there, fellow restaurant patron!” She gave his arm a friendly pat. “Bap!”

The dog growled back at her in response.

Gallus groaned and hurried to Rottweiler’s table with increased urgency. “Think happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts…” he muttered to himself as he walked. Then, refocusing on his task, he nodded his head at the table’s one occupant. “You Rottweiler?”

“Yeah,” the dog grunted, who didn’t look up. “Why? Who are you and what do you want?”

“A moment of your time to talk, if I could.” Gallus glanced around nervously, uncertain. “As for who I am, well…”

“Nah, forget it,” Rottweiler interrupted, shaking his head. He motioned to the seat across from him. “Go ahead and sit, griffon.”

It was only after Gallus had sat that Rottweiler’s words sank in fully. “Wait, how did you…?”

“You don’t smell like a Diamond Dog,” Rottweiler explained. “At all.” For the first time, he glanced up to make eye contact with his visitor. “Gotta admit though, the disguise is pretty good otherwise. It’d fool anyone not getting a good whiff of you.”

“Oh.” Gallus blinked to himself under said disguise. “Guess I owe Yona an apology, then.” he muttered quietly.

By that time, Rottweiler had waved a waitress over. “One of the usual,” he ordered before glancing over at Gallus. “You want anything, kid?”

Gallus thought he’d better for appearances sake. “I’ll have whatever he’s having,” he ordered as well.

The waitress nodded and departed. The two fell silent as they waited. Gallus wanted to launch into why he was here, but was unsure how to continue and Rottweiler seemed to be in thought, giving him the impression the dog preferred to proceed at his own speed.

“I take it Woofus sent you,” Rottweiler finally surmised, keeping his voice low and discreet.

Gallus nodded. “Yeah.”

“Mm. I figured you’d all still be in the city, given circumstances.”

“I guess you’ve already heard the story about that then.”

“Sir Husky’s version of it, at least.”

“You don’t sound very confident of it.”

“I’m not.” He gave Gallus a knowing look. “Should I be?”

The waitress then returned and served them their drinks. Rottweiler took a hearty swig from his before continuing. “So you got a name, kid?”

“Gallus,” the griffon offered. Nudging slightly open the hood of his disguise, he picked up his cup and knocked back a big gulp. The drink had barely gone down his throat though before he started hacking, taken aback. “What is this stuff?” he wheezed, staring through teary-eyes at the dark liquid in his cup.

“Freshly squeezed punchberry juice,” Rottweiler answered with a grin. He took another swig from his cup, unaffected by the potent taste. “This is a drink that’ll put hair on your back.” He gazed into his cup for a second. “Or clean you out. One or the other.” He shrugged. “Sometimes both.”

Gallus decided he wasn’t old enough to be drinking this and pushed his cup away from him. “Look, I didn’t really come here for drinks.”

“All right, let’s not beat about then.” Rottweiler pushed aside his own drink too and leaned forward. “I’m supposing you want my help.”

Gallus nodded. “Will you?”

“That depends. I’m not sure just what exactly Woofus expects me to do about it.”

“He indicated you were chief of security or something like that. Couldn’t you just, like, give us an opening to get out of here? That’s really all we want.”

“I understand you have friends in the dungeons already though. What about them?”

“Well, obviously I want to spring them out too, but one thing at a time, here.” Gallus rolled his eyes. “Look, I don’t really care how we do it, so long as it gets done.” He sighed and leaned closer too. “Woofus seems to think you could help, and I’m hoping he’s right.”

Rottweiler lowered his gaze and sat back to mull it over. “To a certain extent, he is,” he admitted. “But I’m afraid there is one critical problem.”

Gallus felt his heart sink. “Like what?” he asked in dread.

Rottweiler sighed and ended up pulling his drink back to him, finishing it off before answering. “Due to the circumstances, I can’t help directly.”

Gallus blinked, not anticipating this. “What? Why?”

“No matter who’s on the throne, I’m obligated to do my duty as asked…but that doesn’t guarantee I’ll do it quietly or without criticism. So to prevent that, Sir Husky demands I remain solely loyal to him and without protest.” Rottweiler’s gaze wandered, turning distant. “The point is that I can’t interfere too much or Sir Husky will relieve me of my duties, and then I’m of no use to you or in a position to intervene in any form.” He gazed sternly at Gallus for a moment to make sure the seriousness of this point got through to him. As Gallus still had his disguising hood mostly up though, he couldn’t clearly see the griffon’s reaction. But his silence was telling enough to Rottweiler. “Look, I might be able to coax a couple guards to turn a blind eye at one of the side exits,” he explained. “Not much, but realistically, it’s the best I can offer at the moment.” He slid Gallus’s abandoned drink over to himself and took a sip. “My only requirement is that if I do this, Woofus in turn agrees to come back and do whatever he needs to so to take up his proper role as pack leader instead of Sir Husky.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on,” Gallus objected. “We aren’t here to start a coup. We didn’t want to be here at all. All we want is to go home.”

“You want to go home. Woofus, by the sound of it, still wants to bury his head in the sand and ignore the real problem.”

Gallus sighed. “Look, I know about what happened between Woofus and Husky, and I’m sorry,” he said. “But that’s not my business. It’s nobody’s business but Woofus’s, and right now he thinks it’d be better he stayed away. And it’s not my place to tell him what to do. I can’t force him to do anything, especially not something he doesn’t want to do. He didn’t want to cause trouble.”

“You don’t understand,” Rottweiler said, waving a paw to dismiss Gallus’s words. He leaned closer again, his voice dropping almost to a whisper. “Husky isn’t royalty, he doesn’t have the royal markings like Woofus does.”

“So?”

“So, he couldn’t just take the throne unopposed. The rest of the administrative staff wouldn’t permit just anyone walking in from the pack and doing that. Who would? No, Sir Husky was only allowed to because he agreed to do something back for the rest of the administrative staff too.”

Gallus tilted his head, catching on. “Husky’s been making favors?”

Rottweiler snorted. “If you want to call it that, but I certainly wouldn’t.” He supped from Gallus’s drink again. “Certain staff members have already sought to take advantage of Sir Husky’s blind favoritism, and when they do, it’s not necessarily with the pack’s best interests in mind.”

Gallus felt his heart sink again. “How bad are we talking here?”

“Fortunately, nothing irreparable yet, but given time, it will, and soon.”

“Oh great,” Dismayed, Gallus cradled his head in one paw.

“I also suspect Sir Husky’s…frustrations against Woofus are causing him to justify increasingly desperate actions to go after him. As he is the true dog for the throne, he could easily challenge Sir Husky’s control unless he can put an end to that risk.”

“I get it,” Gallus said. He sighed. “But this is a…way bigger problem none of us are in any position to do anything about.”

“Woofus could put an end to it if he was pack leader like he should be.”

“Seems to me Woofus doesn’t want any part in this, and what makes you think he actually can put an end to it?”

“I had strongly warned him precisely this was going to happen when he decided he was going to forfeit the throne,” Rottweiler stressed, unforgiving. “He never should have left at all, so if Woofus wants my help, then I ask for his in return so to resolve all of this.”

“…basically making you no better than the twits Husky kowtowed to in the first place,” Gallus retorted back.

This caused Rottweiler’s gaze to soften and he sighed. “Fair point,” he conceded. “But look at it from my point of view. If this is all allowed to continue, then I can’t help but fear greatly for Sapphiria’s fate. My home. What would you do if you were in my place?”

Gallus was taken aback for a second. He thought about when Chancellor Neighsay had shut down the School of Friendship and how he had helped fight back, not unlike what Rottweiler was proposing. But he also knew that he didn’t fight back for the school, he fought back so he could stay with his then still-fledgling friends. The school was just an added bonus—it was the friendship that was more important to him. And he knew it was the same here.

“I’m sorry,” he truthfully apologized. “But Woofus is my friend. And I can’t just commit him to something like that without at least letting him get a say in it first. He deserves that chance to choose for himself, not have someone greedily take it from him for their own benefit. That wouldn’t make me the better creature here, now would it?”

Rottweiler sighed. “Brave words,” he said. “But it means I can’t commit to your terms either, for much the same reasons.”

Gallus stared down at the tabletop for a moment. “Come back with me,” he suggested. “I can take you back to Woofus and you can tell him what you’ve told me, talk it over with him.”

“I can’t. It’s bad enough talking with you like this as is. If the wrong dog even so much as suspects me aiding you and gets word back to Sir Husky, then it wouldn’t matter if we had agreed on anything at all.”

“Then let me go talk with Woofus and come back with his thoughts.”

But Rottweiler shook his head. “I’m afraid you don’t have time for that,” he said, nodding his head towards the tavern’s entrance.

Gallus turned, and with a jolt of alarm saw that a party of guards had entered, armed and in full armor. Unlike everyone else here, they were clearly on-duty, and as they started surveying the musky interior, slowly sweeping out from there, it was immediately clear why and what they were looking for. Gallus’s eyes then sought out Silverstream only to see she was still chatting with the fellow patron and looked to be totally oblivious of the approaching threat. So much for keeping an eye out.

“I can help you if Woofus will help me set things right,” Rottweiler repeated his terms, bringing Gallus’s attention back on him. He drained the last of Gallus’s drink. “Otherwise you’re going to have to be on your own.”

Gallus stared at him for a moment. Even though his disguise’s hood kept them hidden, his brows narrowed into a glare. “I told you. I won’t speak for Woofus like that. Not for this.”

“Fine then,” Rottweiler said coldly, plunking down some coins onto the table and rising to his feet. “Tell Woofus to go get lost in the tunnels.”

He then left, leaving Gallus to stare after him, stunned. Then he turned furious at the dog’s chilling final words before catching sight of the guards continuing to sweep ever closer. They didn’t seem to have spotted him yet, and his disguise probably helped, but he saw it was time for him to leave too. Spying the tavern had a back corridor that might lead to a rear exit, he darted from the table and back to Silverstream.

“There!” he heard one of the guards suddenly cry as he raced, realizing they had caught sight of him and were now trying to press through the crowded tavern towards him.

Gallus got to Silverstream first, although he was momentarily taken aback when he saw that while he was gone, the disguised hippogriff had taken a napkin, folded it into a cootie catcher, and was now flexing the paper while the burly Diamond Dog sitting next to her watched anxiously. Both were counting as Silverstream worked it. “…three, four, five, six!”

Silverstream then popped open one of the cootie catcher’s flaps and gasped. “Your wife is gonna be beautiful!” she happily cooed to the dog with starry-eyes.

“Yes!” the dog cheered, pumping his fist.

That was when Gallus interrupted. “Time to go, Sil!” he stated urgently as he grabbed her paw.

“Whoa!” Silverstream cried as she was yanked off her seat.

“But will she love me?!” the Diamond Dog wailed desperately after her before getting pushed aside by the guards trying to catch up.

Attempting to keep up their head start, Gallus raced down the back corridor, Silverstream keeping pace with him thankfully without comment, having caught on to what was happening. As hoped, it led to another exit leading into a narrow alley behind the building.

“What happened to Rottweiler?” Silverstream asked as Gallus slammed the door shut behind them and moved a nearby dumpster in front of it, hoping that would bar it for now.

“He’s not helping us,” Gallus snapped back in explanation, still disappointed. He budged Silverstream into motion again as they proceeded to race up the alley. “Augh, I can’t see in this stupid hood!”

He whipped it back as they ran, exposing his head fully. Silverstream did the same. Ironically, they had barely done so when the path ahead of them was blocked by another party of guards entering the alley, immediately identifying them now their hoods were off.

“There they are!” one bellowed as they surged towards them. “Stop them!”

Gallus and Silverstream quickly ducked into an adjoining alley instead, racing down it in search of a new avenue of escape. They barely found one when it was cut off by yet another party of guards, leaving all exits blocked except for dead ahead of them. Eventually this led them onto a quiet street not far from the massive supporting pillar near the center of the subterranean city. As it was nowhere near where they hoped to meet up with the others, Gallus was momentarily disoriented, unsure where to go next in the unfamiliar area until Silverstream grabbed his shoulder, jerking him to the left.

“This way to the river!” she cried, now taking the lead. Gallus followed, hoping she really knew where she was going while chancing a glance behind him and saw the pursuing patrols had all merged together on the more open street and were slowly closing in.

But turned out Silverstream did know where she was going, as after rounding a city block they arrived at the banks of the city’s underground river. Taking Gallus’s paw into hers, she pulled him right to the edge. “Brace yourself!” she advised as she jumped, dragging the griffon with.

“Oh, droppings!” Gallus had just enough time to curse before they both plunged into the water and immediately submerged.

The guards pursuing them ground to a halt at the river’s banks, but when the two runaways didn’t surface again, they quickly spread out, surprised that they had again lost all sign of their targets.

The hours ticked by in the dungeon. It was hard to tell for certain, underground as they were, but Ocellus estimated it was nearing evening time now. Likely because of that, a guard swung past their cell to deliver a meager supper for them (being verbally hounded by Smolder the whole time). The delivered tray contained two bowls. One contained a mixture of mushrooms, leaves, and chunks of dried bread clearly meant for Ocellus as the other bowl contained hunks of shiny minerals, demonstrating the Diamond Dogs knew very well what dragons typically ate.

Smolder was greatly displeased by the offering though. “Pyrite?” she bellowed as she hefted one of the clumps distastefully. “PYRITE?! You might as well have given me bread and water! Instead you give me stinkin’ pyrite!” She ran to the cell bars and started banging on them, trying to lure the guard back. “C’moooooon, you’re Diamond Dogs for crying out loud! I know you’ve got real gems you could give, it’s right there in your names! I’m not asking for anything fancy, it doesn’t have to be! Just…give me something like quartz, or agate, maybe some tiger’s eye…heck I’ll even take a couple of pearls or some turquoise! Just…anything that’s not pyrite! Helloooooo?” Getting no response, Smolder let out a loud growl and hurled the clump of pyrite across the cell then, not satisfied with that, kicked her dinner bowl across to join it. “I’m going to go mad in here, Ocellus!” she fumed next, angrily pacing.

“I noticed,” Ocellus commented as she calmly chewed on her bowlful of food. It wasn’t going to be too filling for a changeling, but it was still better than nothing. “For the sake of everyone though, I highly recommend that you don’t.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Smolder grumbled as she went back to her latest escape attempt. She been peeling shards of stone off the cell walls and, after shaping them into a loose knife-like shape with her claws and firebreath, would use them to try and cut through the cell bars. But after doing this for some hours and having already broken dozens of these shards, all she had to show for it was a small, barely visible, hairline scratch on one bar. “At this rate though, I don’t really have much else to do, so I might as well give madness a try.”

“That’s one way of looking at it, I guess.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, the only sounds being Ocellus’s polite chewing and the scratching of Smolder’s newest shard rubbing against metal bar…up until that shard broke with a faint snap. Smolder snorted before chucking it aside. “Back at the school, who’s supposed to be chaperoning the dorms tonight again?” she asked the changeling as she chipped off a new shard from the wall beside her and began sculpting it into the desired shape.

“Professor Fluttershy, I believe,” Ocellus replied.

“Oh great, I can just see that poor mare’s reaction when she realizes we’re not in our rooms.”

“To be fair, our professors have probably already realized we’re missing. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve started search parties by now. And I did mention to Councilor Starlight where we were going before we left this morning.”

“Yeah, but they’re never going to know to search underground!”

“Hopefully our other friends can liberate us so they won’t need to. You know they’re going to have a plan by now.”

“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to elaborate on that plan, would you?” The new voice startled both of them as they turned and saw a trio of dogs enter and stand outside their cell. Two of them were more of the usual guards serving as escorts, but the third was a new dog they hadn’t seen before, dressed like a guard, but bearing a sense of authority not like the others. “It would help speed things along, at least. Sir Husky has asked that I attempt to interrogate you two for any new information.”

“Forget information!” Smolder snapped as she immediately dropped the shard she was sculpting and thrust her arms between the bars. “Give me some gems! Some real gemstones I can eat!”

“I would rather we—”

“No, gemstones first, talk later!”

“But—”

“Nope! This dragon’s belly needs filling first!”

“Smolder,” Ocellus attempted to gently intervene, “I know you’re irritable, but—”

“Darn right I’m irritable! I’m hungry! And I’m angry because I’m hungry! Hungry and angry at the same time, that’s me!”

“You’re hangry,” the new dog surmised wearily.

“Dude, dragons practically invented hangry.” Smolder thrust her arms between the bars as far as they could go, trying to reach the Diamond Dog. “And you haven’t seen it truly until you see a dragon get properly hangry, but you’re sure as heck gonna unless you turn over some gemstones already!”

Her arms came nowhere near reaching any of the three dogs. The newcomer eyed the dragon’s grasping claws for a moment. “I can see this might take some doing then,” he murmured and turned to the other two. “You’re both excused to go back to your sentry posts at the entrance. I will handle it from here.”

“Yes sir,” one of the two guards murmured and they both departed.

The newcomer watched them go before turning back to the prisoners in the cell, Ocellus now joining Smolder at the bars. “My name is Rottweiler,” he greeted once the other guards were out of hearing range. “I am the chief security advisor here in Sapphiria.”

“Well, whoop-de-doo,” Smolder replied sarcastically and continued grasping her claws at him. “Now gimme gems! Something that’s not stupid pyrite!”

Rottweiler sighed. “Fine,” he replied grumpily, looking up and down the dungeon corridor before reaching into his pocket and reluctantly pulling out a not-quite palm-sized diamond and chucked it through the bars.

“Oh wow!” Smolder cried as she immediately pounced on it, surprised that worked. The gem was quickly in her mouth and being chewed delightfully. “Okay! You’ve got my attention now!”

“Good,” Rottweiler said softly, hiding a wince as the dragoness went to town on the gem. He stooped down onto his knees, pressing a claw to his lips and signaling for them to keep quiet. “I recently spoke with one of your friends, the griffon named Gallus.”

This caught Smolder and Ocellus’s attention even more. “Where is he?” Ocellus asked.

“That was what I was hoping you could tell me,” Rottweiler replied. “He and the others have given us the slip again.”

Smolder snorted. “Like we know! We’ve been stuck in here this whole time! So unless they’ve actually gotten out of this crazy place and into territory we actually know something about…we ain’t got a slag’s worth to tell you!”

“Even if we did, we wouldn’t tell you,” Ocellus responded back. “They’re our friends that you’re trying to capture, after all.”

“I am aware,” Rottweiler commented, straightening. “But I’m not like Sir Husky, trust me.” He watched Smolder for a moment as she resumed pacing anxiously, tilting his head. “The guards tell me you’ve been shouting a lot of nonsense for a few hours now.”

“She’s like that,” Ocellus assured.

“Can you blame me?” Smolder bellowed loudly, as she kept pacing. “I’m locked up in a stupid cell that I can’t escape from with my other friends being chased by stupid Diamond Dogs while I’m left with nothing to do but slowly go stir-crazy and be force-fed PYRITE!” She gave Rottweiler a glare. “So I’m telling you, if we don’t get out of this soon, I’m going to lose it!”

Rottweiler raised a questioning eyebrow at her.

“Lose it,” Smolder repeated, misinterpreting it as misunderstanding. “It means go crazy. Nuts. Insane. Bonzo. No longer in control of one’s faculties, three fries short of a Happy Meal—WACKO!”

As the last of her shout echoed down the stone halls, the other two just stared at her, unimpressed.

“‘Three fries short of a Happy Meal?’” Ocellus repeated dubiously.

“You know what I mean!” Smolder snapped at her. She then stopped and looked back at the Rottweiler. “Why do you even ask, anyway?”

“Actually, I was hoping if I could ask both of you to keep it up,” Rottweiler responded with a small grin.

When Rottweiler entered the throne room a few minutes later, he found Husky inside, pacing back and forth in front of his throne, overcoat swishing around as he walked. “Rottweiler!” he declared anxiously as the other Diamond Dog approached. “That didn’t take as long as I thought. Tell me you have good news.”

“I wish I could, your majesty,” Rottweiler replied with a sigh. “The prisoners were not able to tell me anything we didn’t already know, but there’s also been a new complication.”

Husky’s mood immediately soured. “What complication?”

“Are you familiar with the breakout of tunnel fever we had in the dungeons a few moons back?” Rottweiler explained, unfazed. “How it had infected several of the prisoners and a few guards we had in there at the time?”

Husky’s browed furrowed, his expression now caught somewhere in the middle. “Yes…”

“Well, it appears we either failed to entirely disinfect the cells afterwards or we’re facing an entirely new outbreak, because I had to cut short the interrogation upon realizing the new prisoners have come down with tunnel fever.”

Husky gaped at him for a moment. “Are you certain?”

“I recognized the symptoms of the disease’s first stage quite clearly,” Rottweiler assured, and when Husky quickly took a step away at this, went on to reassure him. “Don’t worry, as per protocol, I already had the castle doctor look me over and he’s given me a clean bill of health. It seems the disease was still early enough in the initial stages, and I had no physical contact with either prisoner, so I escaped infection. But you know this means we must now keep those two prisoners in quarantine until tomorrow. As you know, tunnel fever is highly contagious during this first stage.”

Husky resumed pacing, anxiously playing with the hem of his overcoat. “So you’re certain?” he asked, sounding notably less confident then when they began the conversation. “No doubts at all?”

“They were acting very hallucinogenic by the time I left, and they were already shouting borderline nonsense before I arrived,” Rottweiler assured solemnly. “The dungeon guards tell me it’s only gotten worse since, from what they can hear.”

“What can we do for them, then?”

“Nothing now except to wait for the first stage to pass sometime tomorrow. To even try to treat them now will only guarantee the disease’s spread, and then we’ll have an outbreak on our paws.” Rottweiler put on a reassuring grin. “But I wouldn’t worry too much, your majesty. That first stage is rough for anyone, but every Diamond Dog I’ve ever known has survived it and lived to tell the tale. You know that.”

“Except they aren’t Diamond Dogs!” Husky snapped suddenly. He growled as he whirled his back onto Rottweiler to get himself a quick drink. “This is all Woofus’s fault…they wouldn’t even be here were it not for him.”

Rottweiler opted not to comment. “Have the city search parties had any luck finding the others, your majesty?” he asked instead, already suspecting the answer.

Husky sighed, putting down his goblet. “Nothing yet,” he muttered, clearly frustrated and went back to pacing. “There’s been no sign of Woofus himself and those still unaccounted for since they escaped the castle, and those two we nearly caught at that tavern…all they can tell me is that they clearly went into the river, but haven’t appeared again since.” He paused, gazing blankly about the room. “They must have slipped out of the river undetected somewhere and escaped.”

“Or they drowned,” Rottweiler offered, being realistic.

“Or they escaped!” Husky snapped, whirling onto Rottweiler. “To even suggest otherwise…” he trailed off and suddenly the fight went out of him. “This has become a right mess, Rottweiler. None of this even needed to happen in the first place, but it has, and even worse, it’s happened on my watch.” He frowned. “Lives are in danger, Rottweiler…and I need to make that right.”

Rottweiler was quiet for a moment, silently gauging his leader. “What do you propose then, your majesty?”

Husky was silent for a moment, running his claws through his black-grey fur as he turned to peer out at the city past the throne room’s balcony. “For now, keep searching,” he ordered. “Double the teams if you have to. They’ve got to be somewhere.”

At Woofus’s own insistence, they had devised a backup plan in case the meet-up with Rottweiler went south. Most of them had preferred to think it wouldn’t be needed, but seeing precisely this transpired, they were all glad they had. This plan had them scattering and regrouping at a different location near the beginning of the city’s underground river, right where the waterfall starting it poured into the cavern. It took some time to safely navigate the city without getting noticed now that it was on a heightened alert, but finally Woofus, Yona, and Sandbar arrived at the river banks in a vacant area of the city.

The moment they stepped onto those muddy shores, Silverstream poked her head out of the water. “There you guys are!” she declared with a relieved grin. “We’ve been waiting forever!”

Gallus’s head popped up beside hers. “What kept you?” he barked, but also relieved. “We were starting to fear the worst!”

“The city’s on high alert at the moment,” Woofus explained with a sigh, kneeling down on the riverbank as Silverstream and Gallus swam to shore. “We had to move very carefully so to avoid getting caught and that took time.”

“We weren’t sure you two even got away!” Sandbar added, watching as the two hauled themselves out of the water. “All we knew was those guards suddenly stormed that tavern, and we couldn’t stick around to see if you got away without getting caught ourselves. We didn’t even have time to bring all of our stuff with and had to leave some of it behind.” He then chuckled to himself as Gallus’s body came fully into view. “Nice tail, by the way, Gallus,” he teased.

Gallus twisted his head back at the fins his wings and forelegs had become and the seapony tail that had replaced his hindlegs and scowled. “Yeah, well, it was the only way that crazy escape we did was going to work,” he muttered while crawling the rest of the way out of the water.

“Oh c’mon, it’s not that bad!” Silverstream remarked in her own seapony body, patting Gallus on the back. “I’m just fine with being a seapony!”

“Sil, weren’t you born a seapony?” Gallus asked contemptuously.

“Beside the point!” Silverstream replied, waving the matter aside with one fin.

Yona frowned, gaze moving from on the two and out into the river. “Where yak’s disguises?” she bemoaned.

“Oh, sorry, Yona, we had to ditch them in the river,” Silverstream apologized with a wince. “They not only didn’t fit anymore, they weren’t helping either of us swim, and we needed to get out of there fast.”

“Once we did, though, we basically just hung around here waiting for you three to show up,” Gallus replied, trying to knock water out of one ear.

“So what happened?” Woofus asked, getting right to the point. “Did you find Rottweiler, or was it a trap?”

“Don’t know if it was a trap, but looking back, it wouldn’t surprise me,” Gallus grumbled. “Did find Rottweiler, but long story short, it did not go well.” He attempted to pick himself up only to flop down into the mud, remembering his body didn’t work like that at the moment. “Sil, can I have my legs back now?”

“Oh right,” Silverstream replied, clasping one fin around Gallus’s while the other grabbed at the piece of pearl hung around her neck. With a flash of magical light, both were immediately transformed back into their usual land-faring bodies.

“But you did find Rottweiler?” Woofus urged. “What did he say?”

Gallus shook himself before answering. “Nothing really useful,” he grumbled darkly. “Basically he said he’d only help if Woofus agreed to stay here and help him overthrow Husky, and even then the help he said he could do was pretty darn pathetic because he said Husky was basically riding on him too hard.”

Woofus dropped into a sitting position with a soft thump, dejected. “Oh,” he mumbled.

“Either way, I wasn’t about to agree Woofus to anything like that without letting him have some say in it,” Gallus recapped and folded his arms, grumpy about the whole ordeal. “I don’t regret it either. The guy was very less than helpful.”

Woofus sighed, standing back up and taking a couple steps away from them, silently turned to stare at the city stretching out before him. The others watched him for a moment.

“I’m sorry, Woofus,” Silverstream said. “I know you were counting on his help.”

“So now we’re back to square one,” Sandbar summarized sadly.

“Yona hate square one,” Yona grumbled.

“I still say we’re better off without him regardless,” Gallus stressed. “Guy was even pretty rude at the end there. The moment those guards started showing up, he just left, leaving me to nearly get caught by them…heck, he even had the gall to tell us to go get lost in the tunnels!”

Woofus suddenly spun around. “He said that? He actually said that?”

“Yup,” Gallus replied glumly.

“How rude!” Silverstream frowned.

Woofus, however, moved closer to Gallus. “You’re certain that’s what he said?”

“Word for word,” Gallus assured with emphasis then rolled his eyes. “It was bad enough already that he was refusing to help, he didn’t need to throw in a childish insult.”

But Woofus was starting to become animated. “No, no, no, you don’t understand, Gallus!” he assured. “That wasn’t an insult…it was a code phrase!”

It had begun following the Storm King’s attempted invasion of Equestria, and how some of his forces had tried to take Sapphiria during it. Those forces never succeeded, and their attempts stopped the same time the overall invasion did. Nevertheless, it made the subterranean populace realize their civilization wasn’t immune from invasion, and though they managed to escape it this time, it didn’t mean they wouldn’t face that same danger again sometime in the future. And next time, the invading force might be luckier than the Storm King.

Thus, a series of contingency plans were created in preparation for such a worst-case scenario, but one particularly sensitive one involved evacuating the ruling pack leader to one of a number of “safe houses” scattered about the city and quietly taken into administrative possession. In the event it came time to carry out this plan, word among the royal guard would be spread with a seemingly innocuous code phrase, each phrase signifying a different safe house the pack leader was being relocated to. “Go get lost in the tunnels” happened to be one of them, leaving Woofus convinced that Rottweiler’s use of this phrase was no accident.

So again moving carefully, even though the increasingly late hour had left the city largely quiet and inactive save for the patrols still searching for them, they proceeded to the associated safe house, hoping that something beneficial would be waiting for them. This house proved to be a two-story hut with an attached jetty standing at the shore of the city’s underground lake. It was far enough away that it wasn’t in the thick of the city’s usual activities, but not so much that it was fully excluded from it, leaving it a very unsuspecting location that blended in with the other properties surrounding it. They could see no visible guards or much of anyone securing it, but there was firelight visible through the windows on the first floor, suggesting that someone was present and inside.

Gallus was immediately suspicious. “I don’t know about this, Woofus,” he muttered aloud from where they had gathered behind a stout stone wall. He still had his doubts about Rottweiler’s intentions. “What if it’s a trap?”

Woofus shook his head. “This doesn’t feel like a trap,” he promised. “Besides, where else do we have to go at this point?”

“Well…nowhere, really,” Silverstream replied. “Except wandering the streets helplessly, trying to avoid getting caught, with no food or other supplies between us.”

“And Yona hungry,” Yona added, like this was argument enough for her. It probably was, as immediately after her stomach gurgled in agreement.

“And I’m exhausted,” Sandbar joined in. He looked longingly at the house. “It’d…be nice to have someplace even remotely safe to spend the night, because I think we can be certain we’re not going anywhere until tomorrow morning.”

“And even if there isn’t anyone in there,” Woofus concluded, “we can still find all of that inside. All of the safe houses are kept fully stocked at all times.”

“And if there is someone in there?” Gallus asked.

“Yona think we take them,” Yona stated determinedly, pawing at the ground with her hoof. “Outnumber them!”

“We don’t know if we do, though,” Gallus argued. He motioned his claws at the safe house. “For all we know, there could be dozens hiding inside that place, just out of sight.”

The others exchanged glances for a moment, knowing none of them could reasonably deny that he could be right.

“All right,” Sandbar conceded and leveled his gaze with the griffon. “Do you have a better idea?”

Gallus really wished he did, and he scrunched up his face trying hard to pull one out of nowhere. But ultimately he sighed. “No, I guess I don’t,” he admitted. “But for the record, I think this idea is a bad one.” Nevertheless, he turned to Woofus. “So what’s the plan?”

Woofus shrugged. “We head inside, proceeding with caution,” he concluded. “At the first sign of trouble, we flee.” He gazed at the house again. “But…I really do feel it’s not going to come to that.” He placed a paw on Gallus’s shoulder. “Just…trust me.”

Gallus gazed into the genuine eyes of the Diamond Dog and nodded. “All right,” he concluded simply.

The matter settled, they all quietly approached the house, keeping to the shadows. They eventually arrived at a side door (as even Woofus knew better than to enter through the front) without event and no sign whatsoever that they had been noticed or were about to be jumped. They glanced at one another to again confirm they were good to proceed, before Woofus put his paws on the door, slowly pushing it open with a faint creak.

“Here goes nothing,” he whispered as they slipped inside, one by one.

The side door led into a simple, garage-like storeroom filled with boxes and household tools all gathering dust. Having been forced to abandon the spear he had obtained earlier and feeling the need to replace it with something, Gallus scooped up an old piece of wood as an impromptu club. The others slowly gravitated behind him for protection, except for Woofus, who continued to lead the way unarmed. Crossing the storeroom, they gathered at the door to the next room, and after again silently checking they were all still good, Woofus pushed this one open too. Beyond was a spacious living area, sparsely furnished except for a lit and roaring fireplace and a round table with a modest chaise longue and a simple wooden bench positioned around it.

There was only one occupant in the room though, seated on the bench. “I was starting to wonder if any of you were going to come,” the lone Diamond Dog remarked, calmly turning to look at them.

“Rottweiler,” Woofus murmured.

Rottweiler nodded his head at him. “Sir Woofus,” he greeted back.

Woofus’s gaze averted slightly. “You don’t have to use the formalities with me anymore, Rottweiler.”

Rottweiler grinned faintly. “It is still good to see you again.” He then looked at the others. “I imagine you’re all famished by now,” he said, and motioned one paw to the round table, laden with a wide variety of food. “So I’ve tried to accommodate. I couldn’t be certain what sort of foods would interest all of you, but…”

“Yams!” Yona suddenly yelled, spying the food in question as she pushed her way to the front of the group. “Yak dibs!” She galloped up to the table and immediately helped herself.

The tension broken, the others idly went up to the table as well, surveying the food. Silverstream found two fish and tossed one to Gallus before taking a hefty bite into the other. Sandbar, meanwhile, picked up a bowl of green beans and sat down on the vacant chaise longue to munch on them. Woofus, however, ignored the food and approached Rottweiler’s bench.

“Does Husky know about any of this?” he asked the other Diamond Dog.

Rottweiler shook his head. “No,” he promised. “You have my word.” He then reached for a bottle and a pair of empty glasses seated next to him. “Would you care for a drink?”

Woofus glanced at the bottle and smirked. “Let me guess…punchberry juice?”

“But of course,” Rottweiler replied with a smirk of his own, filling both glasses and handing one to Woofus. “There a problem with that?”

“None whatsoever,” Woofus replied, chinking his glass against Rottweiler’s. They both took hearty sips from their drinks. As usual, Rottweiler did so with a completely straight face, unfazed by its potent flavor. Woofus managed a little less so, making a faint grimace as he forced the drink down, but maintained a content face regardless. “Mmmm,” he hummed in approval.

Gallus, watching all of this, was still a bit skeptical. “So are you actually helping us or not?” he finally demanded aloud.

Silverstream immediately elbowed him. “Gallus!” she criticized in a hiss. “Don’t be rude to the guy who’s providing all the yummy food!”

Rottweiler merely grinned, setting his glass down. “I’d like to help, if you’ll let me,” he answered, not offended by Gallus’s direct tone.

“Well, you sure didn’t give me that impression at the tavern,” Gallus responded.

“Yes, I apologize for that, but as I tried to explain before, no one must know I’m involved,” Rottweiler explained sadly. “If Husky knew I was assisting those he views as enemies, he would relieve me of my position immediately, robbing me of any ability to assist.” Seeing Gallus still wasn’t satisfied, he added, “I also apologize for my curt and abrupt departure at the tavern, but it was for appearances sake, to again make myself appear uninvolved. Plus, when the guards arrived, it was imperative that we not be seen together, for that same reason.” He sighed. “I know it seems rude…but that’s the price you pay for effectively being the double agent…and honestly I can’t blame you for responding the way you had, Gallus. I was improvising throughout that whole conversation anyway, not having much of a plan in advance. So when that meeting didn’t pan out, it gave me a chance to set up better circumstances for us to meet, like we are now.”

Gallus frowned, but he reluctantly conceded to Rottweiler’s points, making sense now that the dog had explained them. “Guess it’s a good thing we managed to escape those guards without your help then,” he mumbled, still a bit bitter about that.

“I wasn’t too worried,” Rottweiler assured. “You’ve all done a very good job avoiding that thus far, so I figured you’d do it again. And you did. It’s actually starting to make Sir Husky uneasy…though admittedly he’s responded in kind by searching for you with increasing aggressiveness, so the sooner we resolve this, the better.”

So Woofus, toying with his glass, got to the point. “Gallus tells me that if you help, you want me to help replace Husky in return,” he summarized softly.

Rottweiler sighed. “I won’t lie, Woofus,” he admitted. “I very much think it needs to be done.”

“Why?” Woofus demanded, setting down his drink a bit harder than he intended. “Why is Husky any less incapable than I am?”

“You bear the marks for royalty and were trained for it. Husky was not.”

“And yet he managed to secure himself the throne, all on his own,” Woofus argued back. “Rottweiler, at this point, I have no issue with Husky being on the throne. I chose to give it up after all, and as I see it, I have no claim to it, so it’s not my business anymore. If Husky really wants it, then I say he’s entitled to it. Who am I to deny him that right if he’s willing to work for it, which he clearly did?” he frowned, picking up his glass again to gulp down the rest of his drink in one long swig, tilting his head as he flinched forcing it down, before sighing heavily. “Besides…you and I both know this isn’t about the throne at all. What started all of this was me not being there to support my friend when needed, and Husky wants to take it out on me. Not only do I feel that’s fair…I feel like not challenging this accomplishment he’s achieved is something I could do to try and make it up to him.”

Silence had fallen in the room while Woofus spoke, the dog’s depressed mood being shared as they all quietly stopped to listen. Rottweiler sighed heavily, letting these words sink in for a moment before responding. “Sir Husky did secure himself the throne,” he began by acknowledging. “But I wouldn’t say he did it all on his own.”

Woofus also sighed, but his was more exasperated. “Gallus mentioned that Husky had the administrative staff backing him up, but that’s not surprising. All it means is that he convinced them he could be trusted with the throne.”

Rottweiler shook his head. “What he did was agree to do what they told him to do,” he summarized bluntly. “You know the old bridge that spans the west side of the river?”

Woofus’s brow furrowed, not sure he was following. “Yes…plans were made to have that bridge repaired or, failing that, torn down and replaced altogether.”

“Not anymore. All of those plans have since been canceled and the bridge to be left untouched at the administrative staff’s request, all because they deemed doing anything to fix the problem would be too costly.”

Woofus’s eyes widened and he half-rose from his seat. “What? But that bridge is crumbling away to the point that it’s a safety hazard!”

“Then you see the problem,” Rottweiler concluded. “And it’s just the beginning. There have been plenty more of such instances taking place ever since Sir Husky took the throne, and I expect there will be plenty more unless something is done to stop it.” At this, Woofus stood and numbly walked away, all eyes watching him as he did this, especially Rottweiler’s. “Sir Woofus, the administrative staff is using Sir Husky’s shortcomings to their own advantage, it’s only leading to corruption and mismanagement, and Sir Husky is too inexperienced and naïve to catch it. I shudder to think what might happen to Sapphiria if it continues.”

“Nothing good,” Gallus mumbled aloud, sheepishly fiddling with a leftover fish bone. “Trust me…there’s a lot of that stuff going on in the Griffon Kingdom, and it’s not exactly left us high and mighty, as much as I hate admitting it.”

“Yona don’t want to see that happen here,” Yona mumbled, looking troubled by the prospect.

“Should we even get involved, though?” Sandbar asked, while Woofus silently walked past them, lost in thought. “This isn’t what we’re here to do—we only came here to do a homework assignment, nothing more! And what about Ocellus and Smolder, still locked up somewhere?”

“Maybe we should go back to Ponyville first and get Princess Twilight,” Silverstream suggested, “have her swing her weight as royalty around so to sort this out.”

“Except her Equestrian royalty would be of little use here,” Rottweiler reminded the hippogriff. “Sapphiria doesn’t answer to Equestria.”

“And he’s right,” Woofus spoke as he stood gazing out a window at the house’s attached jetty. “At this point, I have no reason not to think that Husky would only see her as a meddler and dismiss whatever she had to say.”

“I shudder to think he might even try to throw her in the dungeons too, if given the chance,” Rottweiler added.

“He wouldn’t dare,” Sandbar declared. “It’d only bring the rest of Equestria down on him, trying to get her back.”

“I agree,” Rottweiler said. “But Sir Husky wouldn’t think it through. He has demonstrated that much to me just this evening. I worry he’s starting to exert his power as king more than he should, crossing boundaries he shouldn’t, desperate to get his way.”

“The administrative staff wouldn’t stand for that, Husky,” Woofus pointed out. “That’s why they’re there, to serve as a check on the pack leader’s power should that happen.”

“It would still only add to the disorder, Sir Woofus,” Husky reminded. “You know that.”

Yona looked to Woofus. “So what Diamond Dog do?”

Woofus didn’t reply right away. “I don’t know,” he admitted, still gazing out the window.

The others watched him for a moment then Sandbar motioned for their attention. “Let’s give him a bit think about it,” he suggested softly. “It’s been a long day anyway…we all could use the break.”

But it wasn’t long before their sated bellies started to lull them into a relaxed state and the weariness of the day’s trying events caught up with them, their bodies slowly wanting to drift asleep. Yona was the first to doze off fully, having peacefully curled up in front of the fire, leaving only her head visible so that the rest of her looked more like a giant ball of wool. The others remained awake still, but they were getting droopy eyed. Gallus kept himself awake by engaging in conversation with Sandbar and Silverstream, seated on the chaise longue, about why Equestria might have rock farms. But the glassy eyes and noncommittal grunts Sandbar made back left it questionable how much he was participating. Silverstream was even closer to drifting off, slumped over against the chaise longue’s one arm rest and constantly yawning. Rottweiler, still looking wide awake, kept watch over the group while quietly helping himself to some of the leftover food. Woofus, meanwhile, still stood at the window and remained deep in thought, not having spoken for some time now.

Realizing this and his conversation with Sandbar and Silverstream reaching a lull anyway, Gallus peered around the chaise longue he sat in front of so to look at the young Diamond Dog. “Look, Woofus, I don’t mean to be a nag,” the griffon commented sympathetically, “but we really should come up with some plan of action before morning. I don’t want to stay here forever, after all.”

Sandbar and Silverstream both twisted around to look at Woofus too. “Woofus, we can try and help you replace Husky, if that’s what we really have to do to get out of this,” Sandbar reasoned aloud, trying to be helpful.

“I mean, we totally get why you wouldn’t want to,” Silverstream added. “But, let’s all be honest with ourselves…we’re not really seeing many alternatives at this point.”

Woofus huffed to himself and glanced back at them. “I’m still not convinced we’re at that point yet,” he stated. “As I see it, the only thing that’s really stopping us is we need to free Ocellus and Smolder first.”

“Okay, fine,” Gallus said, latching onto that as a start of a plan. “How are we going to go about doing that?”

“I would rather you all stay here, where I know you’re safe,” Woofus said, his gaze turning concerned. “This is a matter me and Rottweiler have to deal with, but you four don’t. It’s not your fight.”

“It…kind of is now, though,” Sandbar countered. “I mean, thinking it all over, we’ve been dragged into the middle of this whether we wanted to or not.”

“And dang it, we’ll fight it, too.” Gallus promised.

“And I appreciate that, I truly do,” Woofus promised, concern etched on his eyes. “But you never should’ve gotten involved in the first place, and you wouldn’t had it not been for me.”

“Water under the bridge!” Silverstream declared optimistically. “We don’t blame you at all for that.”

Having been silently mulling over the topic, Rottweiler now broke his silence. “I think Woofus is trying to say this is something he wants to do on his own,” he explained, “if only to prove that he can.”

The others frowned at him for a moment then looked back at Woofus. “Prove what, exactly?” Sandbar asked.

Woofus averted his gaze sheepishly, which only made Rottweiler grin knowingly. “That he can be the friend he wants to be.”

“If that’s all it is, then Woofie has nothing he needs to prove,” Silverstream said, gaze bouncing back and forth between the two dogs. “We already know he’s our friend. We want to be good friends back to him.”

“I know,” Rottweiler said as he nodded. “So does he.”

Gallus, Sandbar, and Silverstream exchanged looks. “Ah,” Sandbar responded, believing he understood.

Woofus sighed, turning away from the window so to rejoin the group. “Look, like I said, it’s not that I don’t appreciate the help,” he assured the group. “But it’s bad enough Ocellus and Smolder got imprisoned over this. I do not want to see any more of you face that either. Joining my fight will only put you at risk. So all you are doing is getting out of here. Besides, it’s me that Husky wants! Not all of you!”

“Woofus, we’re not going to just stand to one side and let you face this alone just because you don’t want us to help,” Gallus grumbled, getting frustrated.

“I’m trying to protect ALL of you from having to face what I have to!” Woofus suddenly snapped, not out of anger but out of fear. “I owe you that because you’re my FRIENDS!”

A stunned silence fell in the room as everyone stared at Woofus, taken aback. For a long moment, the only sounds breaking that silence was Woofus’s panting from the exertion of his outburst and Yona briefly snorting in her sleep.

But then Silverstream smiled lightly. “Exactly,” she replied simply.

When this drew a puzzled expression from Woofus, Sandbar elaborated. “Friends help friends in need, Woofus. That’s what friends do.”

“So we’re putting the line down here and now,” Gallus continued, swiping the end of his tail across the floor so to metaphorically draw that line. “Whatever we do next, we’re doing it together or not at all.”

Looking his resolute friends over, and catching sight of an approving look from Rottweiler behind them, Woofus wanted to argue further, but knew there wasn’t much point—they had made up their minds. At first he snorted and turned away…but found their positive support too infectious and couldn’t help but grin. “All right,” he murmured, deciding that matter settled. “If that’s going to be the case…then I guess our next priority will be figuring out how we’re all going to free Ocellus and Smolder…together.”

The others grinned optimistically at Woofus’s show of support, but as she thought about their other two absent friends, Silverstream’s smile morphed into a frown. “Oh, I hope those two aren’t in too much danger…” she mumbled, putting a thoughtful but worried talon to her beak.

But here, Rottweiler grinned in earnest. “They’re fine,” he assured quickly, entering the conversation again. “I visited them in their cell before coming here,” he began.

The others perked up immediately. “How are they doing?” Sandbar asked.

Rottweiler stopped to seek the right description. “…they are bored,” he finally concluded. “But safe for now. I’ve taken steps to ensure Sir Husky does not bother them until tomorrow.”

The grey fur on Woofus’s brow furrowed. “How did you do that?”

Rottweiler’s grin turned sly. “I told Sir Husky they had come down with tunnel fever.”

The others at first reeled back, confused. “Tunnel fever?” Gallus repeated with concern. “Why, what’s that?” Silverstream asked with fear. “Are they sick?”

But then comprehension snaked onto Woofus’s face. “They’re fine,” he realized, forming a grin of his own as he looked at Rottweiler. “You’ve just put them into quarantine as if they weren’t.”

Rottweiler nodded. “No one in or out of the dungeons until tomorrow morning at the soonest. By then, we can ensure it won’t matter anymore.”

“So…we just gotta decide what move we’re going to make before then,” Gallus concluded, everyone nodding in agreement.

They spent the next few minutes brainstorming, but while they all had ideas, none seemed airtight enough for them to be comfortable with. There was also the matter of Husky, and whether or not Woofus would agree to help Rottweiler replace him. Rottweiler made it clear that he was still all for this plan. Woofus, however, still remained undecided, and it seemed that until he figured it out, he struggled with proceeding, hindering all the rest of their plans in the meantime. What Woofus did about Husky seemed to hinge on everything else.

Eventually though the increasingly late hour at last had its toll. As they were already starting to nod off, Silverstream, Sandbar, and Gallus, all fell asleep one by one, despite each’s attempts to remain awake. Silverstream went first, letting her body sag into the armrest she had been wearily leaning on. Sandbar soon followed, oblivious to the fact he had slumped over and rested against Silverstream’s side in doing so. Gallus, meanwhile, slept on the floor with his head tilted back, leaning on the side of the chaise longue. This just left Rottweiler and Woofus still awake, though Woofus was starting to feel the call of sleep wrap itself around him too. Nevertheless, he remained awake as he pondered his problems while gazing out the window, a different one this time.

Rottweiler, the only one still looking wide awake, watched him from where he’d sat all evening. He was well aware of what the younger Diamond Dog was thinking and sighed. “You know, Sir Woofus, it is not my wish to try and force you into doing anything,” he said aloud. “After all, though I urged you not to leave in the first place…I ultimately didn’t stop you.”

“I know,” Woofus answered back, before heaving a heavy sigh of his own. “It’s just…not ideal circumstances, this.”

“It never was,” Rottweiler agreed. “But there isn’t much we can do about that now…just whatever we can do in the future to address it.” He paused, studying Woofus. “I guess what I’m saying is that I need to know sooner rather than later what it is you intend to do.”

Woofus didn’t respond for a long moment. “This is why I left, you know,” he spoke abruptly. “A leader can’t afford to be this indecisive.”

“But a leader can afford to give his decisions careful thought,” Rottweiler responded back. He gazed approvingly at Woofus. “If I may…I believe you are far more capable at the role than you give yourself credit for.”

“I’m not sure that’s justification enough to stage a coup against someone I still consider a friend, simply because he hasn’t ruled to your particular tastes, Rottweiler.”

Rottweiler considered that for a moment. “If it helps, I do genuinely believe that Sir Husky, excepting matters involving yourself, has always meant well.” He sighed. “But he’s inexperienced, grossly so. I fear he doesn’t actually know what he’s doing, so he goes through the motions as if he does, mostly doing whatever is suggested to him without considering whether or not it’s a good idea. He doesn’t understand that won’t actually help maintain Sapphiria. I fear he’s starting to realize his inadequacies too, but remains in denial about them, afraid of the implications.”

“Couldn’t he still learn though, with time?”

“Perhaps, in the end. But how much damage would be done first before he does?”

Woofus averted his gaze. “And what makes you think I’d be any different? How could I know and learn enough to always make the right choice? How do I avoid causing any of that same damage while I figure out how to rule myself? I may have the advantage of experience, Rottweiler…but I’m not perfect. What happened with Husky proved that.”

“What happened to Sir Husky wasn’t your fault,” Rottweiler retorted. “Pack leader or no, you’re still just one creature, who has his own life concerns just as much as he does, and frankly, Sir Husky should’ve known that as your friend.” He paused, watching Woofus’s reactions. “Either way, even if you had been there for him on that day, it still wouldn’t guarantee success. He could have still failed the guard’s entrance exam.”

“I know,” Woofus said. “But he still needed that support, no matter what the end outcome was.” His gaze wandered to the window and at the cityscape beyond it. “They all do. All of Sapphiria. If I can’t spare that support for even just one of them…how can I expect to be able to give anyone in my pack the support they need?” He shook his head. “They deserve a pack leader more capable of that than I am.”

“A pack leader doesn’t need to be perfect to be good, Sir Woofus,” Rottweiler said surely. “We should understand that you can’t be everywhere at once, and we don’t necessarily need you to be…we just need you to be there to lead us through the rougher times when they come. I’ve seen you do it.”

“…you have?”

“You safely got them this far, haven’t you?” Rottweiler motioned to the others, sleeping in their various spots throughout the room.

Woofus frowned at him. “That was a group effort.”

“They don’t know Sapphiria though. How it works, what the populace is like, what its rules are, or the lay of the land. Were you not there to lead them through all of that, Sir Husky would’ve already caught them long ago.”

Woofus shook his head in disagreement though. “They wouldn’t even be here, let alone in danger, were it not for me.”

Rottweiler shook his head sadly. “I wish I could make you see, your majesty.”

Woofus smiled sadly. “Part of me wants you to, to be honest,” he admitted, showing Rottweiler’s words weren’t totally lost on him. But then he sighed, the smile vanishing as quickly as it had come while he looked over his sleeping friends, reflecting on how new they really were. It certainly didn’t feel like it anymore. “What it comes down to, Rottweiler,” he finally concluded, “is that I already failed one friend of mine and am still paying the price for it. Now it’s endangered my new friends…and I can’t stand by allowing that to continue. It’s my fault they’re here…so it’s up to me to help them get to safety. I owe them that much.” He surveyed the others before locking eyes with Rottweiler again. “You can understand that, can’t you?”

Rottweiler gazed at the others for a second too, before nodding. “I can,” he assured. He smiled slightly. “They are indeed good friends, Sir Woofus, ones you’re lucky to have. Your concern in them is certainly not misplaced.”

Woofus nodded, stepping closer to the other Diamond Dog. “So what are we going to do to help them?” he asked.

Rottweiler considered the problem for a moment, knowing their options were limited. “If we can distract enough of the guards from one of the tunnel entrances, we could slip them out that way,” he concluded. “If all of us are working together to do it, the numbers might be in our favor. But the problem is that I can’t guarantee anything. Sir Husky has the guard up at the entrances too high for me to promise success.”

“Couldn’t you just order them away?”

“Not without arousing immediate suspicion. In order to avoid that, we must lure the guards away in some manner that will feel natural and not give them reason to suspect.”

Woofus mulled on that problem for a moment. “And what about Ocellus and Smolder?” he asked. “How are we going to get them out of the dungeons?”

“That will be trickier. I have ideas, but nothing settled into a full plan as of yet.” Rottweiler shrugged. “Part of the problem is that anyone who sees me doing anything in association with them is going to ask questions…and the more questions asked…”

“…the more chance you have of being discovered.” Woofus caught on, nodding. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a moment. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be you, though.” He glanced up at him. “By any chance, do you still have full access to the castle’s armory?”

Author's Note

This one was probably my favorite part of the story to write--lots of fun bits in there. :pinkiehappy:

Come back this time tomorrow for Part IV!

Part IV

Early the next morning, as the underground city of Sapphiria awoke for the new day, the morning shift of guards all started filing towards Pillar Castle so to report in, receive their assignments, and get to work. Most of these guards were already dressed in uniform or their usual duty armor, so to see Diamond Dogs entering dressed as such was definitely not an unexpected sight. Especially not since many were expecting a long day of work, knowing that Sir Husky probably would have many of them continue to search for the missing creatures he was so adamant be found.

What went overlooked, however, was that there were a few extras filing in this morning. After slipping in through the usual checkpoint at the guard’s entrance without being noticed, one of them, Woofus, gently raised the visor of his helmet a bit so to better orient himself, then, being completely overlooked while wearing the armor Rottweiler had obtained for him last night, he turned and hurried off in the direction of the dungeons.

“Everything’s still going as planned,” he mumbled to himself as he went. “I dearly hope it continues, and no unforeseen complications arise…”

Meanwhile, Rottweiler was entering the castle from an entirely different location, pushing a covered cart as he rolled in through the building’s loading bay entrance, located on its side. A couple night shift guards were still posted in and around it and greeted their superior officer happily but with some small surprise.

“Good morning, sir,” the closest of the dogs said, positioned just inside the entrance and surveying all that came and went through the bay. “We weren’t expecting to see you coming in through here today.” He nodded his head at the cart. “What’s the occasion?”

Rottweiler blew a heavy sigh as he forced a grin. “Just getting an early start to what is sure to be a rough day,” he admitted as he rolled the cart past without slowing. “They still haven’t found those outsiders that are supposed to be roaming the city, and I anticipate Sir Husky will be having us up our game trying to find them.” He patted the covered top of the cart. “So I’m bringing in some additional crowd control equipment from one of the guard posts so to boost our supply here, in case we need it.”

“Think we will, sir?” the guard asked, turning his head as he watched Rottweiler roll the cart further into the bay.

“I think it never hurts to be prepared,” Rottweiler evaded.

“Well, it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if we did,” another guard standing across the room groused. “Personally, I don’t know why Sir Husky wants us finding the outsiders so badly. I would think he’d sooner just want the whole mangy lot of them gone.”

A head-sized lump started rising up from underneath the cover on Rottweiler’s cart at this comment, but Rottweiler quickly pressed it back down with one paw. “That’s not your call to make, mister,” he reprimanded as cover. “Now stand at the ready and do whatever job you’re asked without complaint.”

“Yes sir,” the guard grumbled and went silent.

Rottweiler continued on without further incident, leaving the guards behind at their posts as he pushed the cart through the loading area and into an unoccupied storage room full of boxes and other equipment.

The moment he latched the door behind him, Gallus burst out from under the cart’s cover, looking annoyed. “We are not mangy!” he burst out, jabbing a claw at Rottweiler. “If anything, you guys are the mangy ones! I mean, do you all never bathe? Just when I think my nose has finally adjusted to it, I find another Diamond Dog with a whole new level of B.O.!” He fell silent for a moment, breathing heavily while Rottweiler stared him down, apathetic. “Look, I’m sorry, but I just had to get that out finally.”

“Fine, just keep it to yourself,” Rottweiler advised as he grabbed a spear from a stash in the corner and tossed it to the young griffon. “We’re here to try and prevent a confrontation from happening, not start one because you couldn’t keep your beak shut.”

“Right, right,” Gallus grumbled as he ducked back down into the empty cart. “Now where do you want me?”

“We’re going to move closer to the throne room,” Rottweiler explained as he pulled the cover back in place, hiding Gallus from view again. “There’s a storage room near there that I can fit you and this cart in, but while keeping us both within hearing and acting range should something come up.”

“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” Gallus murmured, uneasy about any hiccups in their daring plan, and silently hoped he and his other friends wouldn’t have to face that.

Of which, his remaining friends were already moving to also help ensure such outcomes don’t come to pass. As it happened, Rottweiler knew the location of one bachelor guard’s house which would be vacant at this time and close to Pillar Castle, making it a great lookout point. Dressed in cloaks so to avoid detection, Sandbar, Silverstream, and Yona climbed up a staircase running up this house’s back wall and to its roof.

Once there, Yona had to stop and take in the many plants growing here in raised beds, making for a rooftop garden lit by the same glowing stones that lit most of the rest of Sapphira. “Diamond Dog guard is gardener!” she noted aloud in approval.

“Well, everybody’s gotta have a hobby,” Sandbar remarked as he slipped past the plants and to the other side of the roof where the castle could be seen directly ahead of them.

Yona then wandered over to a large chute standing at the edge to their left, peering into it. “What this though?” she sniffed, wrinkling her nose. “It smell funny.”

“I’ll bet you that’s a rubbish chute, for trash and compost and stuff!” Silverstream declared, coming over to join the yak. “My aunt’s got something like this at her home, back at Mount Aris. It should lead straight down into a dumpster that collects it all.” She poked her head into the sizeable chute. “Mind you, this guy must have a lot of stuff to toss down here at any one time so to have it be this big. We all could fit down this, no problem!”

“I wouldn’t recommend it, though,” Sandbar said, and motioned the two girls over to the roof edge he was keeping ducked down low at. “Now let’s keep quiet and keep an eye out,” he said, pointing a hoof at the castle’s main entrance, clearly in view, as well a number of its key side entrances. “We need make sure the way out stays clear for when everybody else needs to get out.”

“And to keep an eye out for any trouble,” Silverstream added as she ducked down beside Sandbar.

“Yona hopes her eye does not see trouble,” Yona murmured as she hunkered down on Sandbar’s other side, and all three of them settled down to watch the castle.

However, Husky was found in an uneasy mood when three members of the administrative staff came to pay him a visit in the throne room, looking to carry out a normally routine morning meeting.

“If I may, you do not look well, your majesty,” one commented aloud, brow furrowed with concern.

“I didn’t sleep well,” Husky admitted, rubbing at his tired eyes. “This whole mess is stupid…it needs to be over already.”

“I take it, then, that the guards haven’t had any new success in finding the missing creatures,” another of the administrators surmised.

“No, no sign of them at all anywhere in the city,” Husky muttered as he fretfully paced. “They must have found some place secure to lay low for the night.”

“It’s possible,” the administrator concluded. “Wherever it is, though, it continues to elude us.”

“Comments like that aren’t helping us find them, though,” Husky reminded, pointing a claw at the administrator. He rubbed at his eyes again. “Nor was the captain of the guard’s comments earlier suggesting that they’ve somehow already escaped the city.”

“That may also be a possibility. Despite our attempts to cut off all exits in or out of the city, the fact they haven’t turned up for some time may suggest that they still found—”

“No, Woofus is still in the city,” Husky immediately cut off. “I can feel it…besides, we have his supposed friends in prison still…he isn’t going to go anywhere without them.” He paused, then added with some uncertainty, “I hope. He’d better.”

The administrators looked at one another for a second. “With respect, sir, you said the same thing yesterday,” the third finally spoke. “But to be quite frank…we’ve seen little sign that this is actually the case.”

“Nor does it do anything to rule out the possibility the outsiders could try and seek outside help to recover those prisoners,” the first added. “If so, Sapphiria could be in grave danger continuing to hold those prisoners.”

“Needless danger at that,” the second agreed. He bowed respectively. “With all due respect, your majesty, when we the administrative staff agreed to grant you the throne, it was with the expectation that you would be capable of quickly and effectively addressing problems such as this without creating further complications for us or your pack…but your tactics thus far appear to have only dragged out the matter longer than needed, and yet you insist on continuing to pursue a fruitless search we are unconvinced is really proving worthwhile, and the uncertainty you are showing on the matter is not helping with that perception.”

Husky shook his head, disagreeing. “Well, I’m sorry if the results haven’t been completely to your tastes, but…as pack leader, isn’t this my call to make?” He didn’t get an immediately response, so instead he sighed, shaking his head while continuing to uneasily pace. “Given the circumstances as I see them presented before me…”

“What if circumstances are not actually as you see them, your majesty?” the administrator questioned.

Husky squeezed his eyes shut. “Please don’t question me on this and just trust me…I promise, I’ll make this work. It has to. Woofus—”

“Your majesty, Sir Woofus abdicated the throne, and accounts show he has no interest in reclaiming it. He has made no moves against you or anyone of import in the city since his return, and we have accounts that he only did that so to try and dissuade you from imprisoning any of the outsiders in the first place.”

“The prisoners are my bartering chip with Woofus—the advantage we have that will keep in line and playing by our rules.”

“And if Sir Woofus proves to have already been playing by our rules, and this whole situation proves to be…fabricated?” the third administrator tactfully inquired. “Your choice of tactics may no longer be relevant.”

Husky made a frustrated growl, pressing his paws to his temples while pacing. “That doesn’t matter,” he hissed. “What matters is that we’ll find him and his outsider allies. Today. And those prisoners will be the bait to lure them in.”

“And if that fails?”

“Then we—” Husky flustered about for a moment, clearly not having an alternative in mind. “—it won’t come to that. This will work. I promise.”

The administrator wasn’t swayed. “And if it doesn’t?” he repeated again. “And you plans fail?”

Husky paused abruptly and his gaze turned distant as with a suppressed shudder he considered that possibility. “That’s not an option,” he instead stressed in denial.

The administrator was silent for a moment. “I see.”

“Speaking of our prisoners,” Husky continued, quickly changing the subject in hopes of regaining control, “I want to know how they are doing. Do any of you know if they over the worse of that fever yet?”

The three dogs shook their heads. “We do not,” the first admitted. “The quarantine hasn’t been lifted yet, so I assume no one has attempted to reassess their condition.”

Husky frowned at this, concerned. “Where the devil is Rottweiler, then?” he asked as he continued to pace. “He was supposed check on this first thing when he came in…”

“With respect, sir, it may just be that it’s not safe to check yet.” Husky didn’t look convinced though, and if anything, seemed suspicious. “But if it helps, your majesty, we can have someone track down Rottweiler and confirm,” the administrator added.

“See that you do.” Husky commanded as he turned his back on the Diamond Dog as he went to sit on the throne, thinking this would make him look more composed than anxiously pacing. He then added, “assuming this does fail, I will not be taking the responsibility for it…that will be up to the likes of you dogs.”

That ominous condition laid down then, the administrators exchanged uncertain looks for a moment.

“Getting back to the original topic,” the first continued.

“Oh, please don’t,” Husky pleaded, hanging his head wearily.

The administrator ignored him and pressed on regardless. “…Our core question is to ask just how long you intend to continue this fruitless search for the outsiders.”

“However long is needed, I suppose.” Husky replied back.

The administrator raised a brow at that. “You suppose.”

“Woofus and the others are around here somewhere…aren’t they?”

“That would be the question of the hour, your majesty. But as we discussed, the search has turned up little, has only seemed to disrupt operations across Sapphiria needlessly, and is wasting valuable resources the longer it continues without results. You majesty, to be blunt, we are starting to get to the point that we must ask if your insistence on this effort is really worth our best interests.”

Husky looked up sharply, suddenly concerned in more than one way now. “What are you implying?” he asked, hesitant.

The administrator breathed a reluctant sigh before responding, glancing at his fellows to see if they had any objects. When they didn’t speak up or move to stop them, he spoke bluntly. “That perhaps you are not the right Diamond Dog for this position after all.”

Husky stared at them for a long moment, these words clearly not sitting well with him. Nevertheless, he drew himself up, trying to look confident. “I am,” he promised.

The administrator chose to challenge that. “Then do you even have some kind of back-up plan in mind should this one fail?”

Husky hesitated just long enough to make it clear that he didn’t. “We won’t need one,” he instead insisted.

“I think I speak for all of us, your majesty, when I say that we respectfully disagree.”

Husky’s frown deepened. “Well…” he stuttered, trying and failing to immediately devise a comeback, “…right now I still have the final say.”

“Yes, for right now, your majesty,” the administrator seriously stated. “That is what we are trying to get at.” He took a deep breath and tried to address the subject more gently. “We are simply saying that we think it in your best interests to instead change your approach. It helps no one to drag this out too long. The pack prefers a routine and peaceful pattern to their lives after all, and this is preventing that.”

“To that end, we think it would be more conducive to, instead of attempting to seal the targets within the city, relax the guard at the entrances and permit them the option to leave, seeing there is evidence that this is all they want,” the third administrator continued explaining. “Then, once they leave, we simply increase security at the entrances to ensure they or any of their allies cannot re-enter. Surely, they will be of no threat if they cannot get inside the city, correct?”

Husky’s gaze, however, remained concerned and conflicted. “That doesn’t address our two prisoners, and for their own good, I do not want to have to imprison them indefinitely. It is bad enough already that they fell ill with tunnel fever. Hopefully they can be taken off our paws soon before anything worse can transpire.”

“Then…why not offer the return of the prisoners to the outsiders in exchange for their agreement to leave and never return?” the second suggested.

“And what of Woofus?” Husky inquired, his expression now darkening.

The administrators exchanged glances. “It may be best to permit Sir Woofus liberty to leave Sapphiria at this point, your majesty,” the second replied. “Better to cut our losses of the matter than to create more trying to pursue vengeance.”

Husky continued to gaze at them for a moment then slowly let it wander as it turned saddened. Abruptly, he let out a groan and let his head fall into his paws.

The three administrators exchanged worried glances with each other. “You majesty, are you all right?” the second inquired.

Husky shook his head. “No,” he mumbled. “No, I’m not all right. No one was…they shouldn’t have…this is…” he trailed off, unable to speak clearly as he bowed his head and took several deep breaths to try and steady himself. Then, abruptly, he slammed his paw against the armrest of the sapphire throne. “This has gone on long enough,” he growled darkly, rising and walking around the throne to the balcony at the back of the room. He gripped the balcony’s railing, peering at the underground city beyond as he came to a decision. “Look, I want this over with. You want this over with. So let’s stop dancing around the matter. Tell the guards, all of them, to expand the search to include everything. And that means everything, because I want everything in and out of this city searched in full, every square inch! Every building, every room, every body of water, every crevasse, anything big enough any one of the targets could fit into, and they are not to stop or allow themselves to be stopped by anyone or anything until they have found Woofus. Turn the whole city upside down if they have to, but I want it done through any means necessary.”

The three administrators were immediately taken aback by this order. “But your majesty!” the first protested. “You’re suggesting intruding and disrupting upon the solitude of your subjects without their permission on a whim! It is an unjustified invasion of privacy!”

“You wanted me to take more action, so that’s what I’m doing,” Husky snapped. “Now isn’t the time for naysayers like yourself to stand in the way! I’ve already done things you have asked of me, and it’s past time you administrators started returning the favor.”

The three exchanged concerned glances. “As an understandable a goal that all is, your majesty, please try to be reasonable! We cannot possibly justify this order to the pack, not for a target that doesn’t pose that grave a threat or that we can be sure is even still in the city to begin—”

“Then you’re relieved of duty,” Husky barked, whirling on the administrator and jabbing a claw at him.

The three administrators gaped at him, taken aback. “You can’t do that!” the administrator in question proclaimed.

“I just did,” Husky stressed. “I am the pack leader, not any of you three, and I will not allow you to take this chance from me by pushing me around and telling me what to do. So you’re relieved.” He stared down the administrator until he sighed, nodded his head, and backed down. He then jabbed his claw at the other two. “Will either of you do as I ask, or are we going to have a problem too?”

The administrators exchanged glances, seeing their options were limited. It was clear they would only be removed from their positions too if they chose to argue. “No, your majesty,” they chorused.

“Then snap to it.”

The administrators reluctantly left, leaving Husky alone in the throne room, anxiously hoping this gamble was going to bring him the results he wanted at last.

Meanwhile, as yet unaware of the new orders Husky had issued, Woofus was soon arriving at the dungeons deep below Pillar Castle. At its entrance, he found the usual pair of guards stationed there. Assuming he was just a lackey nobody, they bought Woofus’s cover story that Rottweiler had sent him to check on the prisoners and were more than happy to fill him in on the current situation. Not that there was much to report—the guards said they could hear the prisoners shout or make the odd ruckus throughout the night, but had largely quieted down now. They theorized the prisoners were probably past the worst of their supposed illness and were, hopefully, beginning to recover.

Woofus told them that they were likely safe to visit, hoping the prisoners were coherent enough to talk now. But for appearances sake, he grabbed a staff and a neckerchief to tie over his snout. He then slipped through the dungeon entrance and down the unevenly-hewed stone tunnel, winding gradually downwards. Soon he was marching past the prison cells, growing more relaxed as he went knowing he no longer needed to maintain appearances quite as much. When he arrived before Ocellus and Smolder’s cell, he found its two occupants still safely inside. Smolder was currently asleep, zonked out sitting on the floor with her back against the cell’s right side wall, while Ocellus sat awake closer to the other side, near the cell bars, occupying herself by tracing patterns in the dirt floor with her hoof.

Woofus pulled off his helmet as he approached, his movement grabbing Ocellus’s attention. “So…keeping busy?”

Ocellus nearly did a double take when she realized who he was. “Woofus!” she declared in surprise. “How did you…?”

“Snuck in,” Woofus interrupted, motioning first for her to keep quiet then to the armor he wore while he fumbled to pull out a ring of keys he had been keeping hidden in a satchel, “Hence the armor, to serve as a disguise. I’m here to try and get you two out of here.” Examining the keys, which Rottweiler had given him prior to setting off, he realized he wasn’t certain which one he needed to use and decided to start with the first and work down until he found it. As he did this, he focused his gaze on the sleeping dragon with a smirk. “Wore herself out, huh?” he couldn’t help but quip.

Ocellus smirked as she followed his gaze. “Yes, I think she had a bit too much fun shouting around like she was delusional for half the night,” she commented before turning back to Woofus, watching him work with the lock. “We did as Rottweiler asked and only wound it down after we felt fairly certain we had convinced anyone who could hear us of our supposed…condition.” She motioned to the cloth still tied over the dog’s snout. “I take it they believe it, judging from the neckerchief.”

“Quite, but never mind that now.” He tugged the neckerchief off to give the changeling a friendly grin while trying the next key on the ring. “Have you gotten any sleep?”

“Enough,” Ocellus responded before chuckling, glancing around the cell. “Actually, it reminded me a little of back home.” Catching Woofus’s raised brow, she shrugged. “So home was never too lavish for me…but I’m sure you’re not interested in that.”

Woofus grinned and shook his head, happier to just see the two all right. “This might take me a second,” he mumbled as he tried the next key. He paused to pull out a smaller bag from his satchel. “So might as well give you this now. It’s a light breakfast. I don’t know if it’ll be to your usual tastes, but I figured you’d be hungry by now, so…”

“That’s okay, I’m not going to be picky,” Ocellus replied, reaching through the bars to take the bag from him. “Just so long as there’s no pyrite—Smolder seems to hate it.”

“Speaking of, can you wake her up?” he asked, motioning to Smolder before moving to try the next key. “We’re not going to want to dawdle once I’ve got this open.”

Here Ocellus hesitated, glancing nervously at her snoozing friend. “I take it you’ve never tried to wake a sleeping dragon before?”

“Can’t say that I have…why, is that a problem?”

“No…well…not if you’re…smart about it.” Ocellus scooted herself as far from Smolder as she could before picking up one of their empty dinner dishes in her magic. “You…might want to brace yourself.”

She then gently chucked the dish at Smolder’s head. It didn’t hit too hard, but the result was immediate as the dragon snapped awake with a startled burst of blue-yellow firebreath, followed by a string of curses unfit for repeating, before finally she shook herself and, with an annoyed glare, looked around. Her eyes settled upon Woofus and Ocellus, having both pulled back in fright at the dragoness’s violent awakening.

Woofus could see what Ocellus had meant. “Good morning,” he said with faint sarcasm.

Smolder rubbed at her eyes before looking at him again, his identity finally registering in her awakening mind. “Woofus?” she asked, surprised. “What are you—?”

“I’m going to try and get you two out of here,” Woofus explained in brief as he went back to the keys, moving on to the next one. He really hoped he wouldn’t have to try too many more. “Just as soon as I can get this lock open.”

“In the meantime, here,” Ocellus said, who had opened the bag of food and pulled out the biscuits and lettuce clearly meant for her, tossing the rest to Smolder.

Smolder took one look inside and immediately broke out into a grin. “Aw yeah!” she cheered as she reached in and pulled out a polished gem. “This is what I’m talking about!” She bit into it with relish. “Mm! And these are the good kind!”

Woofus, meanwhile, was trying very hard not to flinch at the crunching sound of the dragoness’s every bite. “I collected a few miscellaneous gemstones from the royal stores on my way here,” he explained. “Nothing anyone is probably going to miss. Much.”

Smolder rolled her eyes as she stood up and stretched. “I don’t get you Diamond Dogs, collecting all of these yummy gems and then doing absolutely nothing with them except storing them.” She popped another gem into her mouth. “Seriously, what’s the point of even having them if you aren’t—”

There was a sudden click at the cell door. “Got it!” Woofus proclaimed as he pushed the unlocked door open and motioned for the two to hurry out. They didn’t need any second bidding. One of the first things Ocellus did once she was out was try to light her horn and shift forms, but found she still couldn’t do so. “That probably isn’t going to work here,” Woofus explained when he noticed. “The dungeons throughout here are lined with deposits of azurite, so to dampen the abilities of any spellcasters.” He pulled out a pair of cloaks from his satchel. “Here, put these on instead.”

“So what is the plan?” Smolder asked as she slipped the cloak over her head.

“There’s two ways in and out of the dungeons,” Woofus explained as he closed the cell door and motioned for the pair to follow him. “The main entrance leading into the castle itself, and a second back entrance that leads into the city, used to ferry supplies directly into the dungeons when needed. Of the two, the back entrance is sealed with a heavy metal door and thus requires fewer guards. But the door is locked from the inside, so it’ll be a simple matter for us to unlock it and slip into the streets. That just leaves getting past the guard, and Rottweiler told me that post changes shifts in just a few minutes. If we can get there in time for that change, there will be a brief window in which the entrance will be unguarded, and then we can slip out of here and back to the others.”

Smolder nodded in approval, biting into a round white gem like an apple. “Sounds like a plan,” she said.

Ocellus, meanwhile, had other concerns. “Where are the others, anyway?” she asked.

Woofus realized he hadn’t said yet. “They’re keeping guard nearby, watching out for trouble,” he explained as he led the way deeper into the dungeons, keeping them close to the walls of the corridor, just in case. “Gallus and Rottweiler are inside the castle, staying near the throne room and looking out for any news that could mess things up, while the rest are outside, watching for us as well as any trouble that could take place out there. Hopefully, though, nothing eventful will happen to any of them.”

Regrettably, that wasn’t actually proving to be the case.

Rottweiler and Gallus were already running late getting into the former’s desired position because part way there he was stopped by a pair of guards squabbling over a logistics dispute and needed him, a superior officer, to help settle it. This took around fifteen minutes to do, during which Gallus was left sitting and waiting within his hiding spot, growing increasingly conscious of how all that was keeping him hidden was one flimsy cloth covering and hoped no passing Diamond Dog would get curious and find him in here. Fortunately, this didn’t come to pass and soon they were moving on, though more anxiously due to the delay. Gallus even found himself wondering if Woofus, who he knew had gotten into the castle ahead of them by design, may have already rescued Ocellus and Smolder by now. While they were going through a quiet and empty side corridor, the griffon asked Rottweiler about that, but he was confident that they hadn’t been delayed for that long. Nevertheless, he was feeling the pressure too.

But they never actually reached their intended position as they were again stopped, this time by a squadron of guards hurrying by, all armed and dressed in full field attire. Not expecting this, Rottweiler pulled one of the passing guards aside and demanded an explanation.

“New orders from his majesty, sir!” the young guard reported with a salute. “All guards are to head out into the city and search all locations within for the missing outsiders, using force if necessary to quell anyone who may resist!”

“What?” Rottweiler rumbled, who of the many things he expected Husky to try today, this had been rather low on the list.

“I’m surprised you hadn’t already heard, sir!” the guard continued, though he was intimidated somewhat Rottweiler’s stern reaction to this news. “Sir Husky is looking for you. With respect, I think he wants you to report in.”

“Oh, I’ll report in, all right,” Rottweiler growled darkly as he about faced the cart so to stalk off in a different direction, all without dismissing the young guard, leaving the Diamond Dog momentarily uncertain if he was free to go.

Gallus was quick to notice the change in course. “What are you doing?” he hissed, peeking slightly out from under the cart’s cover.

Rottweiler pushed him back down again without slowing. “Intervening,” was his only response.

Gallus could only speculate about what that was supposed to mean until, shortly thereafter, he realized they had arrived outside the doors to the throne room. There, Rottweiler simply pushed Gallus and the cart into one corner of the room and, without giving the griffon inside any clue what he was planning—other than it wasn’t supposed to be part of their plan at all—marched right up to the throne room doors.

“I’m here to speak with Sir Husky,” he explained to the royal guards stationed there without slowing.

The guards, perhaps taken aback by Rottweiler’s stern demeanor, hesitated to comply. “Uh, sir, perhaps we should announce you to his majesty first…”

“Tough,” Rottweiler interrupted as he threw open the throne room doors himself. “Sir Husky! A word, please.”

Husky was standing before his throne and speaking with a nervous aide, looking not especially happy himself, but he immediately jumped and turned to face the dog marching into the room. “Rottweiler!” he exclaimed, waving the aide away as he moved to approach his guest. “Where the devil have you been? I’ve been looking for you all morning!”

Rottweiler didn’t answer. “What’s this I hear about you giving orders to effectively raid the city in search for Woofus?” he asked instead as he came to stand before the acting ruler, arms folded. Being just slightly taller than Husky, he made sure he appeared to tower over the younger Diamond Dog.

Husky stood his ground though. “Hopefully, I’m doing what it’s going to take to end this matter, Rottweiler,” he replied. He moved to turn. “There’s not much more to it than that.”

“No one will stand for this,” Rottweiler warned, watching Husky’s movements closely. “The administrative staff will stop you, if not remove you from the throne entirely, if you go through with this.”

“Not if I remove them first,” Husky challenged back, changing his mind and facing Rottweiler again.

“You can’t do that,” Rottweiler growled warningly.

“And why not?” Husky snapped, becoming emotional. “I am the pack leader! I should have the last say, and yet—and yet—those stuffy administrators have been bossing me around like I’m their pawn from the beginning! And I’m tired of idiot dogs who think they know what’s best for me try and tell me what I can or cannot do! I can look after myself, so no more! They are not taking this from me, not when I’ve gotten this far! We have outsiders wandering—”

“This isn’t about the outsiders at all!” Rottweiler snapped back, any restraint he had previously been showing now gone. “This is about Woofus, and how badly you want to one-up him for petty reasons that aren’t even worth all of this!”

“How do you know anything about it?” Husky argued back. “You weren’t the one who got a back turned to by his best friend! But this is my chance to right that wrong! He wouldn’t give me his attention then, so I will darn well make sure I get his attention now! I just have to find him, and you will fall in line and obey my orders to at least give me that much, Rottweiler, or I’ll have you replaced too!”

“You won’t find Woofus, Husky,” Rottweiler growled, ignoring for now the implication that Husky may have already had high-ranking staff replaced for insubordination. “Not with him constantly staying one step ahead of you.”

“And what makes you so sure that’ll even last?” Husky demanded, staring Rottweiler down. His eyes then widened slightly as a realization hit him. “You know where he is, don’t you?”

Rottweiler only continued to stare down Husky. “You can’t prove that.”

“You’re not denying it either, though,” Husky was quick to note, deciding he had heard enough. “Guards, restrain him!”

The two royal guards who had cautiously followed Rottweiler into the throne room, already suspecting there was going to be a confrontation, immediately closed the remaining distance between them and seized Rottweiler, forcing him onto his knees. Rottweiler did not resist, but the dark glares he was giving made it clear he was not happy.

Husky wasn’t happy either. “I was already starting to think you were up to something,” he muttered, disappointed, as he peered down at his chief security advisor. He heaved a sorrowful sigh. “I’m sorry to see I was right, much less that you chose to support Woofus.” He leaned closer. “Where is he, Rottweiler?”

Rottweiler didn’t reply, choosing to keep his silence.

“What is it you all are planning?” Husky asked next. He still got no response, so he looked to the two guards holding Rottweiler in place. “I don’t suppose you two might at least have a clue as to what he’s been up to this morning?”

The two royal guards exchanged nervous looks. They weren’t fools—they knew that with Husky’s present state of mind, one wrong move and they could end up in Rottweiler’s place too. “Well…he did come in pushing a cargo cart,” one of the two hesitantly offered, “but he left it outside the throne room.”

Husky’s eyes flicked upwards to where the cart could be just visible outside the still-open doors, just in time to see edge of the cart’s covering flutter back into place. “Did he now?”

He snatched a spear from the royal guard to his left and moved around the three and out of the room towards the cart. As he passed two new royal guards who had already come to fill the spots the first two had vacated, he silently signaled for them to follow him. Together, they cautiously approached, Husky taking the lead as he grabbed the cloth covering with one paw and whisked it back with one fluid movement. Gallus reacted instinctively and thrusted his spear out of the cart and at Husky. Husky, however, dodged the reckless jab, grabbed Gallus’s spear mid-thrust with his free paw while at the same time bringing his own spear to bear at the griffon’s neck, rendering him pinned.

“Well, look who we have here,” Husky declared coldly as the two royal guards immediately moved to restrain the defiant looking Gallus.

Meanwhile, outside the castle and still at their rooftop hiding spot, Sandbar, Silverstream, and Yona couldn’t not notice the sudden flurry of squadrons upon squadrons of guards pouring out of the castle and flooding the streets as they fanned out.

“What are they doing?” Silverstream murmured as they anxiously watched them rapidly draw nearer to their location.

“Yona not like this,” Yona murmured as she nervously nibbled on one hoof. “Something go wrong, yak know it!”

Sandbar, using a pair of binoculars Rottweiler had given them, was biting his lip as he scanned the movements of the guards. “It looks like they’re raiding their own city!” he proclaimed in dismay. “They’re barging into every building and ransacking them, searching for something…I think they’re looking for us!”

Silverstream whistled in awed fear at this aggressive change in tactics. “They’re not messing about now, are they?”

“What we do?” Yona asked as they eyed one squad rapidly making its way down their street and towards their location. “Diamond Dog guards will find Yona and friends here!”

“Not if we’ve got anything to say about it, Yona,” Sandbar promised as he quickly scanned the rooftop for inspiration. “We just need a plan, and fast!” His eyes then fell upon the rubbish chute. “I’ve got it!”

Just a matter of minutes later, a small squad of five guards burst through the house’s front door. As the house was already vacant, their messy search of its two floors went rapidly, and soon all five of them were regrouping so to storm the roof. When they did, they immediately found Sandbar and Silverstream standing at the roof edge, whirling around to face the intruding guards.

“Halt and surrender!” the leader of the group shouted as all five brought their spears to bear on them. When the two hesitantly put their forelegs up, he nodded at them. “Are you going to come quietly?”

“Actually, we were thinking about maybe threatening you,” Silverstream admitted brightly.

The guards surveyed them briefly. “You are hardly in a position to be making threats,” the leader remarked. “You’re unarmed and outnumbered.”

“I like those odds!” Silverstream remarked brightly and turned to her friend. “You like those odds, Sandbar?”

“I think we can work with them, definitely,” Sandbar agreed with a nod.

The leader frowned, not liking that that they were trying to toy with him. “Have you forgotten what we have at our beck and call?” he reminded. “Because, in case you did, remember that we have an army.”

Sandbar wasn’t swayed. “We have a yak.”

It was then that Yona burst out of where she had been hiding behind a box planter, right under the noses of the guards, and with the traditional shout of “Yak smash!” she rammed herself into the first four guards before they even had much chance to react, shoving them into the rubbish chute on the other side of the roof.

The remaining fifth guard, a newbie of rather low rank standing to the back of the group, listened in shock to the sounds of his squad mates thumping and bumping as they tumbled down the chute before it ended with a wet squelch as they hit the rubbish heap at the bottom. He then turned and stared back at the yak, hippogriff, and pony that were regrouping and closing in on him. He brandished his spear hesitantly as he started backing up, but well aware he was the one who was outnumbered now and not liking his odds at all, he decided to flee instead and started running back for the stairs leading off the roof.

He only got partway before getting tackled from behind by Silverstream. “Just a moment!” she said cheerily as she and Yona pinned him down. “We’re not done with you just yet.”

The panicked guard desperately but fruitlessly tried to wiggle free, but as Sandbar moved to stand in front of him, he patted him reassuringly with one hoof. “Relax, bud, we don’t want to hurt you,” he promised with a friendly grin. “But we do want to know exactly what is going on here.”

“…so wait, you’re seriously saying this is all just because he flunked an exam?” Smolder remarked incredulously as Woofus led them through the corridors of the castle dungeons. They were proving to be quite long and winding, so at their request, Woofus was filling her and Ocellus in on the backstory between him and Husky. “Dude! I flunk exams all the time and you don’t see me being a jerk about it! Let alone take somebody’s throne from them!”

“As I already explained,” Woofus repeated patiently, “Husky didn’t so much take the throne as I voluntarily vacated it, and he happened to be the next one to fill it.”

Smolder gave the Diamond Dog a skeptical look. “I don’t know, Woofus,” she said as she pulled out another gem to munch on. “Kinda sounds to me like he only did it to get back at you.”

Woofus frowned, but didn’t respond, focusing on leading the way as he preferred to keep the rest of his attention on that anyway. He was also trying not to flinch at the sound of Smolder eating the gems. After all, he knew if any other dogs saw her doing that to gems from the royal stash, there would be protesting. All gems were coveted by Diamond Dogs, it was their way. Seeing them destroyed, especially from a stash seen as theirs, was usually heart-wrenching no matter what. But he also knew that, right now, Smolder needed them a bit more than he did, and he kept telling himself they were just sitting in a room anyway.

Ocellus, meanwhile, was reviewing Woofus’s story in her head. “I’m not so sure of that, Smolder,” she said thoughtfully. “None of us really know the whole story of why Husky chose to pursue the throne. His reasons may have been totally unrelated, and the fact that happened to put him in position to do…well…all of this, may just be incidental. After all, from what Woofus told us about why he left at all, he wouldn’t have much reason to assume Woofus would be coming back anytime soon.”

But Smolder was unconvinced, shaking her head. “Nah, he totally did it out of spite,” she promised. “Trust a dragon on this.”

Ocellus frowned, but chose not to argue further. “Either way,” she said, focusing her attention on Woofus, “If that’s all it is, I wish you two could sit down and talk this through. If you really were friends once, surely you can still find a way to make peace with each other.”

Woofus shook his head though. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” he admitted sadly. “Husky has already shown he doesn’t wish to listen, and trying is only causing more problems. No, it’s better to cut my losses, as before.”

Ocellus and Smolder was silent for a moment, eyeing Woofus as he led them up to a corner in the end of the tunnel. “Well, that’s depressing,” Smolder remarked snidely. “And you’re talking to a dragon here. Dragons usually don’t own up to that, so…”

“Shh,” Woofus hissed, motioning for them to be quiet and to stay back. “We’re here. The rear entrance is just a few feet around this corner.” Moving slowly and cautiously, he leaned forward just enough to steal a peek around the edge, only to immediately pull back. “The guard’s still there,” he whispered.

Smolder frowned. “I thought you said they were going to be changing guards right about now?”

“They are,” Woofus answered. He rolled his eyes up as he thought. “We’re probably early, though. Give it a minute or two.”

They did. But even after ten minutes it was clear the guard was not leaving.

“So much for that plan,” Smolder grumbled as it became clear there was no changing of the guard anytime soon.

“I don’t understand,” Woofus muttered to himself, frustrated. “It should be now…either we arrived later than I thought, or the schedule was changed without Rottweiler’s knowing.”

“We don’t really have the time to keep waiting though, do we?” Ocellus asked quietly. When Woofus sighed softly and shook his head, she went on. “So what should we do? Go back?”

“I say we take this guy out,” Smolder remarked while rooting through her bag of gems in search for a good one to munch next. “I mean, it’s just one guard, right? We could take him.”

Ocellus whined. “I would really rather not.”

“Besides, he’d only raise the alarm afterwards,” Woofus reasoned.

“Who cares about that?” Smolder whispered, pulling out a gem only to wave it around as she spoke. “Just so long as it gives us a moment to slip the heck out of here, right?”

“But after the alarm is raised, they’d likely only increase the guards at the exits out of Sapphiria,” Woofus pointed out. “And enough guards are there already.”

“So we’d basically still be imprisoned, just in a massively bigger cell,” Ocellus concluded.

“Well, what else do you suggest?” Smolder asked, raising the gem to her mouth, ready to bite into it. “If we can’t go that way, then we might as well just…” She trailed off, letting the gem sit on her lips as she watched Woofus. He had been watching the gem’s every movement since she pulled it out of the bag. Watching him closely and raising a brow, she proceeded to wave the gem around, noting Woofus’s eyes followed its every movement. She then gazed at the gem curiously for a second, a thought coming to her. “Woofus, didn’t you say these gems were special or something earlier?”

“I said they were from the royal stores,” Woofus responded.

“So…does that make them extra special or something?”

“Well, if they’re in the royal stores, then they’re usually of especially rare quality—the best of the best.”

Smolder regarded the gem for a second, smirking slightly. “Just how badly would any Diamond Dog want to get their paws on one of these?”

“I’d imagine a great deal.” Woofus narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Why are you asking?”

Smolder merely grinned, waving the gem back and forth a few times to watch Woofus’s eyes follow it before bringing it back to her lips, thinking mischievously.

Ocellus had already figured out what she was planning. “Don’t even think about it,” she whispered.

This only made the smirk grow. “Oh, I’m totally thinking about it,” Smolder whispered back.

Then, before either of them could stop her, the dragoness rounded the corner and proceeded to stroll right up to the guard standing at the door, plain for all to see. “Hey! You!”

The guard’s reaction was almost immediate. “Hey!” he exclaimed, raising his spear and rushing towards her. “Stop right there! How did you get out?”

“Oh, never mind about that,” Smolder said smugly, unfazed by the guard hurrying towards her, so much so the guard slowed in surprise. “Besides, why care about that, when I’ve got this?”

She then raised the gem up before the guard, who immediately halted at the sight of it. His eyes went alight, but at the same time, his brow furrowed in confusion. “Where did you get that?” he asked.

Smolder’s glee at his reaction was clear. “The royal stores.”

Now the guard’s eyes bulged. “But…how did you…?”

“You want it?” Smolder then asked, adjusting her hold on the gem as if offering it.

The guard sputtered. “Well…I…that is I…of course I’d want a gem from the royal stores, but…” he started towards her again, “…did…did you steal…I really shouldn’t even…”

“Hey!” Smolder barked, interrupting, and thrust the gem at him aggressively. “Sit and listen!”

The guard immediately sat and gave Smolder his full attention. Surprised, Smolder stared at him for a second then lifted the gem up higher. “Now stand.”

The guard stood.

The smirk returned to Smolder’s lips. No way, she thought. “Sit.”

The guard sat again. Highly amused, Smolder turned to look back at her cohorts, to see if they were watching. They were, having both come around the corner so to rescue her if needed, and their mixed reactions to this development only amused the dragon more. Ocellus was shooting Smolder a disapproving but incredulous stare. Woofus, meanwhile, had both paws pressed to his face in utter embarrassment that this was even working. Unrepentant though, Smolder motioned for them to come out.

“All right, big boy,” she said, turning her attention back to the guard as the other two headed for the door. “You still want this gem?”

The guard hesitated, his eyes going back and forth between the gem and the door he was supposed to be guarding. “Well…yes…” he admitted, starting to stand, “…but…”

“Ah-ah! Sit!” Smolder commanded, thrusting the gem out. The guard immediately sat, his attention back on the gem. She waved it back and forth, watching his head twist back and forth to watch it. “Now beg!” The guard moved immediately into a begging position. “Roll over!” The guard flopped onto his front and rolled completely over. “Spin!” The guard jumped up and ran in a circle. “Play dead!” The guard melodramatically acted out a blow to the chest and flopped over onto his back. By this time, Ocellus and Woofus had pulled open the rear door, so Smolder held out the gem as a lure and started backing towards it, enticing the guard to follow. “Now you want this? You want this?”

“Yes!” the guard declared, tail wagging as he blindly followed Smolder out the door and onto a short incline of soil leading up to the city level. “Yes, yes!”

“Then goooooooo fetch!” Smolder declared and, spinning around, hurled the gem as hard as she could into the sky, only to be almost bowled over as the guard shot off after it like a dart, quickly vanishing from view.

Woofus and Ocellus, closing the door behind them, joined Smolder as they stared after the guard. “Well,” Woofus remarked, his tone utterly flat. “At least I know something Rottweiler will want to address with the guards after this is all over.” He then motioned for Ocellus and Smolder to fully cover themselves with their cloaks and follow him.

They clambered up the incline and onto the street running adjacent to Pillar Castle, but didn’t get far before they had to duck down behind some trash cans, watching as a different group of guards raided a nearby house.

“What the…?” Woofus murmured, taken aback. He watched in puzzlement as the guards ransacked the building, clearly searching for something, while the owners were left standing outside at spearpoint. The owners were of course protesting every second of it, and Woofus couldn’t understand why the guards were doing it at all, until he heard one of the guards apologize to the owners, saying they were under orders from the pack leader.

Ocellus gulped. “They’re looking for us,” she realized.

“Pretty aggressively too,” Smolder agreed, then flinched when she felt something prod her back, turning to see the rear door guard had gleefully returned with the gem she had thrown, and from the eager look in her eyes, she could tell he was expecting her to do it again. “Really?” she asked, incredulous. “Really? You really came back just for me to—oh, all right, fine!” She took the gem and hurled it as far as she could in a random direction and once more the guard shot off to chase it.

Ignoring this, Ocellus watched the raid continue. “If they’re searching for us this aggressively, how are we ever going to get past them all unnoticed?” she asked.

Woofus, however, had become filled with dread as he realized what had happened. “It’s worse than that,” he murmured, shaking his head in dismay. “Husky ordered the guards to do this.”

“…I don’t understand.”

“The guards were searching hard before, but not this hard…searching this hard is…insane. Look at how the guards are treating these innocent Diamond Dogs like criminals, all just in the name of finding you or me…Husky has overstepped his boundaries even as pack leader to order this.”

“It looks like it’s widespread too.” Ocellus pointed with her hoof. “I can see similar raids taking place further up the street.”

Woofus looked and winced. “Husky must be truly desperate if he’s resorted to this…but why hasn’t anyone stopped him? Even the administrative staff wouldn’t stand for this, and they’d have the power to overrule him…” He shook his head. “Something has gone very wrong.”

Ocellus looked at the shellshocked dog. “So what are we going to do?”

Woofus didn’t reply right away, his gaze faraway and determined as he stared out at the unjust raids taking place before them.

Meanwhile, Smolder was speaking behind them. “What, you’re back again? Fine, just one more throw then no more, now give me the gem. No, drop it—drop it!”

Woofus continued to remain silent for a few more moments then sighed, removing the helmet he wore. “I can’t let this continue,” he finally concluded.

“Go fetch!” Smolder said as she threw the gem for a third time before turning the others. “So what are we doing now?” she asked, having not been paying attention. “And can we hurry and do it before Mister Best and Brightest comes back? Honestly, I don’t know how Husky couldn’t have gotten into the royal guard, if that guy’s any indication of their standards.”

Woofus turned to face her and Ocellus, his decision made. “Okay, look,” he explained to the two quickly and pointed with one claw. “Sandbar, Yona, and Silverstream should be on a roof of a house not far from here. It’s a two story building with a decorative wall surrounding it. Head up a street, then down that road four blocks, third house of the left where the front of Pillar Castle would be fully in its view from the roof, you can’t miss it. Once you’re there, have them signal to regroup with Gallus and Rottweiler, then tell Rottweiler to go ahead with what he has planned. He thinks he has a way to slip you all back to the surface if you work together.” He put a paw on each of their shoulders. “Stick together, keep your cloaks on, watch out for the guards, and don’t do anything to draw attention to yourselves.”

Ocellus frowned, realizing Woofus had excluded himself entirely from these plans. “And what are you going to do?” she asked.

Woofus averted his gaze. “Turn myself in to Husky.”

Smolder did a double take. “Wait, what? But you—”

But Woofus wouldn’t argue the matter. “I can’t just stand by and let this happen!” he said, pointing a claw at the raided house, the guards now in the process of finishing but leaving the house in total disarray. “This isn’t right! And I don’t know why Husky has chosen to resort to it, but we know it’s me he really wants! Not you! Not really! So if he’s going to resort to things like that until he finds me…then I know what I need to do.”

“The hay you do!” Smolder started to object. “Look, we’ll come with, and together we can show that Husky…”

“No,” Woofus interrupted, and sighed, handing Ocellus his helmet. “Look, this isn’t your fight. None of you should have ever gotten involved in this, and it’s my fault you did. Besides…this is my home…and I can help save it from…that.” He motioned again to the raided house. “And…I probably belong here more anyway. So please…you both know this will work, and Husky won’t care about the rest of you once he has me. Why would he? So let me do this, before things get even more out of control.”

Ocellus, her ears drooping, still hesitated. “Woofus,” she said sadly, “we’re your friends. We want to help.”

Woofus looked them both over and grinned faintly. “Yes,” he agreed, with some pride. “Yes, you are both my friends. Great friends…and I’m glad to have met you. So as your friend…please let me help you get out of here, by giving you the chance you need to escape.” He then took in a deep breath and turned to face Pillar Castle again. “Besides,” he continued, “it’s past time I faced my other friend.”

Then before the girls could have any more chance to try and talk him out of it, he hurried off, turned a corner, and was gone from view. Ocellus and Smolder stared after him solemnly for a long moment. Until Smolder felt a familiar tap on her back again.

“You again?” the dragoness snapped as she faced the guard and his gem once more. “Oh for—gimmie that!” She hurled the gem as far as she could and the guard raced off the chase it once more. She then turned to face Ocellus. “So we’re not actually letting Woofus go and do this on his own, right?”

“Oh, acorns no!” Ocellus immediately agreed. “You go to the house and tell the others what’s happening. I’ll go and catch up with Woofus.”

“And how are you going to do that without getting caught?” Smolder asked.

Ocellus looked at her for a beat, then with a flash of magic, transformed into a splitting image of one of the Diamond Dog guards, in full armor except for the helmet, which Ocellus simply used the one Woofus had handed her instead.

“Oh right, changeling,” Smolder said, answering her own question with a grin and waved Ocellus on. “You go, girl!” Then, as the disguised Ocellus hurried off in pursuit of Woofus, she turned and headed the other way in what she was fairly confident was the direction she was told to go to get to the house.

That is until a certain guard with a gem came running eagerly up to her again.

“OH, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!”

Author's Note

Come back tomorrow for Part V and the final conclusion!

Part V

Woofus didn’t really have a plan for how he wanted to do this, but he figured it didn’t need to be complex. There were already several guards on every street, increasing in number the closer he got to Pillar Castle, so he figured he’d just keep walking towards it until someone noticed and stopped him, and let them take it from there. Interestingly, despite walking right past several other buildings currently being raided, in full view of everyone and making no real attempt to hide himself or his identity, none of the guards actually took notice until he was strolling right up to the front entrance of the castle, and the two guards that were normally stationed there stopped him and realized just who he was. There then followed some frenzied actions as they tried to sort out what they should do, but it was finally agreed that, seeing Woofus was just turning himself in without a fight, there was little else to do than take him into custody and bring him before Husky.

Thus Woofus’s paws were restrained and he was assigned a small escort of two guards so to walk him up to the throne room. The walk was a slow one, partly because the castle was a flurry of activity at the moment, reeling from Husky’s recent orders to effectively raid the city itself. Woofus could see in the eyes on many of the Diamond Dogs hurrying through the corridors that he wasn’t the only one who had mixed feelings about Husky’s actions, but thus far there didn’t seem to be any sign of attempts to resist. Woofus found himself oddly thankful and disappointed by this—thankful that he still had the chance to stop this before it sparked an outright rebellion that harmed innocents, and disappointed that his fellow dogs were choosing not to oppose an unjust order.

Partway there, they were joined by a third guard, who came hurrying up and out of breath. “Apologies,” the guard reported, straightening his helmet, “but it was decided a third guard escorting the prisoner couldn’t hurt.”

The other guards simply shrugged, not protesting. “Probably wouldn’t,” one of them agreed, even though Woofus had done nothing to resist and had no intentions of starting.

When they arrived at the throne room though, they found it had been kept sealed for the past several minutes at Husky’s orders, with entry limited to a couple at a time. The royal guards stationed at its entrance were under orders not to explain why, but it meant that Woofus’s escort of three was two too many. As there were apparently already guards inside, only one escort was sufficient. The third guard who had arrived late immediately volunteered, so the other two stepped back to let him lead Woofus into the throne room.

The doors were only opened just enough to permit them entry, so Woofus didn’t get a good view inside the room until the doors were already closing behind him. The moment he did though, he realized things were worse than he already thought.

As expected, Husky was standing in the center of the room, just before the throne, but seated before him was Gallus and Rottweiler, each under guard by one royal guard. Both twisted around to see who was entering and went wide-eyed in alarm at the sight of Woofus.

“What are you doing here?!” they exclaimed simultaneously at Woofus.

Woofus just stared back at them in shock, not expecting either of them to be here, let alone captured. His mind began to whirl and realized how this complicated his supposed-to-be straightforward plan.

Husky, however, looked on at all of this in approval. “Nice of you to join us, Woofus,” he remarked, content. “Please have a seat. We were just talking about you.”

Smolder recalled Woofus saying she couldn’t miss this place she was supposed to be heading for, but was starting to wonder if she had anyway, because she wasn’t confident she was anywhere near where she needed to be. It didn’t help that she was on the constant lookout for the guards swarming all over, skirting through the streets entirely on foot as she didn’t dare fly, certain that would only reveal her. While her cloak helped her to blend in, it only went so far, and she still ducked out of sight to avoid guards whenever they veered too close. The guard who kept coming back every few minutes with that gem also wasn’t helping. He didn’t seem to tire of his odd game of fetch, which any other time Smolder would’ve found hilarious and milk it for all it’s worth. But he kept popping up at all the worst times, and her tolerance was fading fast. Fortunately, the last time she threw the gem, she threw it hard enough that she was pretty certain it had sailed into the next street. She hoped that meant it’d take a little longer for the guard to retrieve it.

For now, though, she was hurrying through the streets, sticking to the edges in case she needed to quickly hide from danger, trying to spy the house she had been sent to. She heard a commotion somewhere as she rounded a street corner and glanced back, fearing trouble. Fortunately, the source seemed to be from another street over, so figuring the coast was clear for now, Smolder hurried on, turning her head around in time to run face first into a literal wall of fur. Bodily bouncing off and crashing to the ground, Smolder forced herself back up in a panic, ready to fight what she at first assumed had to be a guard, but instead found a familiar yak now spinning around to see what had run into her.

“Smolder!” Yona bellowed giddily, recognizing the dragoness just as quickly.

“Yon—erk!” Smolder’s surprised exclamation was smothered as Yona grabbed her into one of her infamous bear hugs.

“Dragon friend okay!” she exclaimed happily, squeezing the dragon to her chest as Silverstream and Sandbar came hurrying out from behind the yak.

Smolder was glad to see Yona and her friends safe as well, but knew there wasn’t time for celebrating. “Er…Yona?” she gasped out from where her face was buried deep in wooly yak fur. “Let me go?”

“No!” Yona beamed, only squeezing tighter. “Yona hug Smolder until Yona says!”

Smolder went limp, surrendering herself. “Fine, I’ll just stop breathing then,” she rasped sarcastically, “Probably overrated anyway.”

Silverstream intervened though, prying Smolder away from Yona. “What are you doing here?” she asked anxiously as she turned Smolder to face her. “Where’s Ocellus?” She gasped suddenly. “Is she in disguise? Did she disguise herself as your cloak?” She grabbed the hem of Smolder’s hood and brought up to her mouth. “Ocellus? Is that you?”

Smolder yanked it out of the hippogriff’s claws. “Ocellus isn’t here,” she explained grumpily, looking her three friends over. They all wore cloaks like hers (although Yona’s was too small), but other than all appearing on edge and smelling a bit unpleasantly like Diamond Dogs, they seemed okay. “I hope she’s with Woofus right now.”

“So why aren’t you with them?” Sandbar asked, stepping up to her.

“Why aren’t you guys in this house Woofus told me to look for?” Smolder asked back, her mind catching up with her and finding it worrying her friends were also out wandering the streets.

Yona pointed a hoof vaguely at the commotions seeming to engulf much of the underground city. “Diamond Dog guards invade city!” she exclaimed. “Could not stay or they catch us!”

“They’re under orders from the acting leader, Husky, to raid the city so to find us,” Sandbar began to explain.

He would’ve continued, but Smolder quickly cut him short. “Already know about that bit,” she explained and launched into the short version of her explanation. “Woofus decided to do the macho thing and go turn himself in so to stop it, and told us to go on without him.”

“He did what?” Silverstream exclaimed, alarmed. “He doesn’t need to do that!”

“And we’re not letting him,” Smolder added. “Ocellus went after him while I found you guys. I’d imagine they’re in the castle by now.”

“Then I guess that’s where we’re going to have to go next,” Sandbar said, turning to look at Pillar Castle while the rest all silently agreed they weren’t abandoning Woofus. “But that place is going to be crawling with guards by now…”

“Actually, with how many of them are out here on the streets, I’d imagine that castle’s getting pretty empty by now,” Silverstream interjected, pointing to a tussle they could just barely make out a few blocks away.

“Silverstream has point,” Yona agreed with a nod, then added one of her own. “Other Diamond Dogs not like what guards do, too. Might smash back!”

“Heck, it’s what I’d do if a bunch of armed guys came bursting into my home and started trashing all my stuff,” Smolder reasoned, but now that she had the thought, she realized a big problem. “Rocks, that means there could be riots starting out here soon!”

They all ducked down abruptly when they heard a loud and ominous crash nearby. “If they haven’t already,” Sandbar reasoned. He gazed back at the castle again. “Guess the castle just might be the safer place after all.”

“Then I say we take this fight to Husky,” Smolder concluded, pounding a fist into her palm. “I remember that throne room of his enough to know there’s a way to get at it by air.”

“Which works for you and Silverstream,” Sandbar said, pointing a hoof at his winged friends. “But what about me and Yona?”

“Sil can give you a lift, Sandy,” Smolder suggested, jabbing her head at the hippogriff. “Yona can come with me and go through the castle.”

“How are you going to do that?” Silverstream asked, perplexed.

“Oh don’t worry,” Smolder said, standing up and keeping an eye out for someone. “As soon as he comes back with his gem, I’ve got someone that I think can help us out.”

Woofus found himself sat down wedged between Gallus and Rottweiler, with his escort joining the two royal guards to form the middle of a loose semi-circle around them. “You have what you want now, Husky,” Woofus said gently as Husky paced before the three, considering. “Please let Gallus and his friends go free, if nothing else.”

“First I’d need to know where the others are even at,” Husky said, and shot a glance at Gallus.

Gallus, however, only rolled his eyes. “Heck if I’ll tell you,” he said defiantly.

Woofus frowned at the griffon. “Gallus…”

“We’ve already been through this a couple times, Woofus,” Gallus assured him sarcastically. “He’s gotta do something back for me before I tell him anything.”

“And I suppose you’d want Rottweiler and Woofus to go free now,” Husky muttered as he paced.

“It would be ideal,” Gallus snarked.

“And if I still say no?”

“Well, I’m sure we could come up with something else to talk about. Like why Equestria has rock farms, I’ve been seriously wondering about that one the past couple of days…”

Husky snorted and turned away from the griffon. “You’re wasting my time.”

They heard a crash from somewhere outside the castle. “Yeah, well, I figure there might be advantages to stalling right about now,” Gallus replied.

Rottweiler, however, had his attention to the noise echoing in through the room’s open balcony. “Sir Husky, I think you have bigger concerns going on out there among your subjects than us anyway,” he pointed out knowingly.

“He’s right,” Woofus agreed. “You have me, now call off the raid, Husky.” He looked pleadingly at his former friend. “Before someone gets hurt and you have to answer for it.”

Husky’s brow furrowed, clear the idea of that did trouble him, but he didn’t reply and instead continued to pace.

“You have nothing to gain by letting it continue, you realize,” Rottweiler reasoned.

“Nor from holding Gallus and his friends captive,” Woofus added.

Husky’s gaze turned to the city briefly. He suddenly looked uncertain. “How do I know they won’t just cause trouble if I don’t, though?” he asked.

A loud crash was heard dangerously close to the castle, causing them all to jump. “You’re going to have a riot on your paws here soon if you don’t,” Gallus pointed out. “Somehow, I think that’d be worse.” They heard another crash. “Dunno what tells me that, though.”

Husky sighed then nodded. He glanced to the Diamond Dog guarding Gallus. “Go and find one of the administrative staff, tell them to spread the word to end the riot.”

The guard nodded and left briefly through a side door Woofus knew led to the chambers the administrative staff worked in. He came back rather quickly though, eyes wide in alarm. “Sir Husky,” he began quickly. “My apologies, but the administrative staff is refusing to carry out your order.”

Now Husky looked alarmed himself. “What?” he asked, twisting around to stare at the guard. “Why?”

The royal guard hesitated. “They say they will not recognize any of your orders now,” he explained. “They’re…um…”

“They’re rebelling,” Gallus remarked, catching on and shot a look at Husky, “Making a stand.”

They then heard another crash, this time somewhere within the castle itself, and all of them turned to look in its direction. “Curse the acorns, what if everyone rebels?” the guard who had escorted Woofus in declared suddenly.

Gallus shot that guard a surprised look.

“I don’t understand, though,” Woofus remarked, ignoring the guard’s comment. “Husky gave the order to end the raid…why won’t the administrative staff enforce it? They stand to lose just as much as he does.”

“I’m thinking it’s their way of blackmailing Sir Husky into stepping down from the throne,” Rottweiler surmised, shooting a look at Husky as well, backing towards said throne as if it would give him shelter. He then glanced at the royal guard who had delivered the news. “Is that correct?”

The guard reluctantly nodded. “I’m sorry, sir,” he told Husky.

Husky gripped the armrest of the sapphire throne tightly, and swallowed. “It’s a bluff,” he mumbled to himself. He didn’t sound confident. “I can call it.”

Another crash was heard within the castle, closer this time. Gallus folded his arms. “Then I guess it’s the waiting game to see who chickens out first,” he remarked.

Meanwhile, just outside the throne room, the three royal guards currently stationed at the doors were getting increasingly tenser as the sound of crashing kept getting closer and closer.

“What do you think it is?” one of them whispered to their cohorts.

“Rebelling dogs, do you think?” another answered back. “I mean, what else could it be?”

“I don’t know,” the third said, who had only recently gone on duty. “I heard rumors just before coming up here that there was some sort of ruckus going on in the tunnels leading to the surface…”

“You think we’re being invaded?” the first asked in alarm.

They heard another crash, the closest one yet. “Sounds like we just might find out,” the second remarked and turned to the other two. “Best be ready for it, whatever it is.”

Another crash sounded, this time to their left, and all three involuntarily turned to look in its direction. Then, while he was still turned, something hard but small suddenly whacked into the side of the middle guard’s helmet. Surprised, he fumbled to catch it then held it up, seeing it was a gem of fine workmanship.

“Where did…?” he began to ask, but he was cut short as he was suddenly tackled and knocked to the ground by something big and furry grabbing for the gem.

The other two spun around and saw it was one of their own, a Diamond Dog guard, who, panting, was rather unbecomingly trying to tug the gem back out of the fallen guard’s grasp. All three of them were trying to figure out the deal with this wound up fellow when they heard bellows nearby and looked up in time to see their real attackers charging forward while they were distracted.

Back in the throne room, a loud thump was heard just outside the doors followed by the noise of a fight, drawing the attention of all present.

“Sounds like time’s up!” Gallus said, and shot a knowing look at the guard who had brought Woofus in.

The guard nodded and tossed his spear to Gallus, who immediately caught and spun it around on the royal guard still standing at the room’s side door. Rottweiler, meanwhile, snagged the other royal guard’s spear while he was distracted and turned it on the surprised guard. Then the third guard dropped onto all fours and, with a flash of cyan flames, his Diamond Dog form melted away to reveal…

“Ocellus!” Woofus exclaimed in surprise at the young changeling. He looked to Gallus in shock. “How did you…?”

“Ocellus is the only one I know who will curse acorns of all things,” Gallus replied with a smirk.

Ocellus sighed. “I’ve already tried to explain the cultural significance of it to you before,” she reminded as she lit her horn and pointed it in Husky’s direction, standing petrified at the throne. She then glanced at Woofus and grinned a little. “But long story short…it’s a changeling thing.”

“Now,” Gallus said, changing the subject as he kept his spear pointed at his guard and glanced over at Husky, “you’re going to help us find our other friends.”

But Rottweiler then noticed something outside the balcony. “Looks like they found us,” he said, pointing with one claw.

And sure enough, Silverstream, carrying Sandbar in her arms, swooped in from outside and landed on the balcony, the two then hurrying into the room to bar it off from the rear.

“Hey everybody!” Silverstream greeted in her usual bright attitude.

Then the throne room doors burst open and, having finished subduing the guards outside, Smolder and Yona came skidding inside. Yona then twisted around and slammed them shut again, which Smolder barred with one of two spears she was carrying.

“’Sup?” she greeted as well as she and Yona then turned and faced the others.

“Well, band’s all here now,” Gallus said, grinning happily at the sight of all his friends reunited once again. He glanced at the remaining royal guards. “Surely you two don’t want to try and break that up, do you?”

They didn’t. Seeing they were outnumbered now, the two guards put their paws up and surrendered, which just left Husky standing at the throne, surrounded. His bravado had vanished completely and he cowered as everyone looked to him, fear in his eyes.

Woofus sympathized as he carefully approached him. “I’m sorry, Husky,” he apologized truthfully. “I had been against it coming to this myself, but…” he trailed off briefly to listen to the turmoil in the city outside, “…things didn’t go the way I hoped. I’m sure they didn’t for you either.”

Silverstream looked behind her at the city outside, worry etched on her face. “Things are getting real close to bad out there, by the way,” she said. “We probably might want to do something to stop that.”

“Diamond Dog give order!” Yona pressured, looking to Husky. “Stop guards!”

“He can’t,” Rottweiler replied. “The administrative staff is refusing to carry out his orders, and in so doing have broken the chain of command.”

Smolder scoffed at this. “Who’s dumb idea was that?” she demanded.

“Theirs,” Gallus replied and proceeded to explain in brief what was happening to her.

While he was doing this, Ocellus turned to Rottweiler. “You have authority over the guards, right?” she asked. “Couldn’t you call them off yourself?”

“Yes, but working alone and with how widespread across the city the guards have no doubt gotten, it could take too long,” Rottweiler pointed out, having already thought of this. “If we have no other choice, I’ll certainly run out there right now and try, but it’d go faster and cleaner if I had the administrative staff assisting to spread the word.”

“Well, they’ve made it clear they aren’t doing anything more so long as he’s in charge,” Gallus concluded solemnly, nodding his head at Husky.

Who still hadn’t moved, continuing to gaze about as if in a frightened daze. “Please, Husky,” Woofus placated again. “Everyone is only going to get hurt needlessly if you don’t.”

“The administrative staff will happily accept the order from Sir Woofus, I’m sure,” Rottweiler added as a voice of confidence.

Husky’s eyes looked at Woofus for a moment. Woofus took a step closer to him, holding his paws up to show he meant no harm. Husky didn’t stand down, but he didn’t make any further moves either.

“Dude,” Smolder remarked softly but urgently, “We don’t actually want to hurt anyone.”

“We never did,” Ocellus added calmly. She nodded at Husky. “I don’t think you do either.”

“Please Husky,” Woofus pleaded again. “None of us are trying to make this harder. Ocellus is right, too…I don’t think you want to either.”

Husky hesitated, silently looking at each of them in turn. A moment of tense silence followed. Sandbar glanced outside at the city again. “So, I don’t want to rush anyone, but…I’m worried if we don’t do something to defuse things out there soon…”

Woofus nodded, waving a paw in Sandbar’s direction. “I know, just…just bear with us.” He gazed at Husky, trying to piece together what might be going through his mind, but the other dog was shirking eye contact, looking ashamed. He sighed. “Husky…I know you don’t want to give up like this, to concede that things have gone outside of your control…and I honestly can’t blame you,” he assured softly. “That’s never an easy situation to be put into. But…the good of Sapphiria is in danger, so please ask yourself…which would a good pack leader put first? His pack? Or his pride?”

Husky was quiet for a moment then he made eye contact with Woofus at last. “Which sort would you be?” he asked, with grave severity.

Woofus managed a small, sad, but comforting grin. “Why do you think I left in the first place? It was never for my own good, Husky. It was because I felt it was best for Sapphiria.”

Husky mulled upon that for a second. “You were wrong.”

Woofus nodded. “I know,” he agreed. “I see that now. But that’s why I’m here now.”

Husky quietly gazed at him for a moment before hanging his head sadly. Then, at last, he quietly shrugged off the sapphire-hemmed overcoat he wore. He bundled it up in his paws and held it close for a moment. Then, with reluctance, he handed it over to Woofus. Woofus reverently held it close to his chest for a moment too, bowing his head solemnly.

Then he took a deep breath and turned to look at the royal guard still standing at the side door. “Tell the administrative staff to have all of the guards to stop what they’re doing and return to the castle where they are to await further orders,” he instructed gently as Husky slowly lowered himself down, sitting on the floor next to the throne. “Stress that it is me that is giving the order, and that you witnessed the transfer of command yourself. Be quick about it, please.”

The guard saluted. “Yes, Sir Woofus,” he said, and slipped back through the little door. This time he didn’t come back right away, and before long, they could hear the ruckus outside slow down as the shouts of commands ordering the guards to stand down echoed back in its place.

The tension in the room rapidly unwound after that, with many in the group breathing heavy sighs and those who held spears lowered them. As the remaining royal guard moved to go back to his original post outside the throne room and Rottweiler, after assuring that things were going to stay under control here, went to go assist, the others converged together near the throne.

“Mmkay, can I just say that this was all, like, super tense and ask that we not do anything like this again anytime soon?” Silverstream said as they all continued to relax.

“Personally, I’m game not to do this again ever,” Sandbar quipped with a relieved grin.

“Yeah, politics really is crazy,” Smolder agreed with a nod. “I don’t see how anyone would want to get into it.” She glanced at Woofus. “No offense.”

Woofus laughed and was glad to do so, as it helped his nerves unwind a little. “None taken,” he replied. He turned to give the dragoness a knowing look. “While I’m still thinking about it, though…didn’t I tell you and Ocellus to get out of Sapphiria while you could?”

Smolder waved the matter aside by blowing a derisive raspberry. “Like we’d really leave you behind!” she remarked. “I may be a dragon, but even dragons can have limits on how heartless we are, and dude…that would’ve been totally heartless if we did that.”

Ocellus nodded in agreement. “If there is one thing we have all learned from friendship is that friends don’t leave friends behind. We always help each other out, regardless.”

Yona squeezed her way through to grab Woofus in a bear hug, lifting him briefly off the ground. “And Diamond Dog Woofus is friend!” she declared. “Always and forever! This yak promise!”

Woofus grinned as he looked at each of his six friends in turn. “Then I’m glad I’ve got friends like all of you that won’t listen to me when I say to save yourselves.” But no sooner had he said this did his smile fade. “Mind if I try to add one more, though?” he asked, as he turned to look at Husky.

The six all looked to one another then respectively stepped back to permit him to continue. Woofus turned back to the other Diamond Dog and sat down next to him. Husky, during all of this, had taken on a faraway look and hadn’t appeared to be giving the others much attention. He didn’t look at Woofus when he sat beside him.

Woofus assumed he was listening, though. “Husky…” he began uncertainly, having only a vague idea of how he wanted to say this, “…I’m deeply sorry for what happened between us. I promise, it was never my intent to harm you in any way. But I should’ve been there to support you through your trials, no matter what or when they were…and I didn’t. I…I had thought I hadn’t needed to, that you had things handled yourself no matter the outcome…so I turned my attention to things I assumed more pressing…and ended up neglecting the one I would still like as a friend because of it.” He paused to look at Husky, seeing if any of this was getting through to him. “I humbly beg for your forgiveness, Husky…if you can find it within you to do so. If you can’t…I won’t hold that against you.”

Husky didn’t reply for a long moment, eyes distant as the dog’s mind whirled in deep thought. Woofus was about to turn away with a heavy sigh of defeat when he abruptly spoke. “You were right about one thing,” Husky remarked suddenly. “Everything that I did…I did it out of pride. I…had thought I’d gotten myself ready to pass the royal guard’s entrance exam at last, and that I’d pass it with flying colors…I was told I showed plenty of promise afterwards even…but when I still didn’t…” he trailed off, looking ashamed. “I didn’t want to face that I had failed, to be told I wasn’t good enough for what I wanted, so…I was trying to shift the blame.” He sighed. “I could have used that support, Woofus…and I won’t lie…the fact that I didn’t get it still angers me…but…you can’t be solely to blame. But I just…felt it was all so unfair…so convinced that the royal guard recruiters were wrong, that I did have what it took to join up here and now. Then you vacated the throne and left so abruptly…and I thought…maybe that was my chance to prove how capable I was. To you. To the royal guard. To everyone. So I went before the administrative staff and…did whatever I had to so to take the throne in your place.”

“Just so to prove you could?” Woofus repeated, surprised.

Behind him, Smolder elbowed Ocellus. “Told you he did it out of spite,” she mumbled.

Ocellus’s only reply was to gently motion for her to keep quiet.

“At first I was feeling pretty good with myself about it,” Husky continued, ignoring the background commentary. “I…knew deep down that the administrative staff didn’t really have that much confidence I could do the job forever, of course, that they only put up with me because they thought I’d be a good pawn for their individual plans, and I knew deep down that I was just flying blind…but things in Sapphiria were stable and calm at the time, so it was easy to manage.” He looked up at Woofus and the others. “Then all of you showed up…and everything started flying apart at the seams. I couldn’t ignore anymore that I was really…really in over my head.” He turned and motioned aimlessly towards the throne room balcony and out at the underground city. “I hadn’t truly wanted any of this, for anyone to get hurt…but even as things were spiraling out of control all around me, I didn’t want to admit defeat. My pride wouldn’t let me.” He looked to Woofus knowingly. “So you were right to call me out on that, Woofus. If nothing else…I’m sorry I was so vain as to let it come to that.”

Woofus mulled over Husky’s side of the story for a moment with a sigh. “In a way, I can understand, Husky,” he admitted. “You weren’t the only one who was being a little prideful, I think.” He let his gaze wander a little. “That was the whole reason I left at all. When…we had our falling out, Husky, it…it made me think that if I couldn’t be there for one friend, how could I expect to do the same for my pack? I…became too afraid of failing and finding out that…it bothered me greatly. So…I thought it better to leave…to run and hide instead. I was too proud to let myself face that I couldn’t be the perfect leader I felt I should be.”

A heavy silence fell for a moment. “At least you were thinking of others more than of yourself,” Husky conceded.

“And at least we’ve both learned,” Woofus replied back. He glanced at his other friends, silently watching and listening. “And maybe in the future, we can still have the support of others to…help us through those moments when we…are not as perfect as we’d like to believe.”

Husky snorted darkly. “After having all of Sapphiria turn on me, who could I possibly have to count on anymore?” he asked.

Woofus mulled on that for a moment, then turned to face him again. “I can’t vouch for the administrative staff,” he began, “but I won’t lie; they and others will probably want some sort of…compensation from you in return for the trouble, at the very least, and I fear there will be little even I could do to stop it.” He then placed a reassuring paw on Husky’s shoulder. “However I already wasn’t there for you as a friend once before…I don’t intend to do that again.” He studied Husky’s face for a moment. “I hope we can be friends again, Husky.”

Husky was quiet for a moment. Slowly, he grinned faintly. “That would be nice,” he admitted. He didn’t seem to have much confidence in it, though. “What if that’s not enough for the both of us, though?” he asked seriously.

“There’s nothing stopping us from having more friends than just each other,” Woofus pointed out then directed Husky’s attention to the other six standing nearby. “Have you met my six friends here?”

Husky glanced at them for a moment then grinned faintly at what Woofus was getting at. “I suppose I haven’t, not really,” he admitted, straightening.

“Well, that’s Sandbar, Silverstream, Ocellus, Smolder, Yona, and Gallus,” Woofus introduced, pointing at each of them in turn.

“Hey,” Silverstream said with a small wave, the others mirroring the motion.

Husky regarded each of them in turn, studying them like he hadn’t before as he took the six in under a new light. “Will you all really want to befriend someone like me, after all the grief I’ve put you through?” he asked them.

“Yes,” Yona replied with a single nod of her head and all without hesitation. “If Diamond Dog Husky let Yona and friends.” The others quickly voiced similar support as well.

Husky chuckled a little, cheered by their show of support. “Are you all often this quick about befriending former enemies?”

Sandbar shrugged. “It’s…kind of an Equestrian tradition,” he admitted with a smirk.

“It seriously is,” Gallus backed up.

“Dude, the stories we could tell you,” Smolder added, thinking of some of the stories their professors had told about their own friendship adventures. She then folded her arms. “I think our only catch is that you don’t do something like this again, where you…make the problem worse rather than face it and get it fixed.” She glanced at Woofus. “Both of you.”

“After all,” Ocellus added, “in order to have friendship, you have to want it enough to actively seek it out. It doesn’t just come to you or happen on its own.”

“You have to work for it,” Gallus added.

Woofus and Husky exchanged glances for a moment. Woofus grinned a little. “I think we can do that,” he said confidently.

But before any more conversation on the subject could be made, Rottweiler suddenly came hurrying back into the throne room. “Sir Woofus,” he began, nodding his head at the restored ruler as Woofus rose to his feet, “we may have a new problem.”

“Oh, now what?” Silverstream bemoaned. “Can’t things just keep going smoothly now?”

Woofus motioned for her to be quiet as he moved closer. “What’s wrong, Rottweiler?”

“In all the chaos, the castle briefly lost contact with the guards protecting the entrance tunnels,” Rottweiler explained hurriedly. “But now that things here have settled some, we’re getting their reports now, and, apparently, at around the same time the raiding was taking place in the city, the entrance tunnels came under attack.”

“By who?” Woofus asked, alarmed.

“I don’t know, the reports coming back are…contradictory,” Rottweiler explained urgently. “What I can tell you is that what seems to be a decent sized party that has broken past our defenses at the entrance tunnels and is now working their way towards the city, seeking to invade. They may have already reached Sapphiria as we speak.”

“Well, that’s not good,” Smolder remarked, lifting her spear again.

“No, wait,” Sandbar abruptly interjected, getting everyone’s attention as he worked to think this through. “They’re outsiders who are trying to get into the city, but they’re just one party and aren’t part of a full-size army? Guys, think about it! Who else could they be but—?”

He was cut short when there was a flash of magical light and suddenly six familiar pony professors were standing in the middle of the throne room, all already in fighting stances. “All right!” Twilight Sparkle, leading the group, began to demand before the light of her group teleport had even finished fading, “I want an explanation as to what’s going on and where my students—oh!”

She pulled back in surprise as she saw all of her missing students already standing casually about in the throne room, looking at her with varying bemused looks.

“Hey Teach,” Gallus remarked with an amused wave. “What brings you here?”

Twilight, taken aback, glanced at the other five mares around her as they all hesitantly began to reassess the situation. “Well,” she began clearing her throat so to take on a more civil tone, “no one had seen any of you since you left Ponyville yesterday, so…”

“…We honestly had started to assume the worst,” Rainbow Dash concluded bluntly.

“Told you we were overreacting, Twilight!” Pinkie Pie chirped happily, the only who didn’t seem that surprised by this development.

“Um…so what did happen?” Fluttershy asked curiously, “If it’s okay with all of you to ask.”

Woofus was starting slipping on the overcoat so to fully assume his role as pack leader and explain, but Silverstream beat him to it. “Weeeeelllllll,” she began, beginning to list off the key events of their weekend on her talons. “First we accidentally dug into one of the Diamond Dog tunnels on the surface, and the guards were all not happy about that, so they tried to catch us, but they only got Smolder and Ocellus, but the rest of us came to rescue them, but Woofus was all ‘let’s do this politically!’ so instead they took us all down here to plead our innocence, except we found Woofus’s old friend Husky—he’s over there—was king or whatever, and he was all grumpy with Woofus so he tried to arrest us, and he caught Smolder and Ocellus again while the rest of us escaped, and we tried to leave, but we couldn’t leave, and then Woofus explained that he was supposed to be the leader of this whole place, but he left to go learn more about friendship since he messed up his last friendship, and when he left Husky took over, so then we joined forces with Rottweiler here, broke Smolder and Ocellus out of jail, then came up here and restored Woofus to the throne all before the whole city tore itself apart, and we did it with the power of friendship!” Silverstream concluded by throwing her arms in the air in a silent cheer.

Across the room, Pinkie mirrored that cheer. “Yay!” she cried happily. The others, however, just stared blankly at the group, trying to process the hippogriff’s flurried explanation.

Woofus, now dressed in the overcoat, coughed into his fist. “Well, there are a few more details to all of that, of course,” he admitted sheepishly, glancing briefly at Rottweiler moving to one side so to hide his amusement. “But…that is the general gist of what happened.”

The six professors needed a couple more seconds to sort through all of this. “So…basically wut yer sayin’,” Applejack began, scratching her head with one hoof, “is that y’all already got this under control?”

“Basically, yeah,” Gallus concluded with a shrug. “So…I guess we don’t really need your help with it.”

“Because we’re just that awesome,” Smolder added with a smug grin, feeling the need to ham up their victory.

“Oh yeah,” Sandbar also added, taking on what he thought was a chill pose and rubbing one hoof casually on his chest. “It weren’t no thang.”

His friends all turned to stare at him. “Dude, never say that again,” Gallus instructed.

“Yeah, I think I have to agree with Gallus,” Woofus sided with an apologetic frown. “You’re not the sort of fellow that could pull that off, Sandbar.”

“Okay, fine,” Sandbar grumbled, straightening. “Sheesh!”

His friends all then shared a friendly chuckle while Twilight and her own friends all continued to exchange glances, somewhat confused.

Fortunately, it was simple enough to fill their professors in on what had happened in more detail, especially since Woofus felt morally obligated to set the record straight given everything that had happened. He did, after all, still feel like this was largely his fault. Whether it was or not, however, wasn’t of much concern to Twilight once she had the whole story.

“The important thing is that everyone got out of it safe,” she told the young ruler. “And more importantly, you helped to ensure that happened, not just for your fellow students, but your people as well.”

And indeed, as the clean-up from the near-disastrous raids continued in Sapphiria, it was found the underground city had fared better than feared and so had its citizens. Despite the rough day, no one had been seriously hurt, and those more minimally hurt were mostly just guards pushed out of the way by either Twilight and her friends, or the formerly missing six students. On that end, Woofus and Rottweiler were pleased to announce they had convinced the administrative staff to rule that this was done out of self-defense and would not press any charges against them.

Husky’s role in all of this, however, was another matter. As Woofus had feared, both the administrative staff and the citizenry wanted at least some justice on Husky. His imprisonment managed to be avoided for now, but the brief and now formally deposed ruler was expected to still do a great deal to make amends for his actions. Nevertheless, he bravely accepted it anyway. “Even I’ll concede that it is only fair,” he stressed when asked. “What I did is agreed to have been wrong, and I accept that, so naturally, some sort of punishment is expected.”

Woofus was a little less enthused by it though. “It feels a little like rubbing salt into the wound,” he remarked at one point. “It is already clear to me that Husky feels awful for what nearly transpired, more than he lets on. Continuing to drag him down over it just seems needless.” Nevertheless, he heeded the wishes of his pack and agreed to enforce the community service punishment that was selected for Husky…and considering that several properties had been left in disarray from the day’s events, he would have his paws full for a while.

Nevertheless, both dogs weren’t so busy that they couldn’t join the others gathering on the surface for farewells later that afternoon as the professors collected their missing students and prepared to depart.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come back with us, Sir Woofus?” Twilight asked the restored ruler, having caught on to the proper titles to refer him by quite quickly. “I’m sure we can work out a solution that would allow you to continue your studies at the school without leaving your duties here.”

“A part of me would love that,” Woofus conceded with a warm grin while shaking the princess’s offered hoof. “Brief as it was, I did enjoy myself at the school, and I hate to leave again so soon after arriving.” He glanced behind him, where Husky, Rottweiler, and an escort of guards, stood nearby. “But…I’ve hid from my responsibilities long enough, princess. I have my own pack to look after, and after what just happened, they might need the stability of a ruler more than ever…and I know better now than to neglect that. You understand.”

Twilight grinned. “I think I do.”

“Whadda ’bout you, Husky?” Applejack asked, nodding her head at the Diamond Dog. “Yer welcome t’ come to the school yerself, if ya want.”

“I would be honored,” Husky began solemnly. “I probably could use the teaching, if the example of some of your students have shown are any example.” He looked briefly to the six youth with a wistful grin. “But…I think it is better that I stay here and finish making amends first, work to put myself in a better standing with my own pack before I try and…expand my horizons.” He mulled on it for a second then added more optimistically, “Perhaps after I have done that, though.”

“The offer is always open regardless,” Twilight reminded with a friendly grin then looked to Woofus. “That goes to any other Diamond Dogs in Sapphiria that may be interested. If anything, it would help strengthen any relations between you and Equestria.”

“We’ll definitely keep that in mind,” Woofus agreed with a nod. “And if any dogs are interested, I’ll certainly send them your way…but with a bit more forewarning and no hidden reasons like it was with me, I think.”

“Sure won’t say no to that!” Rainbow chipped in. “I mean, I don’t think anyone wants a repeat of what happened here.”

Everybody nodded their heads in agreement to this.

“Anyway,” Woofus remarked, moving to approach his student friends, “I suppose this is farewell.”

“Yeah, but just for now,” Gallus promised as he took Woofus’s paw to shake. “You’re only a quick train ride away after all, so we’ll totally come back and visit.”

“Yeah!” Silverstream immediately agreed, excited by the idea. “Maybe we can come and make a weekend of it every now and then.” She looked to Twilight. “Right, headmare?”

Twilight bit her lip, hesitant. “Well…maybe with a bit more informing everyone of where everyone is first, so to play it safe,” she admitted. “You know…in case something like this comes up again.”

“Yeah, probably don’t want to put you teachers all into a tizzy again, huh?” Smolder quipped.

“You guys making sure you don’t all drop out of contact and without much trace would probably help with that,” Rainbow grumbled.

“The point is that current student at the school or not, you’re one of us now, Woofus,” Smolder smugly assured, shaking Woofus’s paw next.

“Yes!” Yona added. “And friends have to visit friends! It rule!”

“So we’ll be in touch,” Ocellus concluded as she reached in to shake Woofus’s paw too. “I hope you will do the same.”

“Happily,” Woofus promised.

“Anyway,” Sandbar said as he was next to shake Woofus’s paw. “Good luck with being the ruler. Don’t let them work you too hard, but don’t fret too much about it. I may not have much experience with it myself, but…I think you’ll be a great leader, Woofus.”

“I certainly hope so,” Woofus remarked, “though I’ll happily welcome any advice.”

“You could all try to bathe a bit more regularly,” Gallus quipped.

Woofus laughed. “No promises.”

Gallus shrugged. “Well, a griffon can still hope, can’t he?”

“Speaking of bathing,” Twilight interjected, jabbing her head in the direction of the six students, “this lot could stand a bit of that themselves, so we need to hurry if we’re going to catch the next train.”

So with a few final farewells from all present, they parted ways, the Diamond Dogs heading back underground to their city, while the professors led their students across the sparse terrain for the train platform.

Along the way, Gallus’s curiosity got the better of him and he lifted one foreleg to sniff. “Oof,” he gagged, pulling a face. “The headmare’s not kidding. I’m starting to smell like a Diamond Dog myself.”

“We all kinda reek,” Smolder admitted, sniffing the air around her friends with a wince.

“Funny how you kind of get used to it though,” Sandbar remarked. “I guess that’s how the Diamond Dogs can stand the smell themselves.”

“And I suppose it’s what we get for spending most of the weekend around them,” Ocellus added. “We’ll have to think of a way to address that better for future visits.”

“Ooh, I can’t wait to get back to the school though,” Silverstream said, stretching her wings. “I’m so going to go jump in the lake for a swim as soon as we get there! That should help clean me up a bit.”

“…I’m actually going to have to insist you wash off in the showers where you can use some soap and a scrubber, Silverstream,” Twilight tactfully requested.

“Is smell really that bad?” Yona asked, concerned.

“In all honesty?” Applejack asked as she looked back at the six. “There’s a reason why we’re standin’ upwind of y’all.”

“But don’t worry!” Pinkie promised optimistically, pronking along as usual. “It’s nothing a little pumice soap can’t fix! I’ve got a couple dozen boxes of the stuff at the school—you can all borrow some!”

“Why do you have so much of it, though?” Smolder asked, confused seeing such soap was not standard issue at the school and never had been despite this apparent supply.

“In case of soap emergency!” Pinkie replied without missing a best. “Besides, my sister Limestone hooks me up with some of what she makes from the leftover rocks at the family rock farm, so I’ve always got a supply!”

Gallus perked up a bit at this. “Ooh, that reminds me!” he said, flapping over to the pink pony. “Professor Pinkie, real quick while I’m thinking about it, I have a very important question I need you to answer for me, because it’s been driving me crazy not having an answer.”

“Fire away, then!” Pinkie prompted.

“Do I have your full and complete attention, though?” Gallus stressed first. “Because the past couple of times, you got pulled away before you could answer, and I don’t want to waste time asking if that’s just going to happen again.”

Pinkie responded by grabbing Gallus by the head and pressing her snout into his beak. “Gallus, you have my complete and utter attention like you never have before,” she stated seriously.

Gallus waited a moment to make sure she really was serious about this. “Okay,” he said, and proceeded to slowly ask the question. “Why…the heck…are there rock farms?”

“Because,” Pinkie responded just as seriously as before, “if we didn’t, then there’d…” then she abruptly twisted her head around, a big grin on her face. “Hey, a balloon! Who’d leave one of those floating around waaaaay out here?” Everything else suddenly forgotten, she trotted off in pursuit of the random and red helium balloon, aimlessly singing a happy little tune as she did. “La, la, la, la, la…”

Gallus just stood there gaping for a moment, before finally tilting his head up to the sky in frustration. “GGGGRRRRAAAAAUUUUUGGGGHHHHHHHHokay.”

Dejectedly joining the rest to continue walking for the train platform, the others quietly and wisely kept their amusement at his plight to themselves.

Author's Note

...and that's the end! As this will likely be my last major fanfic for now as I start turning my attention to other projects, I hope it was an enjoyable one! :twilightsmile: