The Needle

Chapters

1 - The Back of Beyond
2 - Following the Thread
3 - Into the Storm
4 - Look Out Behind You
5 - Hole in the Wall
6 - A New Frontier
7 - Scar on the Land
8 - Forgotten Peoples
10 - The Spire
11 - Ever Deeper
12 - The Divide
13 - Nothing's Wrong
9 - Aftereffects

1 - The Back of Beyond

Light’s Edge said the sign leading into town, to which ninety percent of ponies would’ve responded, “Later,” and booked it out of there. But Daring Do wasn’t ninety percent of ponies. She wasn’t even ninety-nine point nine percent of ponies. Light’s Edge had actually been her destination, and seconds after Daring had crossed the town lines, she realized it was a far, far, far nicer town than its name implied. Ridiculously nice, even. It was a certain… She didn’t know what. It was a certain je ne sais quoi that hung in the air and gave you a spring in your step. The quiet beauty of trees encased in ice after an ice storm, the crisp smell of pines and firs on a clear winter day, the ember of hot cocoa in a blizzard. And that was even with the mild snowstorm the town was going through at the moment; inconvenient weather was expected when you lived this far into the Frozen North and pegasi couldn’t control it.

She could’ve looked back, at the Crystal Mountains spread behind her, at the towering palace of the Crystal Empire far in the distance, but Daring had seen those before. She was only interested in the main street of Light’s Edge, and more specifically, whatever bars it might have. As a minor trading hub between Equestria and Tarandusia, the town had to have at least one bar.

Daring walked down the street, looking at each establishment’s sign and nodded to each reindeer (and occasional pony) she passed. None of them spared her a second glance; obviously, they were experienced with ponies. The buildings themselves were stone with wooden frames; rough, but solid. Barely anything in the way of keeping the walls flat, but when Daring took a close look at the walls, she couldn’t see anything that indicated the walls were less than superbly designed. Some of the buildings further down the street and closer to the mountains were built in the turf style, with grassy walls helping to keep the heat in. The signs sticking out from the buildings were worn, beaten, and very very tough. Absolutely nothing in the town was less than functional. Daring would’ve like to take her time, but she still needed to find-

There was one. The Bay Bucker Bar. Perhaps a bit unfortunately named, given Equestrian slang, but the alliteration was nice. (Although for all Daring knew, the name was deliberate.) Daring pushed open the door and stepped inside. The floor was practically snow itself, with so much tracked in. She took a deep breath through her nose. Warm (relatively speaking), packed with patrons, and the food they were making smelled fantastic. Her first stop, and she could already tell she’d find everyone she needed right here.

With a few mumbled “Sorry”s, she pushed her way through the crowd to the bar itself. The reindeer bartender was standing in front of her before she could take a seat. Daring preempted her. “I’m going on an expedition,” Daring said, “and I’m looking for people to join me. Protectors, guards, mountaineers, guides, anyone like that. Got any names?” She scooped a small stack of bits from one of her bags, dropped it on the bar, and pushed it toward the bartender. “And some warm cider, while you’re at it,” she added, tipping a few more coins onto the pile. “Keep the change.”

“You all meet in a bar” (or tavern, or inn, or alehouse, or…) was the eternal starting cliché of Ogres & Oubliettes players, but that was because meeting at a bar was a perfectly logical place to start. They served beer. Friends often met there. They served beer. They had a ready-made audience for adventurers to brag to about their heroic deeds. They served beer. They were the social center for towns. And, of course (and most importantly), they served beer. Coupled with Light’s Edge being a not uncommon stopover for trade caravans in need of guards and guides, Daring’s confidence that she could hire a few assistants here was through the roof.

After a quick glance at the pile of coins, the bartender looked around the room a bit, then pointed at a corner. “See the deer back there?” she said. “With the notch in her antlers?” Daring twisted and peered through the crowd. There she was: a bulky reindeer with an impressive set of antlers. Even at this distance, she obviously had a few scars on her face. “Rangifera. Bit of a mercenary, but don’t call her that. Good fighter, loyal, good rates, and she knows people who know people. If you can’t get everyone you need through her, you won’t find them here. And…” She swapped the bits with a steaming mug of cider.

Daring nodded, grabbed her cider, and forced her way through the crowd to Rangifera’s table. As she approached, the reindeer looked up and waved. She was big and well-muscled, even for a reindeer, and her antlers were even more impressive up close. Her coat was a mixture of deep, milky chocolate and cream, beautiful even with its scars. For Rangifera was scarred, all over; a sickle curled across her chest, lightning bolts ran down her legs, a line traced down the right side of her face, barely missing her eye, and that was when Daring stopped counting. Leaning forward as Daring sat down opposite her, she said, “Well, aren’t you a mare on a mission, my forthright foreigner.” Already, Daring could see anticipation dancing in her emerald eyes.

“Name’s Daring Do,” said Daring. “Looking for a job?”

Light’s Edge wasn’t Daring’s final destination, just the last stop on the way there, as it sat right next to Needle Vale. Long, deep, thin, and running due north straight into the heart of the Crystal Mountains, Needle Vale was infamous for constant bad-even-for-the-Frozen-North weather, bordering on actively hostile. The winds simply never ceased, always strong enough to bring down all but the hardiest pegasi in moments, and the hardiest pegasi would still follow soon after. Whether because of the depth of the valley or the snow getting whipped up by the wind, nopony knew, but Needle Vale was also perpetually shrouded in clouds, preventing anyone who flew above the storms from getting a good look at the valley. Those who braved it on hoof reported a dense forest lurking within a labyrinthine network of stone pillars and ravines smothered in a haze of wind-whipped snow that dropped visibility to nothing. The storm had been there when the first records of Needle Vale were scribbled down and hadn’t stopped since.

Naturally, between the strange weather and the evocative landscape, Needle Vale had attracted something of a reputation. It was cursed, this group said, because of the sins of ponies in the past. (The fact that most of the people living in the area weren’t ponies didn’t deter them.) It’d been a site for magical experiments, that group said, and the experiments had gone wrong, contaminating the area with arcane energy. (That group couldn’t even agree on the type of experiments, though; large-scale non-pegasus weather manipulation, forgotten superweapons, portals to other worlds, necromancy, and seeing the future were all suggested.) It was an area with naturally bad vibes, those ponies said, since the straightness of Needle Vale being perpendicular to the Crystal Mountains obviously meant it was a conjunction between opposing ley lines.

That was without getting into the stories about the Vale in various pony and reindeer mythologies. Those were even more varied: the site of some monster being slain, some grievous atrocity committed, the place where the gods first physically manifested, the birthplace of the windigos, whatever. The short version was that there were a lot of legends about Needle Vale, both modern and ancient, urban and tribal.

Daring knew, better than anyone, that legends were usually based around a grain of truth. There had to be something in there. Her plan was simple: visit Light’s Edge, head into Needle Vale, and find whatever the heck was in there. Easy. It’d be a great adventure.

There was only one flaw with that logic.

“Needle Vale?” Rangifera asked. “Seriously?” Any sense of expectation had dropped from her voice, leaving it flat and lifeless. She shook her head. “You’re new here, aren’t you, my daft delver? There’s nothing out there.”

“I’ve done my research,” said Daring, “and there’s all sorts of stories and legends-”

“-that are nothing more than stories and legends,” interrupted Rangifera. “Yes, it’s a weird place. But people — deer, ponies, yaks, even griffons — go in there all the time. You know what happens to them? Nothing.” She slashed through the air for emphasis. “They come right back out here, bringing out nothing to show for their efforts except maybe some frostbite and hypothermia.”

Daring took another sip of her cider. The warmth running through her veins gave her brain an extra jolt. “I don’t think they’ve gone in far enough. Do you really think a place like that just happens to exist?”

“Yes,” said Rangifera bluntly. “Not everything needs to have a reason. Aren’t you Equestrians supposed to be used to weird stuff like that? You’ve got wings, my pretty pegasus.” Before Daring could respond, Rangifera planted her face in her hoof (so oddly large, next to a pony’s hoof) and shook her head. “Do you even know what you’re looking for? Or-”

“Nope!” Daring said cheerfully. (“Oh, stars above,” mumbled Rangifera.) “That’s the great part! It’s a journey into the unknown, where anything can happen!”

“Like us just vanishing?” Rangifera grunted.

“Everyone’s come out! Nobody’s vanished yet!”

“First time for everything.”

“Like getting to the bottom of what’s in Needle Vale.”

“You’re obsessed with this, aren’t you? I can already tell.”

So what if Daring was obsessed? The only difference between obsession and a noble drive was the end result. History vindicated nutjobs so thoroughly ponies forgot they’d been considered nutjobs, and it did that all the time. Still, she knew what would drive potential workers away, so she forced herself to tone down her enthusiasm. “I’m an archaeologist-” she said.

“Uh-huh, sure,” mumbled Rangifera.

“-an archaeologist,” Daring repeated, “and I know that legends can be based on fact. Remember how Nightmare Moon was thought of as a legend, then she popped up in a small town in the middle of Equestria?”

“Who? Oh, her. I… guess.” But Rangifera still didn’t look convinced.

Daring continued, unperturbed. “Nearly every ancient civilization that’s lived around here has some story or another about Needle Vale. All of them. They felt there was something in there. I’m going to find out what. All the others? I did research. They were just adventurers, they didn’t know what to look for. I do.” Daring was perfectly aware that “adventurer” applied to her one hundred percent as well, but she had a formal education. She knew the difference between a pointy piece of flint and a well-made arrowhead. What others might dismiss as a pretty landmark, she could recognize as a carefully-crafted stone circle. She paid attention to subtleties where other adventurers wouldn’t (at least in situations like this; sometimes, she just had to book it before the pyramid imploded, and subtlety was a hindrance).

“Good for you,” said Rangifera, as unconvincing as a politician pretending to be honest.

“And I need somebody for protection,” Daring said. She didn’t really need somebody to protect her; it just couldn’t hurt. “The bartender recommended you. What do you say?”

Rangifera tried shooing Daring away. “Hire all the others you want, but not me. It’s a waste of time. You’ll need to say a lot to get me to go in there.”

“Cash up front.”

Rangifera blinked and stared. Daring smiled. After a moment, Rangifera tilted her head and flicked her ears. “Bits or tacks?” she asked.

“Which do you want? I’ve got both.”

“Tacks. Six thousand for the first ten days.”

And Daring plonked a small pile of very-high-value tacks between them. Rangifera picked through the heap of squarish coins for a moment, then said, obviously trying hard to not grin, “Alright. Consider me yours, my benevolent buyer.”

“And I need a couple more people,” said Daring. “Some sort of mountaineer or guide, and someone moderately skilled with magic. Either a unicorn or a reindeer would do fine, I’m not picky.”

“You need a mountaineer?” Rangifera’s eyes flicked to Daring’s wings.

“In case I can’t fly for some reason. For people like you who can’t fly. For a lot of reasons.” Daring flared her wings. “I heard you could help with that, too.”

It might’ve been Daring’s imagination, but it looked like Rangifera was sitting up a little bit straighter. “Cash up front for them, too?”

“Oh, absolutely. Either kind of currency, too. Get the best ones you can. Money is no object.”

Rangifera nodded. “Right.” She stood up. “Be back here, this table, at sundown and I’ll have your people, my acclaimed archaeologist. This shouldn’t be hard.”

“Great. See you then.”

After Rangifera departed, Daring stayed, cradling her still-warm cider. Easy. This was going to be easy. A few of the right people, and she could have Needle Vale figured out by the end of the week. And if she hadn’t, she would take notes. None of the other adventurers had taken notes, so they only had their own half-remembered stories on what the inside of Needle Vale was like. The least she could do was make things easier for future adventurers. One way or another, she would get something out of this expedition.

Sundown took far too long to come, yet Daring could barely remember anything from when Rangifera left to when she was walking back to the bar. The place was even more crowded than before; Daring was practically buried in bodies as she forced her way through the throng. When she finally found her way to the table, Rangifera was already there, sitting with another, slightly smaller reindeer and a somewhat old unicorn. The three of them all had some kind of drink in front of them and were deep in conversation.

Daring wiggled into an empty chair, catching their attention. “Ah! Perfect!” Rangifera said. “We were just wondering when you would show up. Fallende, Stalwart, my courageous colleagues, this is Daring Do, our excellent employer.”

The reindeer just gave her a small wave and a nod, but the unicorn nearly leaped across the table to shake Daring’s hoof. “Hello, hello!” she said. Up close, she didn’t look that old — early fifties, max — and instead had the hard, worn body of someone who’d spent their entire life getting knocked down and back up again, with a slightly off-kilter jaw. Her coat was a bright, bright red, and her mane and tail (a subdued, orangish yellow) were short enough to be tucked into coverings. Her blue eyes glittered with energy. “Daring Do, right? I’ve heard of you. Secondhoof, obviously, but the stories!” She laughed. “I’ll be! You put the pulpiest of pulp heroes to shame! I’ve been thinking of just running off into Needle Vale myself, just to see what it’s like, so you came at an absolutely perfect time! It’s just one of those stories, you know, where you have to try it for yourself, even if-”

“Yeah. Great.” Daring wrenched her hoof from the unicorn’s grip and put her hat back into the right position. “And you are…?”

“Ah! Apologies.” The unicorn took a step back and clapped a leg across her chest. “Warrant Officer Stalwart Shield, EUP, Retired. Combat and navigational mage for my unit. Well-trained in various arcane arts, can understand most any spell you throw at me, can cast a good number of them, and I can even take care of myself, to boot!” She smiled, nodded, and sat down.

“Three thousand bits for ten days,” Rangifera whispered to Daring. “Don’t let the low price fool you, my skeptical scientist, she’s good.”

Daring nodded and turned to the second reindeer. This one was sleek, shorter and skinnier than Rangifera but with the same colors. Her horns were flawlessly polished and her coat looked like it’d been styled in some way. She was youngish, and the way she held herself reminded Daring of someone on the tail end of adolescence. “Fallende, I presume?” Daring asked.

The reindeer was expressionless as she nodded. “Mountaineer, and I’ll carry your crap through the Needle if that’s what you pay me for.”

Rangifera leaned in before Daring could respond. “Fallende Snø. Don’t let her… word choice fool you, it’s all an act,” Rangifera whispered. “She’s not bitter, just frank and colorful. Two and a half thousand tacks for ten days. Again, very reliable.”

Daring nodded again, this time with slightly clenched teeth. But she forced the feeling down and looked at the three individuals. “So. Rangifera told you both what we’re planning on doing?”

“Indeed!” said Stalwart, practically glowing. “Straight into the Needle itself, that mysterious land! I already told you I wanted to go, didn’t I? Of course I did. But I suppose clarification wouldn’t go amiss, so-”

“Sounds like a fool’s errand,” said Fallende. But then she smiled, and it seemed to lack any kind of resigned sardonicism or mockery. “Fool’s errands are the best errands, or at least the most fun. I tried to go through the Needle once, myself. Didn’t get very far. You sound better prepared. Let’s hope we get farther.”

Daring’s gaze lingered on Fallende, but then she tore herself away. “Right. And, really, that’s all the plan I have right now. How long will it take you to gather supplies? I’d like to leave ASAP.”

“Three days, maximum,” Rangifera said, to vague sounds of assent from Stalwart and Fallende.

“Then let’s meet back here in the morning in four days, and we can get going.”

“Sounds good,” Stalwart said, grinning. “Been a while since I’ve been a part of something like this. Quite invigorating.”

“Fine by me,” Fallende said, shrugging. She leaned forward. “And our pay?”

“Right here.” Daring was already counting out the coins and pushing them to their respective people. “Good?”

Stalwart gave her pile a once-over and put it in a bag. “Good!”

Fallende counted out her pile carefully, twice. When she was satisfied, she shoved it into her own bag. “Good.”

“Then unless you have any-”

“Wait!”

An earth pony stumbled out of the crowd and hit the table. She was skinny, with a pale yellow coat and tired orange eyes. Her sable mane and tail were both braided and she moved like she was forcing herself through tar. She spoke up before anyone else could. “Listen, I’m sorry, I- I know you probably… have enough people for your… expedition into the Needle already, but I heard you were paying in advance, and I, my family really needs some money if we’re going to survive the winter. So… Will degrade self for cash, I guess.”

Daring glanced at Rangifera, who shrugged and said, “It’s your money, my fine financer.” Nodding, Daring asked the earth pony, “What kind of job were you looking for?”

“Lackey,” said the earth pony bluntly. “Whatever you need. I can carry your packs, I can fight off wild animals, I’m decent at climbing, and my special talent’s cartography.” She pulled aside her furs; a sextant decorated her flanks. “It’s, like I said, we need money. I’ll take any just about any pay you give me. Name’s Windrose, by the way.”

“Cartography,” Daring said to herself. Very nice, very nice. No maps of Needle Vale existed. Simply going in and coming back out with a map could be a minor victory. She’d hit the jackpot here, hadn’t she? Four excellent assistants. Already, she felt like nothing could stop her. If- “Can you be ready in the morning in four days?”

Windrose’s ears went up and she held her head a little higher. “Oh, yeah, easy.” She opened her mouth again, then quickly cut herself off.

“Sure. You’re in.” No one made any objections, so Daring turned to Rangifera. “What do you think we should pay her?”

Rangifera thought for a second, then said, “How’s three thousand tacks for ten days sound?” Stalwart sat up a little, her mouth twitching, but didn’t actually say anything.

“Three… thousand… tacks…” Windrose blinked. “That seems a bit muYES! Three thousand tacks, good, yes!” She smiled guilelessly.

Daring almost rolled her eyes. Amateur. If she’d been in a haggling mood, she probably could’ve gotten Windrose to work for her for just one thousand. But she wasn’t, and she had to admit that she was slightly moved by the story of a poor family. She counted out the money. “Three thousand tacks,” she said, and pushed the coins at Windrose.

“Thank you!” gasped Windrose, shoving the coins into her saddlebags. “This’ll be a huge help!”

“Any objections?” Daring asked the table, spreading her wings wide. “To her or the current situation?”

Negative murmurs all around. Rangifera looked like she was thinking of something, Stalwart was grinning, Fallende looked detached, and Windrose seemed ready to explode from gratitude.

“Then, one last time: be here in the morning in four days.” Daring’s heart was already pumping hard in anticipation. “We will get to the bottom of Needle Vale, and nothing’s going to stop us.”

2 - Following the Thread

Before Daring knew it, four days had passed and the would-be adventurers were sitting in the bar one last time, surrounding a map. They were all packed for twenty days’ travel and camping, all bundled up in thick winter clothes, all with their own accoutrements for their own roles on the trip. They’d all showed up right on time. Daring had a good feeling about this.

She was already glad she’d hired Windrose. Reading a map was a skill all of them had, but Windrose was picking up on little ins and outs that even Daring had missed. Windrose was laying out their current route to Needle Vale with an almost lazy ease.

“Honestly, we barely even need to do anything for the first few hours,” she said. “Just follow this road-” She traced a dotted line away from Light’s Edge. “-and it’ll take us to a few miles south of the Eye.”

Fallende snorted. “Why would they name the route to Needle Vale ‘the Eye’?” she half-mumbled. “Too easy. Buncha predictable wusses.”

“Then you might not want to go to the Crystal Empire anytime soon,” Stalwart said. “They name their things after crystals and gemstones like you wouldn’t believe. Assuming they don’t just take a perfectly ordinary, everyday thing and slap ‘crystal’ in front of it. Crystal ponies, Crystal Palace, Crystal Heart, Crystal Fair, Crystal Princess… And Cadance isn’t even a crystal pony! Why is that, anyway? Seems tribalist to me. You’d really think the crystal ponies ought to have one of their own for a princess, and instead they get-”

“What about this path, here?” asked Rangifera, interrupting Stalwart’s rambling. She tapped another line that took a considerably more direct route from Light’s Edge to the pass. “It’s a lot shorter.”

“It’s shorter, but it’s not faster,” said Windrose. “Look.” She traced the line across the map slowly. “It crosses contour lines like crazy. We’d have to scale five or six cliffs. It’s really just an old road that was built by some reindeer warlord in the past and now used by adrenaline junkie mountaineers. It’s not even paved. Trust me, there’s nothing out there.”

“Right.” Rangifera glanced at Daring and shrugged.

“And once we get to Needle Vale… Well.” Windrose’s eyes flicked the vaguely-defined space northeast of Light’s Edge. The detail on the map dropped off, leaving a space so sketchy Daring thought it should probably just be replaced with a text box saying Terra Incognita. “We’ll see.”

Daring leaned forward and examined Windrose’s path more closely. It looked easy enough: a straight-ish, level-ish “road” that swung by the Eye on its way to another town, forced there by cliffs. At least her expedition would start with minimal fuss. “Alright, last chance. Any objections? No? Then let’s get going.”

Setting off always sounded far more epic than it looked. Purple up the prose all you want, describe the scenery and implications all you want, go into great detail about each party member all you want, it really just boiled down to a group of people walking out of a town.

And so, with the teeth of the mountains on their left, they walked out: Windrose in the lead, easily carrying a good chunk of the team’s bags, a folded map stuffed down the neck of her fur coat. Daring not far behind her, a few extra-personal bags slung over her withers. Stalwart Shield, walking with an easy pace but eyes constantly flitting about, ready for danger. Fallende, hauling her own climbing gear and other similar equipment. And Rangifera brought up the back, a spear bumping at her side and a few sparks dancing along her antlers.

The slopes weren’t too bad around Light’s Edge and the road gently meandered across them. It needed some maintenance; thin, scraggly grass was poking up through the cracks between the cobblestone, and every now and then, Daring felt a stone shift beneath her hoof. But it was clean, and the heating enchantments to melt the snow on it were still strong enough that Daring could feel them through her furs if she concentrated. There was hardly any traffic, which suited Daring and the others just fine, thank you. Even the weather seemed still, so Daring thanked the fates for an easy start.

Everybody walked along in mostly silence — the “we don’t have anything to talk about, so why bother?” kind that didn’t need to be filled. Every now and then, Windrose would announce that they’d gone so-and-so miles and only had this-and-that many to go. Nobody objected, so Daring let her keep it up.

They were about halfway to the Eye when Windrose slowed her pace enough for Daring to catch up. Windrose cleared her throat. “Okay, um, Daring- Is, is it okay if I call you ‘Daring’?” Daring nodded, and Windrose continued, “Well, it’s, I’m not really in any position to be… making criticisms like this, but…” She swallowed. “Just what do you think you’ll find?”

“Dunno. Isn’t it exciting?” Daring grinned. “There aren’t many things that are this unknown anymore. Whenever we find whatever it is that’s in the Needle, we’ll be the first people ever to see it.”

“Soooooo…” Windrose hitched some bags further up her back. “We don’t even have a plan beyond ‘go in there and blunder about’.”

“Plans fall apart too easily. This is more flexible.”

“I-” Windrose rubbed her head with a hoof. “Look. Needle Vale is something nobody really gets, yeah? And nobody has learned anything about it. Even though they’ve tried. But you- You’re going to… walk in and bumble about until you find something.”

She sounded quiet, like she was trying to avoid giving offense. Daring wasn’t offended in the slightest. “‘Bumbling about until you find something’ is the real name for what’s euphemistically called ‘research’,” said Daring. “Just think about Velcro. It wasn’t invented by some gal going, ‘I’m going to invent Velcro!’ It was invented by some gal going, ‘So why do burrs stick to my coat like this?’. No, I don’t think we’ll walk in there, dig around, and quickly find some magical artifact or whatever that’s the cause for the storms. But we have to start somewhere.”

“Well…” Windrose wiggled her ears. “Okay, but… I just- think-”

“Lemme ask you something. Do you think something’s up with Needle Vale?”

“Yes, but-”

“No ‘buts’,” said Daring, putting as much snap into her voice as she could without actually snapping the word. “Yes or no?”

Windrose grimaced a little. “…Yes.”

“So do I. Do you have any idea what that something is?”

“No, bu- No.”

“Neither do I. The only difference is that I’m trying to do something about it. I’ll get a better idea of the next step once we’re inside Needle Vale.”

After a moment, Windrose nodded. “Okay.” But her voice didn’t sound all that convinced. She fell back a little more. Privately, Daring hoped that whatever concerns Windrose might have, she’d keep them to herself. The last thing they needed was a Negative Ninny bringing everyone down, and if Windrose’s varied skills were even average, she’d be almost indispensable.

The hoofbeats of someone picking up their pace sounded. Daring heard voices behind her and swiveled her ears to catch them. “Listen, my concerned comrade,” said Rangifera, “don’t argue with Daring. It’s not a good idea.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, don’t argue with the boss. But I don’t think-”

“I don’t mean in the ‘she hired you and can fire you’ sense, I mean in the ‘her concern isn’t yours’ sense. Why do you care whether she wins or loses? You get paid either way. Heck, you already got paid. Stop sweating.”

“I don’t think she wants you talking like that-”

“Talk however you want!” Daring hollered over her shoulder. “I’m a realist! I know most of you guys are just working with me for the money!”

“Excuse me, I’m not,” said Stalwart, trotting up to Daring’s side. “I actually do want to see what’s inside Needle Vale, actually. It’s just, a, um… a thing, you know? One of the great, ineffable mysteries of the world. And we are about to eff it so hard, it won’t know what hit it! …Why are you all looking at me li-” The pin dropped. Stalwart somehow managed to turn even redder and tugged her hood down as everybody else failed to hold in their snickers.

Once Daring had her voice under control again, she said to Windrose, “Okay, so she’s not. But I don’t care if you don’t care, so long as you do your job.” She took a few more steps, then asked, “Speaking of your job, how accurate of a map can you make during camp?”

“Ehm… Reasonably accurate, if the weather’s good. It can’t be super precise, not without more specialized tools and more time, even I’m not that good. But if you’re just looking for a ‘general idea’ sort of map, I can manage that.”

“A ‘general idea’ map was just what I was thinking of. We’ll be in the middle of a snowstorm, so I couldn’t really ask for anything more.”

“You’d think at least one of the groups that went into the Needle would’ve made a map,” mused Rangifera.

“Wanna know a secret?” Windrose said. “Mapmaking is kind of a crappy job if you don’t love it, especially this far north.” She chuckled. “You’re out in the wilderness a lot, but you barely get to appreciate its beauty because you’re too busy finding out how far this mountain peak is from that one. You need to lug around a lot of equipment all the time. And it doesn’t even pay all that much. Why do you think I need the money? No, I’m not surprised nobody else made maps.”

“So why do you do it?”

Windrose’s voice turned dreamy. “Because on the good days, it’s amazing. You do get to appreciate the beauty of the wilderness once you’re done mapping it. You get to go places nobody’s gone before. You get to know the land like the back of your hoof. Really-” She waved a hoof at Rangifera. “If you blindfolded me, I practically could cross Equestria by memory. I’ve been dang near everywhere.”

“Wow. Nice.” And, contrary to her expectations, Daring didn’t hear any sarcasm in Rangifera’s voice. “You didn’t work yourself out of a job or something, did you, my far-roaming frontiersmare? Chart everything that could be charted?”

“I wish,” Windrose said with a snort. “No, it’s… a long, complicated, and boring story involving freelancing, family problems, and the stock market. My life’s not really that interesting.”

“Until we get to the Needle, we’ve got time,” Daring said encouragingly. “We could use-”

“No, trust me, it’s boring. Unless fiscal analysis is your idea of a good time.”

Daring assumed gauging the value of the latest artifact she’d recovered didn’t qualify as “fiscal analysis”, so she said, “Not really, no.”

The group walked in silence for several moments.

“You’re awful quiet back there, Fallende,” Stalwart yelled. “I don’t think you’ve said a word yet on this trip.”

Fallende shrugged. “I’m not a talky person.”

“Fair enough. I never really had that problem, you know. I like to talk. Sometimes it seems like words just… They’re leaping straight out of my mouth and I can’t control them or which direction they’re going. I was never really cut out for guard duty back when I was in the Guard, I’d always try to make conversation with passers-by and tourists, which is a bit of a no-no. This one time, it was at a Grand Galloping Gala, oh, eleven years back, I think it was, and…”

The miles slowly rolled by. The sun’s rise slowed. The slopes slowly got steeper, the trees more gnarled. The wind that whipped down from the peaks wormed its way into Daring’s clothes, through her coat, to scrabble at her skin. Whatever good atmosphere that had hung around from Light’s Edge had long since dissipated in the sharp chill. Daring realized she was tugging her wings close to herself.

Not far ahead, the increasingly-grassy road jinked to the left, then curved long and slow to the right. Daring looked up the mountains to her left. Somewhere, beyond those peaks, was a mystery that needed to be solved. And they just needed to find the way-

She sensed it more than saw it, a skill born of countless years of pathfinding. A path through the forest, visible only as a strip where trees refused to grow, three or four ponies wide. It shot off northerly, perpendicular to the main road, and climbed the mountain slopes. Daring slowed her pace and pointed. “There,” she said to her followers. “Do you see it?”

“Yep,” said Rangifera, coming to a halt next to Daring. “Think that’s our way into Needle Vale?”

“Probably. Windrose? Could you check the map?”

“Sure. Give me just a sec…” Windrose pulled the map from her furs and rubbed her chin as she looked at it. “Boom…” She tapped a point on the map. “…boom…” She pointed at a mountain peak to the southeast. “Boom, boom…” She repeated the process with another peak, this time due south. “Boom boom!” Grinning, she pointed at the faint, faint glow that marked the Crystal Empire far to the southwest. “Perfect. Needle Vale is due north, everybody! Follow that path.”

Daring almost flew — literally — down it, but she couldn’t leave the others behind. She almost sprinted down it, but the snow was too deep for that. Rangifera and Fallende took point, their antlers shimmering as they wove a spell to melt the worst of the snow.

“A literal path to the unknown, eh?” chuckled Stalwart. “Things couldn’t be much easier for us, right? Although I suppose they’ll get much much much harder once we’re in that snowstorm. Maybe it’s supposed to balance out somehow. Personally, I’d prefer to have the harder parts be first, so…”

Daring tuned Stalwart out and glanced at Windrose. To her surprise, Windrose was looking over her shoulder, staring thoughtfully at their footprints as she walked. She turned to Daring and whispered, “So… if few ponies — people — go to Needle Vale… who or what made this path? This… isn’t natural.” She traced the path up and down, a mostly straight line, and kept frowning.

The first thing that came to Daring’s mind was that it didn’t matter. But it only took a little bit of thought for her to realize that, yes, it did matter, it mattered a lot. Because if she was going to uncover whatever general weirdness was going on in Needle Vale, she needed to know the specific weirdnesses and how they fit together. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “Let’s ask the mages.” Her own experience with magic, barring the usual pegasus stuff, generally boiled down to how long artifacts could retain their magic and befuddlement at how many powerful enchantments had been lost since those artifacts had been made. She nudged Stalwart, jolting her out of her automatic-speech fugue. “Stalwart. You know magic, right? Know of any natural magic that could’ve made something like this?”

“Well, ahm…” Stalwart looked up and down the path. “Ley lines would be the obvious culprit,” she said. “But they’re usually more obvious. They cause landmarks like the Crystal Mountains, and, ah…” She swept a hoof around them at the towering cliffs. “And even then, they cause plants to grow, not die.” She lowered her head, so far that the tip of her horn was beneath the surface of the snow, and cast a few spells. “I can’t feel any magic that’ll cause us to drop dead mid-stride, if that’s what you’re wondering. Well, I don’t think I can. Earth magic’s always been probably my weakest point. I wonder if it’s because I’m a unicorn, but…”

Daring and Windrose exchanged glances as Stalwart kept talking. Daring shrugged, but Windrose’s frown deepened. “Rangifera! Fallende!” she yelled. Rangifera looked back, her antlers still glowing, but Fallende just made a vague affirmative grunt. “Either of you know a thing about magic creating paths like this?”

Rangifera tilted her head for a moment, then said, “Nope. Sorry.” Fallende, however, suddenly had her head up, and a few miniscule stars flew into the forest as her concentration faltered. She bit her lip, then said, “Stalwart. Can you take over for me for a second?”

Stalwart picked up her pace until she was between the two reindeer. “More than a second!” she said. Her horn started glowing and the snow in front of her started melting, just like Rangifera’s and Fallende’s. “I can do it as long as you like! We really should switch off, you know. It’ll keep us from tiring ourselves-”

“Yeah, yeah, shaddap,” Fallende mumbled as she dropped back. Once Daring and Windrose had caught up with her, she said, “I don’t know anything for certain, but there’s some legendary mumbo-jumbo about this. Old legends. The kind parents tell to naughty fawns to get them to go to bed.”

Daring folded her ears back, although she kept her voice level. “And you didn’t think to tell us this because…?”

“Because it has nothing to do with Needle Vale or weird weather, you idiot,” said Fallende flatly. “It’s about things like strange patterns in the forests, animals behaving weirdly, that sort of thing. If you hadn’t brought this path up-” She stopped, sucked in a breath through her nose, and started again. “There are… stories,” she said, “old stories, of a town of reindeer dedicated to studying magic, hundreds of years ago. They dove into the magic too deeply and it overtook and… twisted them. They became these… immortal things-”

“Like alicorns?” asked Windrose.

“Don’t interrupt me,” snapped Fallende. Windrose twitched and fell back a little. After a glare, Fallende continued, “But no. From what I’ve heard, your pretty pony princesses are… Their bodies are different but their minds are the same. With these deer, it was the other way around. Their bodies were the same, but their minds… It was like they… shattered or something. They just stopped caring about… about anything besides themselves. They were flighty, capricious, and just… off, you know? They became known as the Alver.”

Daring nodded, cataloging the information away for later. While she was eager to hear what the heck this had to do with the path, any little shred of mythology could help them unravel the story of Needle Vale.

“Now, since they were… almost-sociopathic scumbags, they were very self-centered. There’s a story-” Fallende stopped and frowned to herself. “Long story short, their queen had an entire forest burnt down because walking around it was too much work. And, somehow, that rippled through the magic of the earth that now, big plants just refuse to grow where the Alver like to walk, for fear of obstructing them and getting destroyed in retaliation. It’s why you can find weirdly clean natural paths in forests and where clearings come from: the Alver gather in those places, so plants stay out of their way. And it leads to things like…” Fallende gestured up and down the path. “…this. In those stories, the Alver walk here, and they walk here often.”

“Oh.” Windrose looked behind her and shrank an inch, licking her lips.

“Hmm.” Daring wasn’t sure what to make of the story. Simply discounting it out of hoof was the pinnacle of stupidity — she’d done that regarding the legend of Nightmare Moon, and, well — but something about it simply didn’t click. Like it’d been transplanted from elsewhere. Reindeer just weren’t as magically-inclined as unicorns (as far as she knew), and the idea of a group banding together and going nuts from magic simply didn’t gel with her, not the way most other facts-turned-to-legends she’d run into in the past had. Not the way the idea that something was in Needle Vale did. Still, that hardly meant it was impossible. She decided she’d grill Fallende on them some more the next time they came across something out-of-place, like this path.

“Personally, I don’t believe it,” said Fallende quickly. “It’s full of holes and just- unlikely, you know? I’d say this path was made by people going up and down to see Needle Vale, naturally beating it down over and over and over. Obviously.”

“Awful lot of people to come out this way for nothing,” muttered Windrose.

They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, thankfully broken up in a few minutes when they reached the bottom of a low cliff, maybe forty feet tall. Some not-too-difficult hauling pulled them and their gear up to the top, where they collectively agreed to have lunch. Cutting into the mountains was a narrow cleft, maybe seven feet wide and winding enough to be all but invisible from the road.

“That looked a lot wider on the map,” said Windrose through a mouthful of cheese. “Like, two or three times as wide. But I guess if no one comes here, why map it?” She shrugged.

“We’re lucky there’s a pass at all!” said Stalwart. “Can you imagine coming all this way only to have to climb over all the mountains ourselves?” She laughed. “That’d put a bit of a damper on the whole expedition, at least for me. It’ll be hard enough once we actually get inside and have to deal with the storms, so to have to climb big stinking mountains like these before we even get there? Can you imagine? That’d be so-”

Rangifera leaned close to Daring and whispered, “I forgot to ask, my likeable leader — we’re staying tonight in the Needle, right? Back in Light’s Edge, Windrose said it’ll only take an hour at most to get through there-” She nodded at the “pass”. “-assuming it’s clear, and I don’t want to spend hours sitting on a ledge above the Needle waiting for nightfall.”

“I was planning on going as far in as we could manage while it’s still light,” said Daring. She squinted slightly at Rangifera. “That’s not a problem, is it?”

“Oh, noooooo,” Rangifera said with a chuckle. “Just thinking ahead. I didn’t come on this trip because it was easy, no ma’am.”

When they’d eaten, they set off down the cleft, with Windrose taking the lead. It was wide enough that they didn’t have to, but they wound up going single file. The winding nature of the canyon amplified sounds again and again. The few times the group spoke, they had to keep their voices at almost a whisper to avoid deafening themselves. Channeled by the stone, winds whipped through the gap in both directions and lashed at their clothes.

Daring looked up. The walls on either side of them were sheer, almost flat, and the wind whipping through it meant even a pegasus would have trouble climbing them safely. The cleft was so deep that the walls seemed to lean inward and compress the sky into a twisting scar. Barely any snow fell into the gap, but that didn’t stop it from being very, very cold. Colder than the road, certainly. Like they were walking down the gullet of a frost dragon.

The dragon breathed again, harder than before, and Daring slammed a hoof to the top of her hood to keep it from being blown down. Suddenly, she stopped, her ears straight up. She swivelled them to the left, to the right- “Does anyone else hear that?” she asked.

The others stopped and listened. A quiet, high-pitched wailing rolled through the cleft, getting straight to their bones. “Wind’s picking up,” Fallende said quickly. “Not long now.”

“I’d give us ten minutes at the most,” whispered Windrose. “Let’s, let’s keep walking.”

One minute later, the amount of snow that made it down began to increase. Three minutes later, it was an inch deep and the wind was battering at their eyes. Five minutes later, Daring had passed around goggles for protection and everyone had their mouths covered with scarves or balaclavas. Seven minutes later, the cleft began widening. Seven minutes and five seconds later, the full brunt of the weather hit them like a sledgehammer. Clamping her wings tightly to her sides and shielding her face with a leg, Daring pushed her way through the cleft and the intense winds. Maybe, once she got out of the funnel-

After one of the longer minutes in her life, the winds slackened, even if that was only a relative term. Rather than battering her like river rapids, it felt like she was standing in a ford, being assailed but able to withstand it without too much effort. She took a breath; the cold didn’t stab at her throat quite so hard. She lowered her leg and took a look.

It was partially concealed by the haze of snow in the air, but it was undeniable. A long, thin valley lay before her, stretching out into the distance like a corridor. Its walls were steep and pointed as palisades, hemming them in and ready to skewer the unwary. The trees were sparse, barren, as effective shelter as a cocktail umbrella. Strange pillars of stone loomed out of the miasma like ghost ships in fog. It was hostile. It was unforgiving.

And it was exactly what Daring wanted.

“Ponies and gentledeer,” she said, grinning, “welcome to Needle Vale.”

3 - Into the Storm

If nothing else, Needle Vale certainly delivered on its weather. It was simply relentless, pounding the group from all directions nonstop. Snow was whipped through the air at incredible speeds, and it only got worse as they descended to the valley floor. It was like swimming through a murky riptide. Everyone needed to yell to each other to be heard over the wind. It wasn’t a place for the soft.

And as the group pushed on down, they gave no indication that they were the least bit soft. As she broke a path through the snow, the cold gnawed at Daring’s bones, but she let it choke and die on them. Stalwart and Rangifera started leaning against each other for support. Fallende did a sort of sideways-diagonal hopskip that looked strange but let her cut through the wind easily. Even Windrose, who Daring admitted probably would’ve been the weak link, casually muscled on through without falling behind.

The slope to the valley floor wasn’t too steep, but the low visibility meant it was treacherous all the same. Several times, Daring stopped to let Fallende poke her way down a slope. At one point, she had to be pulled back to avoid blindly stepping off into nothing over a cliff that the blowing snow had rendered invisible. But they made decent time, and after an hour or so, they finally reached flattish ground.

Squinting into the blizzard, Daring grinned to herself. She’d taken the first step: getting into Needle Vale. Now, it was just a matter of time. Now, she was in her element. Now, the expedition could well and truly begin.

“So, um, now what?” asked Windrose over the wind.

Daring experienced the emotional equivalent of losing control of a flight and divebombing into the ground face-first. She’d been so invested in finding out what was in Needle Vale that she’d totally forgotten how she would do the finding out. Looking for lost artifacts had legends, book research, all that jazz. Here, she had nothing more than an isolated valley, at least for the time being. Which, in itself could be a benefit… A plan began forming in her mind.

“You… do know what you’re doing, right?” said Windrose nervously.

“No, she doesn’t,” said Fallende. “And I wouldn’t have joined up if she did. We’re going off the beaten path, you idiot. You can’t plan on anything until you find it.”

“Hey,” said Windrose, her ears back, “there’s no need for-”

“Needle Vale’s supposed to be fifteen miles long, right?” Daring said loudly.

“About, yes,” Stalwart said, equally loudly. “But that’s one of the longer guesses. A lot of pegasi think it’s closer to ten. What with all the storms, it’s hard to get a good feel for it from above, so those guesstimates can vary quite a lot, and since Needle Vale’s so unimportant, no one’s really felt the need to get accurate-”

“So I say we follow the eastern foothills until we get to the other end of the valley,” continued Daring. “Let’s say it’ll take two or three days in this weather. We don’t worry about looking for anything. Then we can weave back and forth across the Needle on the way back, doing our best to find something out of the ordinary. Sound good?”

The few sounds Daring heard over the wind seemed to be affirmative. Everyone was nodding, at least. Fallende and Windrose were very resolutely not looking at each other, and Rangifera semi-casually stepped between them and nudged them away from each other. “Good,” Daring said. She paused; no objections. And so she set off to the east.

There wasn’t much to see in Needle Vale, even without the blizzard. The trees that made themselves known were skinny and clawed and half-starved, begging for a little bit of magic, just a little, to help them grow. They were sparse, so thinly spaced they barely qualified as a forest, and didn’t come far up the valley’s slopes. And then there were the pillars: giant stone columns, twenty feet across or more, that randomly dotted the valley. They were rough, like boulders had been compressed together to make them, and stood around fifty feet tall. And that was it, yard after yard, mile after mile. Any other landmarks were swallowed up by the snow on the ground and the snow in the air, and it was hard to tell one stretch of valley from the next. It certainly didn’t look like a place that had stories told about it, and it’d be easy to miss something small in the storm.

But Daring had a feel for these sorts of things, honed by year after year of treasure-hunting. She knew when she was missing something, when she needed to look more closely. It was what had poked her to Needle Vale in the first place. She wasn’t getting that yet. As the group trudged on, according to whatever sixth sense she had, Needle Vale was so far exactly the wasteland it appeared to be, with nothing special about it. So far.

The scenery was so monotonous and the blizzard so hard that Daring barely noticed it getting dimmer until Rangifera spoke up, saying, “Do you think we should set up camp soon?”

“Camp sounds good,” said Windrose.

“Sure,” Fallende said with a shrug.

“I could definitely use a breather,” said Stalwart. “Time flies when you’re doing the same thing over and over and over, doesn’t it? And yet it drags at the same time. I can barely remember-”

“There’s a cliff not too far ahead,” said Daring. It was barely visible, but she couldn’t mistake that black smear. “Let’s stop there. It should give us a little shelter.”

And it did. Only a little, but these conditions, even a little was worth a lot. The wind dropped significantly once they neared the base of the cliff and the snow was noticeably thinner. Stalwart pulled several collapsible metal rods from her bag and jammed them into the dirt in a large circle. One spell-casting later, and the wind within the circle was practically nil. With nothing screaming in her ear anymore, Daring almost felt like her hearing had been amplified.

“Rune-engraved shelter,” she explained as she helped clear the area of the worst of the snow. “A neat enchantment my old CO taught me. One of those jerkish nice types, she was. Or is it nice-ish jerk types? Helpful when she needed to be, but more prone to yelling until you ran away with your tail between your legs. Not a bad sort, but she was very hard to get along with. When I first got promoted, she-”

“Do they need any upkeep?” interrupted Daring. “Or will they last the night?”

“Oh, they’ll last much longer than the night!” Stalwart said with a laugh. “Runes are tricky, what with all the preparation that goes into making them — burn a branch from a yew tree chopped down at midnight beneath a full moon and use the ash to inscribe the rune, really? — but once you get them down, they’ll practically last forever. I actually made these almost a decade ago, and it’s like I made them yesterday! Of course, you need to protect the rune itself, but-”

The moment she’d heard about runes, Fallende’s ears went up. Now, she cleared her throat. “You, um, wouldn’t happen to have a spare, would you?” she asked. “I’d like to take a look at it.”

“Sure, sure!” said Stalwart. “Give me a moment to find it…”

Perhaps the greatest thing to come from the wind shelter was the capability to light a fire. Once her tent was up, Rangifera went out, gathered enough branches from the ground and the nearest trees for a good-sized bundle, magically dried them off, and soon had a fire crackling happily away. After hours of getting pressed in by the cold and with the light rapidly fading, it was practically heaven.

No one said much as they sat around the fire, warming their food and eating, but no one seemed particularly down. Just tired. After reducing a roasted carrot to pulp, Fallende swallowed and said, “So which one of us is gonna be the wuss who says it’s too hard and we need to go back first?”

“Me,” Stalwart and Windrose said simultaneously. They looked at each other for a moment. “You explain first,” said Stalwart.

“I’ve already said we need to go back,” said Windrose, “and I still think we sho-”

“But,” Rangifera said, “not because it’s too hard. You want to turn back because you think we’re looking for nothing. You earth ponies are supposed to be super tough, right? I’d’ve thought that ‘it’s too hard’ would be the one reason for turning back that you didn’t give.” She nibbled down a crust of toast, saying, “What do you think about the weather, my self-deprecating surveyor?”

Windrose looked out into the encroaching gloom, at the raging storm. “Well,” she said hesitantly, “it’s… bad, but… I mean, no, it’s not that bad. If it was just the weather, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.”

“See?” Rangifera grinned slightly. “Don’t sell yourself short. You’ll get more jobs that way.” She turned to Stalwart. “So what’s your excuse?”

“I forgot exactly how cold it could get out here,” said Stalwart. “This would be nothing in my prime, but now? It’s… I guess I’m not afraid to admit that the weather took me by surprise. I don’t want to turn back yet, heavens no, but I just suppose that I’d be the first one to cave. I also don’t see the same in admitting you’ve been beaten, so I guess I wouldn’t-” She slapped herself across the face. “Yeah. That’s my excuse.”

“Uh-huh.” Rangifera turned to Daring. “And you’re immune to the cold, aren’t you, my pegasus pony?”

“Not immune-” Even Daring had been shaking when they set up camp. “-but definitely resistant. And this?” She gestured outside the poles. “This is nothing. It’d need to be twice as bad before I’d even think about turning around.” That she knew from experience. Of course, the weather then had been pegasus-summoned, not spontaneous, so there’d been some order she could exploit. It’d still been worse than this. “What about you?”

“Don’t care about the weather,” Rangifera said. “It’s there and you can’t change it, so why bother complaining about it? I guess in Equestria, I’d have somebody to complain to, but they’d likely be a bureaucrat, so we’d be right back at square one.” She looked across the fire to Fallende. “And, for the complete set…?”

“What, is bragging about how tough we are a game, now, with trading cards?” scoffed Fallende. “It’s bad, but I can handle it. As long as it’s not a windigo or a wechuge that’s responsible for it.”

“A wechuge? Really?” Rangifera said skeptically. “What makes you think they even exist, my mystic-minded mate?”

Fallende spread her front legs wide. “I’m just keeping an open mind. Things look different when you’re in a nonstop blizzard that’s apparently caused by nothing.”

Rangifera snorted, but didn’t say anything.

That was the extent of their conversation for the evening. Everybody seemed just too tired to say much. It wasn’t long before they all decided to turn in at about the same time. But before she went to her tent, Daring decided to check up on Windrose. She still seemed a little bit green, regardless of getting through the blizzard with no problem, and Daring wanted to be sure she still felt okay.

The tents were small things, just large enough for a single person to sleep and some extra gear. Enchantments kept the heat in and the snow out. Inside one of them, Windrose was hunched over a large scrap of parchment, sketching away in the faint illumination of a light gem. A stack of similarly-large sheets was at her side. “Hey,” she said. Scritch scratch.

“Hey. How’re you doing?” asked Daring.

Windrose didn’t look up. “Hmm? Oh, fine, fine, just…” She clicked her tongue a few times. “Trying to remember where a few features were.” She gestured vaguely and sketched something out. She tilted her head this way, then that way, then nodded to herself. “Yeah, that’s it.”

“Making that map?”

“Hey, it’s part of why you hired me, isn’t it? I gotta earn my keep somehow.” Windrose laughed, but it was a bit forced. “We’ve gone almost six miles already, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we hit the end of the valley around noon tomorrow. Probably later, though.”

“Really? You can tell how far we’ve gone in this weather?”

“Sure. Part of being a cartographer. It’s…” Windrose scratched her head. “I can’t really say how I do it, but I just… know. Maybe it comes from my special talent.”

Daring thought of her own talent. Maybe that was where her “you’re missing something” sense came from. “Maybe. How’s the map coming?”

“It’s more of an outline or a draft than a map map. I can only see so much in this weather.” Windrose shrugged and held the map up. Although rough, it was still more detailed than Daring would’ve expected. She could trace out a few things she remembered from the trip, and what columns were on the map appeared to be in the right places. “I’ll fill it in once we start going back and forth. Hopefully.” She went back to sketching.

“Good,” Daring said with a nod. She ducked out of the tent flap, then stuck her head back in. “You’re sure you’re oka-”

“Definitely,” said Windrose. “Look, if I run into problems, I’ll tell you about them, okay? I’m not a complete idiot. Don’t worry about me, worry about finding your whatever.”

Daring prayed Windrose would stay like this throughout the whole expedition. This was the kind of pony she wanted to work with: straightforward, communicative, capable. Why couldn’t more ponies be like her? “Right. See you tomorrow.” Daring pulled out of the tent.

Her own tent wasn’t much different from any of the others. But it was hers, it kept the snow out, and while she was out here, it was home. Unfortunately, she couldn’t go to sleep just yet. Daring pawed through her gear and found a journal, picked up specially for this trip. She’d record everything she thought was important. She took a pen in her mouth and began writing.

Daring woke up panting, her heart running a marathon, her muscles tight. She didn’t know why, but she immediately knew something was up. Her instincts wouldn’t have woken up like this if it wasn’t.

She held still. It was still dark, probably the middle of the night. She rolled over and nudged at the sides of her tent, in case she was in danger of being buried. Some snow, but not much. She held her breath and strained her hearing. Those metal pole things were still working; the tent was mostly still and Daring could only hear the faintest splinters of the wind howling beyond the magical boundary.

Then she realized that the wind wasn’t the only thing howling.

Awoooooooooo…

She clumsily pulled herself from her sleeping bag to the tent flap. She hadn’t heard that, had she? She thrust her head into the open air. The cold hit her like a sledgehammer, but she ignored it. She slowly pivoted her ears around, listening for-

Awoooooooooo…

That. She had heard it. Worse, it was closer. Maybe, under normal circumstances, Daring would’ve ignored it, but she wasn’t taking chances in Needle Vale. She crawled back into her tent and fumbled around for her light gem. It took her a few eternal moments, but she found it, and it bloomed to life as soon as she rattled it. She awkwardly yanked her clothes on and stepped into the cold. Just in time to hear another howl, even closer.

Daring’s head was still swimming a little from sleep as she stumbled out. By the time she got to Rangifera’s tent, the frigid air had jolted her into full wakefulness. She ducked inside and poked at the sleeping bag. “Hey! Rangifera!”

“No, no,” Rangifera muttered in her sleep. “This color is all natural.”

“Rangifera!”

“And if we go to the shampoo store, I can-”

Daring jabbed Rangifera sharply. She yelped, twitched, and raised her head, blinking. “Wha’s…” she mumbled. “Wha’s goin’ on?” She yawned.

“I heard wolves.”

Rangifera’s eyes immediately focused. “Wolves?” she whispered. “I didn’t think anything lived out here. You’re sure they’ll be a problem?”

“They’ve howled several times already,” said Daring, “and they’re getting-”

AWOOOOOOOOOO…

“-closer. I don’t want to take any chances.”

“By Aurora…” Rangifera practically slid out of her sleeping bag and into her clothes like a liquid. “Not good. You were thinking of waking the others, right?”

“Yeah. You throw up whatever defensive spells you can while I get everyone up.”

“On it.” Already, light was dancing between Rangifera’s antlers. She snatched up her spear.

In a stroke of luck, everybody woke up and was out quickly. Stalwart began reinforcing Rangifera’s spells with her own while Daring, Fallende, and Windrose clustered together. It was warm, uncomfortably so, and Daring wasn’t sure whether the pounding heartbeat she felt was her own or somebody else’s. Probably somebody else’s; she knew how to handle wolves. Wolves were nothing.

An off-key bell rang through the air and Daring dimly made out the faint shimmer of a shield snap up around them. When Rangifera and Stalwart joined the group, they were both breathing heavily. “It’s not- much,” gasped Stalwart, “but- but it should- hold- for the night.”

“The only way wolves- are getting through that,” panted Rangifera, “is if they- all attack at once.”

“You’re…” Windrose swallowed. “You’re sure?”

AWOOOOOOOOOO…

“Positive. I’d bet my life on it,” said Rangifera. She coughed and rubbed at one of her antlers. “I already am.” She twirled her spear with a tiny font of sparks.

“We’ll stay up for another few minutes,” Daring said, “just in case the wolves do attack and manage to get through. After that, one of us’ll stay up and keep watch. Guard changes every hour or so. I’ll go first. Sound good?”

Everyone agreed that that was the best option for the moment and they quickly drew straws to find who’d go after whom. The wolves kept howling while they were up, but never approached the camp. The expedition stayed huddled together, silent, waiting for the worst to happen. Every second that ticked by strung them just a little bit tighter. Once enough time had passed, everyone reluctantly dispersed, probably too antsy to sleep. Daring was left alone in the dark, staring out at nothing, trying to catch a glimpse of something, anything.

AWOOOOOOOOOO…

Daring paced back and forth, forcing frigid air down her throat to stay awake. She didn’t have a clock and the clouds blocked the moon and stars. Her mind seesawed between a desire to sleep and a desire to run out to fight the wolves. Her legs were sore from how she’d been sleeping. The illumination from her light gem barely showed the whole campsite at the best of times. And she was hungry.

As far as bad experiences went, keeping watch for wolves in the middle of the night during a blizzard was definitely in the bottom ten.

“So!” Stalwart said to the breakfasters with far more cheer than the morning deserved. “How’d you all sleep last night?”

“Terribly,” mumbled Fallende. “And if you talk about sleeping again, I’ll rip off that horn of yours and shove it up your-”

“Quiet,” Daring snapped at Fallende. Just because she shared the sentiment didn’t mean she wanted to hear it.

“And then,” Fallende continued, “I’ll shed my antlers and-”

“Quiet!”

Fallende shot a stinkeye at Stalwart, then went back to chewing her egg.

Daring wasn’t sure what, exactly, Stalwart was trying to accomplish with that question. In their little pocket of calm, it was dead obvious that everyone had had a bad night, whether from that special bad-sleep kind of bedhead, bloodshot eyes, bags beneath their eyes, or plain old lethargy. Rangifera didn’t seem to want to say anything and was chewing on coffee beans, Windrose was jumpy, Fallende was cranky, and Daring herself felt burnt out. It was hard to say whether Stalwart’s upbeat attitude was genuine at all or some kind of attempt to raise the spirits of the team. It was made even worse by the fact that no wolves had showed up at all, even beyond the shield; if they hadn’t heard the howls, they could’ve slept through the night.

Eventually, Stalwart said, “Did any of the previous expeditions mention wolves at all? I can’t remember. And, of course, if they didn’t mention them, was that because they didn’t encounter any wolves, or for the same reason you don’t mention the sky is blue? That it’s just kind of assumed and no one makes a big deal out of-”

“No one said anything about wolves,” grumbled Fallende. “As far as I can remember, they always talked about how fricking barren Needle Vale was. And I don’t think they’d forget to say anything about wolves, either.”

“M-maybe they moved in recently?” Windrose suggested, not sounding convinced herself. “When was the last expedition?”

“Heck if I know,” muttered Fallende. “Years, I think.”

“Just under three,” said Stalwart. “Years, that is. There was that reindeer and griffon, oh, what were their names, and they-”

“So, yeah, maybe they came in between then and now!” Windrose said in a high-pitched voice. “It wouldn’t take much, just following the right animals in, and… and…” Her voice trailed away as her explanation dried up.

“Maybe Needle Vale’s responsible,” said Fallende. “It’d be just like this place.”

Daring stared into the flickering fire, thinking. The wolves’ spontaneous appearance could be part of what made Needle Vale so weird, but still: what brought them here? Why? What else was here because of it? Was the “secret” of this place just that it was wilder than the outside world, like the Everfree? What made it that way? And did any of this really matter at all? Ultimately, until the group saw them for themselves, the wolves were just wolves. Nothing special. Nothing to speculate about.

And that decided things for Daring. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Unless the wolves turn out to have something supernatural about them, we shouldn’t run ourselves in circles chasing what they might be. Stalwart, do you know any kinds of animal-repellent spells?”

“Eh. Kind of.” Stalwart rubbed the back of her neck. “My memory’s a bit rusty, but I think I can keep any wolves away from our camps. They’re no good on the move, though, and we shouldn’t put too much trust in them until we know for certain that they work.”

“I can help test,” Rangifera said tonelessly. “I know some of that, myself.” She seemed to have slept the worst of all of them. Daring had to restrain herself from asking Rangifera if she was okay; she seemed to be the kind of person to take offense at that, treat it as patronizing.

“Good. Good.”

Once the group was done eating, Daring decided to force them onward, to try to take their minds off the terrible night. As soon as she’d swallowed her last bite, she stood up. “We won’t get any further sitting here, feeling sorry for ourselves. Let’s pack up.”

Windrose mumbled something incoherent and loped to her tent. Rangifera’s steps looked automatic. Stalwart stumbled as she got up. And Fallende spat into the fire before leaving.

As Daring pulled down her own tent, she wondered what, exactly, was going through their heads. She prayed to whoever was listening that it was just sleep deprivation, not genuine animosity. They hadn’t even spent a full day in Needle Vale yet. And to think they might be in danger of breaking up already. The best she could hope for was that traipsing through the blizzard would get them awake enough to get over it.

But if push came to shove, she could shove. This was her expedition, her team. She would keep it under control.

4 - Look Out Behind You

Tramp, tramp, tramp. That was the rhythm of the day, over and over and over. Daring and her team pushed through the blizzard, their hooves tramping against the ground as the snow swamped them. The storm was the same as it’d been the day before, almost exactly. Maybe it was just because she was tired, but the biting cold had a little more teeth to it today than it had before.

But in spite of the bad night, everyone kept pace. Whenever Daring looked back, they seemed to be holding their heads a little bit higher than the previous time. She even heard Rangifera recommending eating coffee beans to Fallende. Maybe their bad attitudes had just been weariness.

Awoooooooooo…

Or maybe they were alert because they still heard the wolves.

Because the wolves, wherever they were, were following them. Every now and then, a howl would tear through the blizzard, from a different direction each time. The team would immediately jump into an outward-facing circle, ready to face down a pack. And the pack would always fail to appear. Daring couldn’t even make out any dark shapes prowling around them in the blizzard. After a minute, the group would dissolve and set off again, a little bit more annoyed than before.

In spite of the previous day’s enthusiasm, the wolves were wearing on Daring. Every so often, she’d have to stop her pace, just in case they decided to attack, but she couldn’t go out after them, because what sort of moron would wander off into a blizzard like that? It was like they were using guerilla tactics, trying to slowly reduce her to nothing so that-

“How’ll we know when we reach the end of this hellhole?” Fallende asked suddenly.

Daring pulled her hood up and looked behind her. “What? We’re not there yet, so-”

“I know we’re not there yet, I know we won’t be there for a while,” Fallende said, rolling her eyes. “I just want to know how we’ll know when we are there. Or do you expect we’ll find signposts going, ‘end of valley here, turn around’?”

“Well…” Daring didn’t know what the other side of Needle Vale looked like, did she? It could’ve been wedge-shaped, it could’ve been broad and circular. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. (Fallende’s whole body heaved as she sighed.) “When we’re heading west, I guess.”

“So obvious a sign,” mumbled Fallende.

“We don’t need to start checking for another few hours!” said Windrose. “I don’t-”

Not wanting to deal with Fallende, Daring ignored the argument. The mere mention of “west” had flipped a switch in her mind, and she habitually looked at her compass. She’d almost put it away when she realized what she’d seen. She double-checked it, and, still seeing the problem, frowned. The needle was pointing south, unless they’d somehow gotten completely turned around and wound up on the opposite side of the valley without crossing it. She tapped the compass. The needle jiggled, then turned counter-clockwise to point north. Hmm. Must’ve gotten stuck someh-

The needle did another full revolution.

Her heart skipped a few beats, then Daring grinned. Finally, some concrete evidence that something was wrong with Needle Vale! None of the other expeditions had mentioned anything like this, which almost certainly meant they hadn’t encountered it. She was already closer to uncovering the secret than anyone else before! It was a shame she didn’t know how close was close.

Daring stared intently at the compass. If everybody else saw it- The needle’s movement didn’t halt. It jumped around, sometimes doing full circles, sometimes twitching back and forth, sometimes sliding this way and that. “Hey! Girls!” she yelled, praying it would still be moving once everyone arrived. “Take a look at this!” She turned around and practically ran for the others.

Fallende opened her mouth to say something, but Daring cut her off by shoving the compass in her face. She gave an angry look at Daring that shifted to amazement — and maybe fear? — when she saw the compass. “What in the…” she whispered. Snatching the compass from Daring, she whirled around and waved it at Windrose. “Look at this. Look! At! This!”

“Hold it still!” protested Windrose. “I can’t-”

“Look!” Fallende finally calmed down enough to hold the compass steady.

Windrose stared at the compass. She blinked and tilted her head. “Well, that’s ominous.”

“And you said there wouldn’t be any weird crap out here,” Fallende said, smirking.

Hearing the ruckus even above the blizzard, Rangifera and Stalwart had gathered around as well. “Huh,” said Rangifera. “Give me a…” She shrugged off her bags and began rooting through them.

“Odd,” said Stalwart. “Not unheard of, but very, very odd.” She carefully took the compass from Fallende. The compass glowed for a second, then Stalwart passed it back. “I can’t detect anything wrong with the compass itself, but that implies that there’s something wrong with the land itself, or at least the general area-”

“We already knew that,” said Daring. “It’s what-”

But Stalwart shook her head. “No, I mean very wrong,” she said, “more than just a storm. We ought to be looking at magically-carnivorous plants, inverted rockslides, insanity-inducing springs-”

AWOOOOOOOOOO…

“Or unusually aggressive wolves?” asked Fallende.

“Maybe,” said Stalwart. “…Probably.”

“Here we go,” said Rangifera. From her bags, she pulled out her own compass and held it out so everyone could get a look at it. Its needle pointed resolutely north. They waited, but after several long moments, nothing happened. “Huh. I wonder why nothing’s wrong with-”

The needle twitched. It spun in a complete circle. Then it began behaving in the same way as Daring’s.

“…with mine…” Rangifera tapped at the compass. No change in behavior. Rangifera grinned. “Heh. At least this trip won’t be a complete waste. Definitely something up with Needle Vale. What is your deal, my confounding compass…?”

“Stalwart?” asked Windrose. “Should we be… worried about that? You said-”

Daring saw the dark shapes come bounding out of the snowstorm, and before she’d fully registered them, she yelled, “Wolves!”

Everyone froze, and then everyone scattered, caught up in the fight-or-flight instinct. Daring had shed her saddlebags for speed; maybe the others had, too. She half-ran, half-flew through the snow, wind buffeting her all around. She forced herself to land and get a good, firm grip on the-

Something snarled behind her. Daring whirled around to see a wolf come lunging from the white. A quick flap took her up into the air, leaving the wolf to viciously attack the empty space where she had been. She forced herself down before the wind could carry her too far.

The wolf turned around and charged at Daring again, fangs bared. But now, Daring was ready. When it tensed to jump, she flapped forward, spun, and kicked out with her rear hooves. The buck hit the wolf straight in the face; its attack became an agonized roll on the ground. Lacking any weapons, Daring pounced on the wolf and pummeled its ribcage with her hooves.

Yowling, the wolf swiped at her with its claws. Daring pulled her head back and escaped with nothing more than a light scratch across her nose. Using her wings to keep herself on top and the wolf down, she kept attacking the wolf’s ribs, taking out her anger on one of the things that had caused it, hitting the wolf over and over and over…

When the wolf’s growls of struggle turned to whimpers of pain, Daring knew it had had enough. She gave one last spiteful blow and pushed off of it. The wolf hastily struggled to its feet and, still whimpering, limped off into the blizzard. “Yeah, you better run!” bellowed Daring. “That should teach you something!” Absolutely pointless, speaking to a dumb animal like that, but it made her feel better.

Daring turned on the spot, looking for any others that were coming for her. None… None… None… None. She pulled her hood down to give her ears better audio. Nothing close to her, but she could hear the struggles of the other members of the group through the howling winds. She picked the closest one and struggled towards it. The winds picked up, forcing her to the ground.

Whoever it was, their wolf was barking loudly. The pony or reindeer was also yelling angrily at the wolf, but not running. It was… Windrose? Yeah, Daring recognized her voice. She picked up her pace as much as she could manage.

Soon, Daring could make out shadows through the haze. Definitely Windrose and a wolf. They were standing their ground, staring each other down, and neither looked ready to give up and inch. The wolf was low to the ground, barking furiously. “Whoa, hey!” yelled Windrose. “Bad wolf! Bad!” Was she-? Daring blinked and squinted at the silhouette. She was. She was, honest-to-Celestia, waving a hoof scoldingly at the wolf. “We’re not attacking you! Go on and git!” She waved the wolf away, like it was an especially annoying squirrel. “Git!”

The wolf, not being an especially annoying squirrel, kept barking at her. It jumped a foot forward; Windrose stepped half a foot back.

“Windrose!” Daring yelled. “Run!” She started flapping, bounding through the snow like some mutant rabbit, but the wind and snow still slowed her.

Windrose didn’t move, didn’t look away from the wolf. She didn’t even look like she’d heard Daring. “Now, listen,” she said sternly, and not at all hesitantly, “we can do-”

The wolf leaped forward, fangs bared. Windrose yelped, reared, and put up her legs to shield her face. The wolf latched onto one of her hooves as momentum made her stumble and topple over. With the wolf clawing her, Windrose rolled onto her back-

-and kept rolling, backwards-somersaulting through the snow until she was on top of the wolf. Still fending its jaws off with one hoof, Windrose jabbed it once in the neck and twice in the stomach. The wolf squealed. Windrose rolled off it and it scurried back into the storm.

By now, Daring had finally reached Windrose. Coming to a stop, she stared after the wolf. “Huh.” She flicked her ears and raised an eyebrow at Windrose.

“What?” Windrose said defensively. “The animals tend to be just as nuts as the weather this far north. Knowing how to fend them off is kinda defensive lesson number one.” She looked at the hoof that’d been in the wolf’s mouth. It’d gained several deep furrows from the wolf’s teeth, but it wasn’t bleeding. “Hmm. Hope that’ll buff out.”

“Hey!” From behind her, Rangifera walked up out of the snowstorm, glancing between where the wolf had run off and Windrose. Her spear was floating at her side, but the end was bloodless. “Interesting strategy, my fine fighter,” said Rangifera seriously. “What made you think it’d run so quickly?”

“Because they’re wolves,” said Windrose. “They’re apex predators, so they’re not used to prey fighting back. Hold off their attacks, get in a few solid hits, and they’ll run for the hills. Even I can do that.” She absently, almost unconsciously, rubbed one of her legs. “It’s… a bit tricky actually getting those hits in, though.”

“Good to see you’re alright, in any case.” Rangifera wiped her face down; for the first time, Daring noticed that she had a few bloody cuts going straight down across the left side of her mouth. They’d go nicely with the scars she already had and seemed to counterbalance the one next to her eye. “Don’t worry about me,” she added, seeing Daring’s expression, “these’re shallow.” She tapped the cuts and grinned, stretching them awkwardly, but didn’t flinch.

“And I just got this.” Daring pointed at the slice across her nose, already scabbing over. She pushed her hood down and ran a hoof through her sweaty mane. Her heartbeat was slowing down, but she hadn’t noticed it speeding up. Adrenaline. “If this isn’t fine, I’ll eat my hat.”

Rangifera’s eyes flicked upwards. “What hat, my bareheaded brawler?”

“It’s back in Vanhoover, and I’ll have you know it’s a very fine pith helmet.”

“I’ll hold you to-”

“Um. Hey.” Windrose stuck a hoof in the air. “I hate to interrupt the, um, hat talk, but… how’re we gonna get back to our stuff?”

Daring and Rangifera looked at Windrose. Daring and Rangifera looked at each other. Daring and Rangifera looked at the snowstorm that had already obscured their tracks. “Well, poop,” said Daring.

“And where’re Stalwart and Fallende?”

“Double poop,” said Rangifera.

“Not poop,” Daring said in a flash of inspiration. “Rangifera, do you know any spells to make you louder? If you can yell through the blizzard-”

“On it.” Rangifera’s antlers glowed. “HEY!” she bellowed, far beyond her usual voice. “FALLENDE! STALWART! ARE YOU OUT THERE? IT’S RANGIFERA! DARING, WINDROSE, AND I EACH FOUGHT OFF OUR WOLVES!”

For several long moments, silence. Then: “Rangifera! Is that you? It’s Stalwart!”

“IT’S RANGIFERA! I’M WITH DARING AND WINDROSE!”

“Thank goodness! I’ve got Fallende! If you’ll give me a moment…” Suddenly, a bright light pulsed some distance away. “Ha! Still got it! Follow the light and we can meet up!”

Stalwart and Fallende weren’t far away. Stalwart had a large gash in the front of her clothes, while Fallende was ignoring a thin cut straight down her leg and panting heavily. As luck would have it, the pair was sitting with the bags everyone else had abandoned. And, in fact, luck didn’t have it.

“Didn’t I tell you about the tracking spells I put on our stuff?” asked Stalwart as she rummaged through her saddlebags. “I must’ve. But I didn’t, did I? Hmm. It’s technically not standard-issue in the Guard, but so many unicorns do it, it might as well be. You stick a simple tracking spell on something important, and then you can’t lose it. Great for recon in unfamiliar territory; track your tent pole, head out, can’t get lost because you always know where- Here we go.” She levitated out a roll of bandages and some dressing. She began tending to Fallende’s wound.

“I’m a mountaineer, not a fighter,” said Fallende gruffly, as if she were preempting any observations. “Stupid dog came at me from the side, and…” She snorted. “Bandage isn’t too tight, by the way. Keep it like that.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh,” said Stalwart. “Aaaaand…” She cut off the last strip of bandage and secured it with a spell. “There. How do you feel?”

Fallende flexed her leg easily, then put weight on it. “This is good.”

“What about you?” Daring asked Stalwart. “That cut looks pretty-”

“Oh, this?” Stalwart gestured at her clothes. “This is nothing. It looks worse than it is. Clothes caught most of it.” She pulled open her coat; she had a thin cut across her chest that had already stopped bleeding.

“So the only one of us to not get hurt,” Rangifera said slowly, “is Windrose, who didn’t even want to come in the first place.” She glanced at Windrose and chuckled.

“Um. Yay?” Windrose smiled nervously. “It, it really wasn’t that hard, I just…” She coughed. “I’m hungry,” she said quickly. “Lunch?”

Daring thought back over their trip and how long they’d been walking. It was about that time. But before she’d even finished her thought, everyone had said some form of, “Lunch.”

Thankfully, in spite of the fight, everyone was far more relaxed than they had been in the morning. Maybe, like Daring, being able to punch the source of their stress had unwound them a bit. Whatever the case, lunch was only a few laughs short of jovial. Stalwart setting up her poles to keep out the storm certainly helped, even with the lack of a fire.

“I have jam,” Stalwart said, waving a jar around. “Anyone else want some jam? Strawberry.”

“How long will it take you to unfreeze it?” Daring asked.

“About, ah, zero seconds.” Stalwart stuck a spoon in the jar and scooped out a small chunk of jam. “See?” She slowly licked the spoon down.

“I’ll have some,” said Rangifera. She held out a slice of bread for Stalwart to spread on. “Why are you bringing jam out here?”

“In case I get a hankering for jam.”

“…Can’t argue with hankerings.”

Stalwart shrugged. “Anyone else? Windrose?”

Windrose was holding Daring’s still-misbehaving compass, frowning at it and tapping it. “I feel like there’s supposed to be a pattern here. Something that repeats. But I got nothing.” She shrugged and tossed the compass back to Daring. “Pass that jar over.”

“Anyone got any ideas on this?” Daring asked, holding the compass up. “Stalwart, you said something about the land?”

But Stalwart shook her head. “We’d be seeing far more than just the compasses, some wolves, and the weather acting up if that were the case. The land itself would be changing before our very eyes. I mean things like rivers flowing uphill. It’s not something we’d miss, especially not with an earth pony to sense any magic in the land.” She glanced meaningfully at Windrose. “Right?”

“Hmm?” Windrose had a spoon hanging out of her mouth. Her face reddened and she quickly swallowed. “W-well, uh, if you mean feeling something up with the land, then I got nothing. This, this place feels ordinary to me. Nothing wrong with it. So far.” Her ears twitched as she passed the jar back to Stalwart.

“Anyone else have any ideas?” asked Daring.

Vague negatory murmurs. Daring sighed internally. Of course, there was no way it could be that easy. If it was, it would’ve already been found out. Still, not even a single idea… “Hey, Fallende?” asked Daring. “What about those strange reindeer you mentioned, the, um, Alver, right? Any stories about them doing something like this?”

Fallende shook her head. “They couldn’t do something like this. Isn’t that compass made of iron?”

“I think the needle is,” Daring said. “Why?”

“Iron disrupts the Alver’s magic. They couldn’t affect the needle at all. No way they’re responsible.”

“Oh, come on!” protested Stalwart. “Iron dispelling magic? That’s gotta be-”

“No, no, I’ve heard this, too,” said Rangifera. “Cold iron drives them away and makes their spells unravel. For some reason. Must be a magic thing. No way they’re responsible.”

“‘Cold iron’ as in chilly iron or another iron-like metal, like orichalcum?” asked Windrose.

“Plain old iron, actually,” said Fallende. “For some reason, the stupid folklore uses ‘cold iron’ whenever iron’s fulfilling some mystical role when it’d be so much simpler to call it ‘iron’.” She paused. “Although, assuming they could, this would be exactly the sort of thing those scumbags would do. Sic a bunch of wolves on us and screw with our sense of direction for kicks.”

“Could they do anything about the weather?” Daring asked. Her sense of discovery had been piqued. Even if this went nowhere, the different mythologies and beliefs of different cultures were fascinating (and true in some way, more often than not).

“Efh.” Fallende wiggled her hoof noncommittally. “Jury’s out. None of the stories seem to agree on that. Some say yes, some say no, some say yes but not to this extent, and on and on and on.” She gestured into the distance. “Again, stupid folklore. And while we’re talking about the Alver, there’s another problem. They’re supposed to kidnap people for some reason unknown to us, but no one who’s gone in here has vanished, have they?”

“Nope,” said Daring. “I asked around in the days before we left. As far as anyone could remember, everyone that went in came out with nothing.” Of course they hadn’t. Vanishings would only make this place more mysterious and attract more people, like some kind of horror story. And if things went far enough, Celestia or Luna might decide that Needle Vale was magically dangerous and spend a week glassing it.

“Hmm.” Fallende shrugged noncommittally. “I’ve heard some things about them working with changelings, but changelings never come this far north.”

“And no one’s left anything in here, either. At least, nothing I’ve read has mentioned that.”

“Double hmm,” said Rangifera.

“You know,” said Stalwart, “we’ve been spending so much time thinking about what we’ve heard that we haven’t thought about what we haven’t heard. What if somepony went into Needle Vale, found something, and just didn’t mention it? Or left something and didn’t mention it? Think about it: this is a place that’s legendary for both its strangeness and for nothing being out here. Everyone who goes in here looking for something is looking for something in general, not something specifically. So if you wanted to hide something small, an artifact or something, just map Needle Vale out, find a nice cave, shove the artifact in an out-of-the-way nook, and be on your way. No one would think to look in the cave, because what could possibly be in a cave? Plus, I’ve heard caves can get really big and mazelike — labyrinthine! What a nice word — so you wouldn’t want to go in anyway unless you knew-”

“That’s not the greatest idea,” said Daring. “Once we start thinking about what might’ve happened, anything goes. You can just say, ‘Oh, maybe Princess Celestia trapped some monster here and maybe she never said anything about it and maybe-’ You get the idea. You want to get weird theories about aliens? Because that’s how you get weird theories about aliens.”

“Aw.”

“I definitely don’t want weird theories about aliens,” said Rangifera. “I prefer things I can hit.”

“And back to square one we go,” sighed Fallende. “That’s gonna happen a lot in here, isn’t it?”

“Speaking of hitting things and changing the subject,” said Stalwart, “before we hit the road again, I’d like a vague idea of how much longer we need to go. Anyone have any idea how far we’ve gone?”

“About ten and a half miles,” Windrose said promptly. “Total since entering the valley, I mean, not just today.” She raised an eyebrow at the surprised glances and said, “I’ve got a good sense of distance and direction. Like most cartographers. It’s really nothing special.”

“So even if Needle Vale is fifteen miles long,” said Daring, “we’re almost to the end.”

Stalwart grinned. “Very nice. Very, very nice.”

They sat in silence a little bit longer. Daring’s muscles still ached from the fight with the wolf, but the worst was long gone and hadn’t been that bad. Was everyone else feeling the same way? They seemed almost ready to go. Daring herself was ready, able, and a few notches short of willing. Adventure was great, but sometimes, you just needed to sit a while. This was one of those times. Windrose had definitely made the right choice in proposing lunch.

“You know, I just realized something,” said Windrose. “We haven’t heard a single wolf howl in the past fifteen minutes.”

They hadn’t, Daring realized. Just the muffled wind of the storm. The entire group tensed up, waiting for- But nothing came. They waited and waited. Nothing and nothing.

“Oh, thank the stars,” breathed Fallende. “If those fricking things are finally gone-”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Daring cautioned, “but wings crossed. Before we go, any jam left?”

5 - Hole in the Wall

The good news about the weird compass was that such a clear proof that they weren’t doing this for nothing provided motivation for everyone. They all went a little bit faster, pushed through the snow a little bit more easily, held their heads a little bit higher. And it was hard to deny the morale upswing, especially compared to before the wolf attack. It wasn’t much, but they all talked slightly more often and their words lacked any cynical bite.

The bad news about the weird compass was that their compass wasn’t working. If they hadn’t been following the eastern edge of the valley, Daring wasn’t sure she’d know which direction they were going. And if the valley walls curved too shallowly, they could wind up walking south without knowing they were doing that. Hopefully, their cartographer was good at that sort of thing.

“How good’s your sense of direction?” Daring asked Windrose.

“Pretty good. We’re still heading north, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Windrose replied. “Maybe… I dunno, ten or twelve degrees to the west. We only started curving in the past fifteen, twenty minutes.”

“Good, good,” Daring muttered, half to herself. “Tell me when our heading’s mostly west, okay?”

“Will do.”

And so they walked on, Daring paying extra attention to how the mountains to the right were behaving. It was hard to say what “straight” was in these conditions, but she managed. At first, it wasn’t much. Then she turned a little as the mountains seemed to hem them in. Then a little more, then a little more, then a little more-

Windrose tapped her on the shoulder, saying, “About halfway between north and west.”

“Thanks,” said Daring. She raised her voice and said to the rest of the team, “You’re probably noticed, but our path’s changing direction. We’re almost at the end of Needle Vale.”

“Gotcha,” said Stalwart. Rangifera just nodded. Fallende didn’t even seem to be listening and was staring off into the distance. Daring rolled her eyes and kept walking.

The rapid crunching of snow told her someone had picked up their pace, then Fallende was right next to her, holding up a leg to stop her. Fallende still wasn’t paying any attention to Daring. She pointed into the blizzard. “Hold on, look,” she said.“Is… that a rabbit?”

Daring squinted through the snow to where Fallende was pointing, and her keen pegasus eyes picked it out. A white rabbit, almost invisible, nosing casually through the snow, looking for something to eat. In spite of the lack of obvious food sources, it didn’t look thin. Amazing, what species could do to survive, even without ponies to help them along. “Definitely a rabbit,” said Daring. “And there’s probably more we don’t see. The wolves have to eat something, right?”

“That’s the first animal we’ve seen out here, besides the wolves,” said Fallende quietly. “And here at the end of this weird place…” She raised an eyebrow at Daring. “Bit of a coincidence, ain’t it? If I were superstitious, I’d say that meant something.”

Rangifera lightly shoved Fallende in the rear. “Good thing you’re not superstitious and definitely stopped us for something as incredibly important as seeing a rabbit, my sudden stop sign,” she said. “Can we please keep moving?”

When they kept walking, Daring found herself watching the rabbit. It always seemed a good dozen or so yards ahead of them, give or take. It’d poke around in the snow, hop forward a ways, and repeat. She tried to tell herself it was just a rabbit. Just like the blizzard was just a blizzard. Just like the faulty compass was just a faulty compass. But it didn’t behave strangely at all for a while.

Eventually, Windrose nudged Daring again. “I figured you’d want to know,” she said, “we’re heading due west, so this is as far back as-”

The rabbit stood up straight, ears twitching, like it’d heard something. It looked in one direction. Then another. Then it bolted and scampered up into the mountains.

“-the valley goes,” continued Windrose. She definitely wasn’t paying attention to the rabbit. “When do you want to start crisscrossing the valley? And what’re you looking at?”

“The rabbit,” Daring said. She twitched and quickly looked at her compass.The needle was going nuts, jiggling around so fast she could barely follow it.

Just a rabbit. Like this was just a compass. At the furthest end of Needle Vale.

“Change of plan, team,” Daring said. She turned and followed where the rabbit had gone. “We’re going to follow that rabbit.”

“We’ve- We’ve been following that rabbit ever since you saw it?” sputtered Stalwart. “I stopped bothering the second after I saw it! I- I thought we were-”

“Less ‘following’ and more ‘it happened to be going the same way we were’,” said Fallende, who was right behind Daring. Somehow, it didn’t surprise Daring that she’d also been watching the rabbit. “And it just ran off.”

“Good thing you’re not superstitious,” said Rangifera, her voice dripping with sarcasm, “and you’re certainly not putting our job-”

“First,” Fallende yelled over her shoulder, “I’m not, she is.” She pointed at Daring. “Second, you were the one who kept saying it didn’t matter what Daring did as long as you got paid. You still believe that?”

Rangifera glared at Fallende. Fallende glared at Rangifera.

“Take a look.” Daring tossed her compass over to Rangifera. “Worse than before. Right where that rabbit turned away. I’d bet my life that means something in here.”

After a second of examination, Rangifera passed the compass back to Daring. “Fine. Worse than before, right where that rabbit turned away. Yeah, maybe that means something in here. But what if those two are just coincidence, my maybe-misguided manager?”

Daring looked over her shoulder to lock eyes with Rangifera. “If we don’t find anything in five minutes, we’ll turn around.”

They found the cave one minute later.

The rabbit’s tracks were still visible, if only barely, more as vague imprints than tracks. They ran right up to the cliff face and into the opening there. It wasn’t large, maybe five feet tall and just barely wide enough for the reindeer to slip through if they turned their heads in the right way to get their antlers in. The wind blowing past it howled extra-loudly, a massive version of the echo produced by blowing over an empty bottle. The cleft was like a wound on the cliff face, narrow and yawning and black. And Daring couldn’t possibly ignore it.

Rangifera sounded less angry when she said, “See, now, a coincidental cave right where you turn off? That’s something, my lucky leader, not a random rabbit.”

“The rabbit led us here,” said Daring, looking into the cave. “What makes you think it was random?” It was hard to see anything; the cave was too dark. She held up a light gem to illuminate the inside. Still nothing. “Anyway, all those in favor of exploring the cave-”

“Only,” interrupted Stalwart, “if we keep sidetracking to a minimum. I’m sure I don’t have to go into detail about how easy it is to get lost in caves, what with their passages, and we don’t even know how big it is-”

“You’re right,” snapped Fallende. “You don’t.”

“How about this,” said Daring. She didn’t look away from the cave. “We turn back after we reach the first branch or going in fifteen minutes, whichever comes first.”

The team agreed. Daring took a deep breath and entered the cave, her wings brushing rock on either side. It was like a tunnel, a little bit longer than she’d suspected, but nothing too bad.

As Daring slid through the cleft, she felt odd. Overly still, somehow. It took her a moment to realize that she was feeling nothing; the winds had completely ceased, the cleft too narrow to let them get in. Even Stalwart’s bars didn’t block out the winds this much. After getting battered by the blizzard for over a day, it was a nice feeling.

She popped out of the cleft like a cork from a bottle and held the light gem up to get a better view of the cavern. Nothing unusual; a lot of rocks, some echoes from the wind outside, and a continuation of the passage on the other side of the “room”. Every surface was smooth-ish, with no stalagmites or stalactites. There was no sign of the rabbit.

“Yeegh,” Windrose muttered as she pulled herself from the entrance. “I didn’t think feeling something on both sides could be so creepy.” Her shivers weren’t related to the cold.

Daring didn’t look at her. “Claustrophobic?”

“I guess.” Windrose lit up her own gem. “I never knew I was before.”

“First time for everything,” Daring said with a shrug. “You don’t know you’re afraid of something until you meet it for the first time.”

“I have a friend,” Stalwart said as she entered the room, “who’s afraid of heights — downright terrified of them — but she didn’t know that until she decided she wanted to go mountain climbing. Well, hiking up a mountain, anyway. She got near the top, and we had to walk along this narrow ridge, with like eighty-degree slopes on either side, and she suddenly couldn’t go any further. She was terrified, shaking all over, and refused to take another step. Shame; she was so close, and to find out she couldn’t reach the summit at the worst possible moment…” She shook her head and sighed. “Shame.”

Soon, Rangifera and Fallende had managed to pull themselves into the cave and the room was brightly lit. There was no sound except for the echoes of the wind and their own breathing. It might’ve been Daring’s imagination, but it felt like the temperature was climbing, with everyone in such a tight space.

“Nice place,” Fallende said. “Really got that ashen chic style going.”

“It’d be remiss of us to not check it all out,” said Daring. “Keep close and don’t wander off.” She rattled her light gem and set off into the cave.

The passage she followed was about the size of a hallway, nothing particularly large or small. Every now and then, she glanced at the floor. No sign of the rabbit’s tracks. Ah, well. The cave was cold, but thankfully, it was mostly level and not very slick. It didn’t turn much, either, with zero branches. Lucky them. In fact, the smoothness of the walls and floor almost made her think it’d been carved out of the rock itself. Nobody said much, though, and that meant that the main sound was their echoing footsteps, amplified tenfold by the cave. Even if they wanted to make conversation, it’d be hard to make out the words.

The cave stretched on. Daring wondered how the others were doing. She could handle the cave, with its complete lack of natural light, just fine (she’d been in plenty of caves before, after all), but she didn’t know anything about them. They could’ve been peachy, they could’ve been terrified. She glanced back for a second. No one seemed all that upset, not even Windrose. Some types of claustrophobe were scared of any enclosed space, but it didn’t look like she was one of them.

Daring turned ahead again just as the tunnel widened. A ways ahead, there was a white spot on the rock, indistinct in the bad light. At first, she paid it no mind. It wasn’t moving.Then the thing came into full view and Daring sucked in a breath in surprise.

A reindeer skull, still with antlers, was hanging from a spur on the cave wall.

Windrose hiccuped, but she was the only other one with an audible reaction. Rangifera and Stalwart looked at each other and shrugged, while Fallende became very still. Daring frowned and climbed up to the skull. It looked normal, any flesh long since eaten or rotted away. She wanted to touch it, but being an adventurous archaeologist in Equestria, she knew that there were certain things you didn’t touch without being careful, and this was definitely one of those things. “Stalwart? Can you probe this for magic? Just in case.”

“Sure. Give me just a second…” Stalwart’s horn and the skull glowed alike for a second. Once the light had faded, Stalwart said, “Absolutely nothing. Perfectly normal, as far as I can tell.”

“Hmm.” Daring delicately pulled the skull from the wall, careful not to crush it by accident. But it felt like the bone was still strong. A thin, uncarved protrusion was sticking from the cavern wall where the skull had been hung. She turned the skull over and over. Each surface was examined for some sort of clue, but there was nothing. “Hmm,” Daring said again. By all accounts, an ordinary skull. Nothing to even indicate how the deer had died.

She stared into its eye sockets. What sort of reindeer had its owner been? Obviously an adventurer of some kind, but that covered a wide swath of personalities. Warrior? Trailblazer? Gatherer? Adrenaline junkie? “Did you know something?” she asked quietly. “Something about Needle Vale?”

The skull didn’t respond.

“You must’ve. Why else would you be here?” She shrugged, hung it back up, and dropped back down to the cave floor. “Unless someone else wants to take a look, let’s move on.”

“Whoa, whoa, wait, what?” blurted Windrose. “I, I’m sorry, should we really keep going?”

Daring tilted her head. “Why?”

“…Dude. There’s a skull on the wall,” Windrose responded flatly. “That’s like ‘don’t go here’ warning sign number one.”

“And that’s exactly why we’re going!” Daring said, flaring her wings. “Do you think they’d put a warning like that if there was nothing out there? And since no one else has said anything about it, that means we’ve gone farther into the Needle than anyone else before!” And after only two days, too!

“Than anyone who’s come out. This?” Windrose jabbed repeatedly at the skull. “This is a sunblasted omen. How could it last out here for so long? Someone put this up. Recently, even.”

“Windrose, come on!” Stalwart said cheerfully. “If tired clichés like this are the best somebody can do, they really need to step up their game! It’s not even bloody.” She tutted. “If you’re not going to be creative, the least you can do is-”

“One single skull, we don’t need to worry about, my apprehensive ally,” said Rangifera. “There could just be a hermit living in there-” She nodded down the cave. “-trying to keep people away. It’s not like there are materials for ‘Keep Out’ signs.”

Windrose stared at Rangifera, at Stalwart, at Daring, them repeated the cycle twice more. “You. All. Are. Crazy!” she yelled. “It’s-! There’s a-! I can’t believe-!” She groaned and hung her head. “Whatever,” she mumbled. “Let’s- Let’s just keep moving.”

“Fine,” said Daring. “We’re going. Fallend-”

She stopped and blinked. Fallende had retrieved the skull from the wall and was staring deeply at it. Her antlers were glowing as threads of magic twined around each other and twisted in and out of holes in the skull. She was muttering something, but Daring couldn’t make out what.

But before anyone said a word, Fallende twitched. “Sorry,” she said quickly. “I just wanted to take a closer look at it.” She quickly hung it back up on the wall. She looked everyone in the eye once. “Well, let’s move,” she said gruffly. She stepped around Daring and set off deeper into the cave.

Daring looked at everyone else, shrugged, and trotted off. She caught up to Fallende in a few moments. “You looked pretty interested in that skull,” she said. “Any idea what could’ve killed that reindeer?”

Fallende scoffed. “No clue. Who do you think I am? A forensic scientist? Aurora?”

“…Who’s Aurora?” Daring asked.

“…You know, Aurora,” Fallende said, tilting her head at Daring. “The- oldest Gift Giver?”

“The oldest what?”

“Uffh. Never mind.” Fallende shook her head, and Daring only barely caught a muttered, “Ponies.”

Daring opened her mouth to say something, then froze. She stopped walking and lowered her hood. “Do you feel a breeze?” she asked Fallende.

Fallende stopped walking. After a second of feeling the air, she raised her head up. “Coming from deeper inside the cave?” she asked.

“Yeah.” Daring raised her head and sniffed. It certainly didn’t smell like the inside of a cave. It smelled like… a forest?

Fallende nudged Daring and pointed. “Look at that,” she said. “Light.” And indeed there was; just beyond another jink in the tunnel, the cave wall was illuminated. “There must be another entrance.” She picked up her pace.

Another entrance? Back into Needle Vale? Daring thought herself to have a good sense of direction, and they hadn’t gotten turned around that much in the cave, had they? …No, they hadn’t. But the light was still there.

Not only that, Daring realized, but the light was steady, with nothing breaking it up. No blizzard. Maybe they hadn’t gotten turned around at all and instead burrowed straight through the mountains to come out north of Needle Vale. In unexplored territory. A prime spot the unexplained, the weird, the unknowable. Exactly what she was looking for.

Daring couldn’t help grinning to herself as she ran after Fallende. She turned the corner, and sunlight blasted her eyes.

6 - A New Frontier

As she exited the cave, Daring was assaulted by sunlight and caressed by a cool wind. She blinked a few times to let her eyes adjust. Not only were they out, they weren’t even in the storm anymore. Ahead of her, lying beneath the blessedly blue sky, was a long, thin valley nestled deep within the mountains. Literally; she and Fallende were on a cliff far above the valley floor and the mountains on either side were vertiginously steep, as if the valley had been violently gouged out from the earth itself. Daring looked up and down the sides of the valley, but she couldn’t see any easy passes. Nothing was getting into the valley without passing through the cave behind her, at least on foot. The ground was dotted irregularly with trees for minimal cover and a river or stream (it was hard to tell from this height) wound its way down the valley like a glittering ribbon.

Fallende leaned forward, her eyes closed, smiling. “Thank the stars we’re done with that blizzard crap,” she whispered. “Kinda makes you forget how bright the sun is.”

“Yeah.” Daring leaned over and looked down the cliff in front of them. It was steep, but not very, and rough. It ought to be easy to climb. She wasn’t going to let a place like this slip by unexplored, not after pushing herself through that blizzard. Definitely one of her least favorite things. “Think you can find us a way down this?”

“Oh, sure.” Fallende had her bags off in seconds. “This’ll be a frigging cakewalk.” And then she was crawling down the cliff like a spider.

“Hey! Girls!” yelled Daring into the cave. “Get over here and check this out!”

Rangifera, Stalwart, and Windrose were out of the cave in seconds. When they saw the valley, their jaws dropped as one. “I’ll be,” whispered Rangifera. “That’s… just… Dang.”

“I know!” said Stalwart. She sounded giddy. “A more picturesque view I’ve never seen. It’s like a postcard!” She held up her hooves, making a frame, and nodded to herself. “Yep, yep, that’s a mighty fine postcard right there. Wonder what the text would say, though. I mean, you practically need to force your way through Tartarus to get here. ‘A nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to travel here’, maybe? No, no, too wordy. Maybe-”

“W-where’s Fallende?” asked Windrose.

“Finding us a way down the cliff,” Daring said. She looked over the edge; Fallende was about two-thirds down and still climbing easily.

“We’re going down?” Windrose adjusted her bags. “Not that I mind the nice weather or anything, but shouldn’t we focus on, you know-” She pointed back into the cave. “-the part of the land that’s actually strange?”

Daring sighed. “Do I have to remind you that no traveller has mentioned anything like this? We’re the first ones here, ever! I’d bet money, and a lot of it, that whatever’s going on with Needle Vale begins in here.”

“I’d bet money, and a lot of it,” added Rangifera, “on that same thing, my cautious companion. Strange blizzard hiding a cave on the very end of a valley, complete with a skull on the wall, that leads to a whole ’nother valley? Suspicious is what I’d call it. Maybe whatever’s going on with Needle Vale is meant to protect something in here.” She gestured across the valley with her spear.

“That’s a pretty big leap,” Windrose said, her voice a touch accusatory.

“You sometimes have to make those leaps,” said Rangifera, shrugging. “We don’t know a thing yet about this valley.”

“And besides,” Stalwart piped up, “look at how beautiful this place is. You’ll get paid for hiking through some of the most spectacular land in Equestria!”

“We’re not in Equestria,” Windrose muttered.

“Oh, you know what I mean.” Stalwart waved a hoof dismissively. “Really, what’s not to like about this? Especially after the blizzard. And you’re complaining about… what, exactly? Getting off-track when we don’t even know what the track is? I-”

“Shut up,” snapped Windrose. “I get it.”

Stalwart kept talking, but Daring tuned her out. From the looks of things, so did Windrose and Rangifera, as everyone took a seat to wait for Fallende. Daring looked over the valley again, still in awe at the sight, before stealing a quick glance at the others. Stalwart either didn’t know or didn’t care that nobody was listening to her (the latter, more likely) and Rangifera was taking the view as if she was an artist committing a scene to memory to be replicated later.

But something new was up with Windrose. Her expression started out neutral, but it slowly became confused, then concerned. “Hold, hold up. I… just realized… there’s nothing out here on any map,” she said, frowning. “Just mountains. You’d think a few passing pegasi would’ve seen something like this. I mean, look at it. It can’t be that hard to miss, can it?”

Daring chuckled. “And that’s a bad thing why?”

“I dunno,” admitted Windrose. “But it’s… kinda ominous, you know? The compass, that skull, now this…”

“Will you relax?” asked Rangifera, poking at Windrose. “Not everything strange is bad, my paranoid partner. Protection, remember? Perhaps there’s an illusion that we can’t see.”

“Maybe,” Windrose mumbled, “but I just… feel like… effh, never mind.” She quickly looked at one of the valley walls — a position that kept anyone else from looking her in the eye.

Daring almost said something about embracing the unexpected, but cut herself off. Windrose was here by chance, a last-second addition. She wouldn’t get the same feelings as anyone else, that thrill of discovery when confronted with the unknown. True, things like the skull were a little bit… strange, but the only reason the familiar was familiar was because it was no longer strange. Once they learned a few more things about Needle Vale, they wouldn’t find anything in here strange anymore. Probably.

Fallende popped over the cliff again, grinning broadly. “Found a route. Easy as pie. Come on, I’ll show you.”

They didn’t notice the jump.

Rangifera laid another stack of wood next to the fire. “If that’s not enough,” she said to no one in particular, “I’ll eat my hat.”

“Better get a hat, then,” said Fallende.

“Yep.”

Daring took a sip of her stew. Salty, but good enough. She leaned back and sighed. It was so good to be out of that blizzard, to be able to see the sky and the sun. The advanced sunset cast long shadows through the valley, but with their fire crackling merrily, they had nothing to worry about with regards to the dark.

When she sat up again, she noticed that Stalwart was halfheartedly stirring her stew and staring at the cliff as if she were disturbed by something. “Something wrong?” Daring asked.

“It’s probably nothing,” Stalwart said, “but does anyone remember coming down from the cave?” She jabbed a hoof at the cliff. “I’ll admit my memory isn’t what it used to be, but I was looking up at it, and I realized I couldn’t remember a thing about it.”

Fallende snorted. “Really? You’re concerned about that? I think-”

“No,” said Windrose, staring at nothing. “She’s right. I… I can’t remember anything, either.” She shook her head and smacked it. “It’s like there’s a hole in my memory. More than just the cliff, even.”

And now that Daring was actually paying attention, the gap was so glaring she couldn’t believe she’d missed it. Fallende had just returned to the top of the cliff, and then she was sitting here at the fire with no in-between state. She examined her surroundings. The forest was unfamiliar, the trees strange and patchwork; why hadn’t she noticed that? The cold wormed its way into her furs and clawed at her skin.

“I’ve got the same hole in my memory, too,” said Rangifera. “I was getting ready to climb down, then I was laying out those logs, and-” She blinked twice. “Wait, what if- sonofagun.” She bolted for her supplies and tore through the bag like it held a bomb detonator. Whenever she found one of her meal packs, she put it out the ground, laying them out in neat lines.

“You think she’s overreacting?” Fallende “whispered” to Windrose, loud enough for everyone to hear. “I think she’s overreacting.”

“I- am not- over- reacting!” Rangifera nearly screamed. She actually sounded scared. She wasn’t taking out any meals anymore, but whatever she was looking for, she hadn’t found it.

“Then what’s the matter?”

“The matter, my dismissive dunce,” yelled Rangifera, “is that we’ve only been on the road for two days-” She stepped away from her bag, a haunted look on her face, made even worse by her scars. “-but I’ve apparently eaten five days’ worth of food.”

After a single, shocked moment, everyone ran for their own supplies. Daring rummaged hastily through her premade meals, pulling them out one at a time, sweating in spite of the temperature. Unknowingly missing a few days’ supplies could doom them out here. How many days ought she have enough food for? They’d packed for twenty, been travelling for two, so… eighteen. One day, two days, three, four… And soon she was at sixteen… seventeen… eighteen.

Nineteen.

She counted again. Nineteen.

Daring stared at the extra bundle of food. Where it’d come from held a lot of implications, none of them pleasant. “Um, girls?” she asked, trying to keep her voice level. “How, how many days do you have enough food for?”

“Fifteen,” said Rangifera promptly.

“Eighteen,” Windrose said. It was hard to tell what emotion she was feeling from her voice, some strange mixture of confusion, relief, and guilt.

“Seventeen,” Fallende said tightly.

“And sixteen for me,” said Stalwart. “Huh. That’s strange. I wonder why we all have different amounts? And, ah… huh, we all have enough for everyone to have seventeen days’ worth. Strange indeed.”

They quickly redistributed food so everyone had an even amount. “So,” Daring said, staring at the fire. “On the one hoof, we’re in unexplored territory, where we could find just about anything. On the other, that includes sudden, probably magic-induced amnesia. We’re already missing a day.” She looked at the assembled team. “Thoughts?”

Windrose slowly raised a hoof, quickly lowered it, quickly raised it again, slowly lowered it again-

“Yeah?” Daring said.

“Well, it’s-” Windrose ruffled her mane. “You all already know what I’m gonna say, right?”

“Give up and head home,” grunted Rangifera.

“Yeah, but- This time, just- think about it,” said Windrose. She stood up and started pacing. “We just climbed down a cliff and lost a day for no reason. I’ll-” She swallowed. “I’ll admit, I… was being a bit of a wuss back in Needle Vale-”

“A bit of a wuss?” Fallende snorted.

“-but this is actually hurting us,” Windrose continued, “not just some spooky thing you see in a haunted house set up for Nightmare Night. We didn’t just lose a day, we also didn’t move for whatever reason, so whatever got to us screwed with our behavior, too. How do we know we won’t go to sleep tonight, wake up tomorrow, and tomorrow won’t be three weeks from now and we’re starving to death in a cave system or something?”

A salient point, Daring had to admit. The problem with mental magic was how hard it was to detect. Other spells at least glowed. But this… This was something else. They’d have to pay constant attention to their own memories just to avoid being lost. And there was always the possibility that the magic that stole their memories could steal their minds, too, making them… do something. Daring didn’t want to think of what.

Windrose kept talking. “And I’m just assuming that that cliff is the one we came down. Maybe we’re near one that looks a lot like it.” She pointed at the sun, just below the mountains on what Daring thought was the western side. “Do we even know that’s a sunset? It- It could be a sunrise and we’re- somehow on the northern end of the valley.”

“Easy,” said Stalwart with obviously faked confidence. “We’ll check-”

“The compasses don’t work, genius,” Fallende snapped. “Did you forget what brought us here in the first place?”

“But maybe, in here…” Daring said. She looked at her compass and seemed to be rewarded with the needle pointing solidly to her left. Then she rotated, and the needle still pointed solidly to her left, as if nothing was pulling it one way or another. Rather than working wrongly, the compass now wasn’t working completely. “Nope. Still nothing.”

“Great,” Windrose said flatly. She took a deep breath. “I’m- not going to run out on you all or anything, but- At least give it some thought and don’t just dismiss me. Please?”

No one said anything. The fire crackled and the wind blew and the trees rattled. There were no birds. Rangifera took a breath. “This isn’t what I expected,” she said, “but I didn’t come this far to turn back at the first sign of danger. I’d like to keep going, but I’m not the one funding this expedition.” She turned her eyes to Daring. “I’ll go however you go, no questions asked.”

Everyone stared at Daring, and she was reminded why she preferred to work alone. She glared at the fire so she wouldn’t have to look at the team. Her team, the ones who were only out here because of her. Anything that happened to them was her fault, one way or another. Whether they went home wealthy or died. She preferred it when the only one she had to worry about was herself, but that hadn’t been an option.

The smart thing to do would be to turn back, she knew. Go straight back to Light’s Edge, tell about the hidden valley she’d found, get some ecological arcanists or whatever the term was to take a look at it. But… But that was way too easy. She’d been through worse. Maybe, maybe this amnesia was a one-time thing. She couldn’t just let the secret of Needle Vale sit now. The proof that she was getting closer to the heart of it all was just stacking up. Nopony ever achieved greatness if they turned back once the going got tough.

“We’re staying,” Daring said. “We’ve come too far to just turn around.” Windrose groaned quietly, but everyone else seemed satisfied. “But we’re turning back once we have five days’ worth of supplies, no matter what. I don’t care if we’re at the base of a temple made of solid gold when that happens, we’re going back to Light’s Edge.”

“Something, at least,” mumbled Windrose.

“And try to keep track of your memories.” Daring cringed at how strange that sounded. “Review them every now and then. If you ever find yourself missing time, tell me. We need to keep track of time. It might get worse the further into this valley we get.”

“They’re memories,” Rangifera mused to herself, “we shouldn’t have to review them every now and then. Hard habit to form.” She shrugged. “But I’ll do my best to keep track of time.”

“Sounds good,” said Stalwart. She craned her neck and looked at the sun. “And, ah, the sun’s just a little bit lower. That way’s west, so we are at the bottom of the first cliff.”

Daring wasn’t sure whether that was reassuring or not. “Right,” she said. “We’ll pack up and head north tomorrow morning.”

Nothing more was said for a while. Everyone just sat in the chill and watched the fire as the sun slipped lower. Eventually, Windrose trotted over to her tent. She came back out with a quill and a stack of parchment Daring recognized as her map sheets. Windrose wordlessly sat down and flipped to the second sheet of parchment, the first one already covered with the first day’s map.

But instead of drawing anything, Windrose froze. After a second, she said, “Okay, that’s, that’s creepy.” She held up the sheet, showing a rough sketch of the area surrounding the campsite. “That’s, I know I made that, I recognize my sketching style, but… I can’t remember any of it. And…” She fanned back through some of the other sheets. “Yep, I also drew out the part of Needle Vale we went through earlier and the cave.” She sighed and rubbed her forehead, muttering something under her breath. Daring sympathized. Windrose got up and said, “Going to bed. Wake me if something else goes wrong. G’night.” She vanished inside her tent.

“Going to bed sounds good,” said Rangifera, standing up. “G’ni-”

Stalwart coughed. “Rangifera, remember the, ahm, wolf-repelling spells we discussed this morning? Yesterday morning. Let’s, let’s get to work on them.”

“…Right,” Rangifera said with a sigh. “Sure.” They put their heads together and started talking magic.

Daring and Fallende looked at each other for maybe half a second before Fallende mumbled something and vanished inside her tent. Daring gave a few reassuring words to Rangifera and Stalwart before going to her own tent. A quick moment of looking found her journal, and she flipped to where she’d left off. The only entry was from the first day of travelling; “yesterday’s” page was still blank. Hesitantly, Daring put quill to paper and began writing.

I don’t know what to make of today, because it wasn’t just today…

That night, nothing bothered them as they slept. It was a small comfort.

7 - Scar on the Land

Daring slept that night, but she didn’t rest. When the morning woke her up, the first thing she did was check her rations. She had the expected amount.

During breakfast, the only thing anyone said was a comment that they all had the right amount of food. The silence was a mixture of sullen and haunted; no one really wanted to admit what had happened yesterday except for Windrose, who had already said all she could say. Once they finished eating, they quickly moved to break camp.

Daring packed up her tent with practiced, almost mechanical ease. Stakes: removed from the ground. Poles: out of the tent, tied up. Tent itself: flattened, rolled up. Everything: collectively stuffed into the bag. Daring zipped up the bag and-

She stopped, looking at the bag. She thought back over each step of the process. Yes, she remembered each step, all the way up to breakfast. Nothing was missing. She was safe. She still shivered.

When the team quietly reconvened, Daring asked, “Before we go, does anyone have anything to say? About- anything?”

Fallende turned to Windrose and said, “Can I see that map you don’t remember making?”

“Sure,” said Windrose, tossing her bag to the ground, “but why? Did you see something on it?” She dug through the bag, muttering to herself.

“Maybe. I remember a river.”

“Aaaaand…” Windrose whispered, “this one?” She pulled out a sheet of parchment, examined it for a brief second, and nodded. “This one.” She unfolded the parchment, revealing the map of the area around the campsite, and tapped a line. “This would be a river, right here. Not far to the west.”

“Good,” said Fallende. “Come on. We’re going to that river.” She set off across the valley.

Windrose, Rangifera, and Stalwart exchanged glances as Daring trotted after Fallende. “So what’s your plan?” she asked.

“Right now?” Fallende replied. “Making sure the river is really there.”

It was technically a stream, but it was there. Water trailed lazily down the cliff face, collected in a pool at the bottom, and flowed off into the valley. It was a normal-looking stream by all accounts, but it made Fallende very happy. “Good,” she whispered to herself, grinning. “We should follow the river,” she said to Daring. “That’s our best bet.”

“Any reasons why?” It wasn’t a bad idea — you had a constant water source, and if you ever got lost, you could just turn around and follow the river until you knew where you were again — but that idea made the most sense in open wilderness, not a closed-off place like this valley. It would be hard to get lost at all in here.

“Duh, yeah. First, rivers go places,” said Fallende. “They can only flow downhill.” She pointed downstream. “So where’s this one going? Why isn’t the valley flooded yet? All that water’s gotta be feeding something. Second, if we ever go loopy again and stray from the river, we’ll know it immediately.”

“Some very good reasons why,” Daring said with a nod. Self-evident, even, once it was pointed out. Hard to argue with them. Besides, they were heading north anyway.

“Oh, and we probably shouldn’t drink from or touch the water,” Fallende added. “What if it’s an óminnibrunnr?”

“A what?” The word was vaguely familiar to Daring, but she couldn’t place it.

“A spring of forgetfulness,” Fallende said with an exasperated sigh. “Magic springs are common in Equestria, yeah? We’ve got our own stories. One of those is springs that make you forget stuff. Maybe we came here yesterday, scouted the place out, found the stream, decided to drink from it, and poof.” She made a little popping motion with her hooves. “There go our memories for the past twenty-four hours.”

“I don’t know,” Stalwart muttered. “That seems a bit unlikely, and it doesn’t explain everything.”

“I’m just trying to be cautious in a place we already know is dangerous,” Fallende said tightly. “There’s a lot about this place and Needle Vale we can’t explain right now, but that doesn’t mean they’re safe.”

“Perhaps it is a bit unlikely and it doesn’t explain everything,” said Rangifera, “but doesn’t mean it’s not right, my cautious comrade. I don’t think that’s a spring of forgetfulness, but I’m not taking my chances.”

“Me neither,” said Windrose. She scooched an inch or two away from the pool. “But, but you know why.” She flinched, folded her ears back, and looked away.

“Stalwart,” said Daring, “just stay away from the water, okay? I’ve had experiences with cursed springs, and believe me, it’s not pleasant on the best of days. It’s not like we’re low on supplies or anything.”

Stalwart gave a dubious look at the pool, but shrugged and said, “Fine. I mean, even if you’re wrong, it’s not exactly a hard thing to do, is it? Just stay away from the shore and tread carefully if we ever need to cross it. Do you suppose we’ll need to cross it? Probably not. Where would we need to cross to? The other side of-”

“Come on,” said Daring, setting off downstream. “Let’s go.”

Between walking through a simple blizzard and walking right next to a river that might possibly wipe her memories and drive her insane if she even touched it, Daring would take the latter every single time. At least she could see.

Honestly, the simple low winds and clouds lifted her spirits so much that it wasn’t long before her amnesia had been shoved to the back of her mind and temporarily swept under the rug. If it had never existed at all, Daring supposed she would’ve been fluttering downriver rather than walking. The cold was still wiggling and worming its way beneath her clothes, but it was the brisk kind of cold, not the kind where you could feel your blood turning to ice cubes. No howling wolves, no howling wind. Nothing was making any sound to disturb Daring except the bubbling stream. Bliss. If you overlooked the little amnesia incident, anyway.

The stream itself wound its way lazily down the valley, slowly twisting this way and that, always heading north. The banks were never too steep, too narrow, or too rocky; they only risked falling in if they were phenomenally unlucky. Daring glanced at the stream again. It still looked normal, but then, the magic springs that looked like magic springs had all either been commercialized (if they were beneficial), roped off to the public (if they were harmful), or turned into tourist traps (if they looked harmful but were no such thing). She wasn’t going to risk anything. Behind her, she could hear the rest of the group chatting amicably.

“So does this all qualify as a forest?” Stalwart asked as they slid down a gravel-covered slope. “It seems a bit sparse to me. Just look at how few trees there are and how much space is between them. I’m a bit surprised there’s so few, actually, trees can germinate each other quite nicely. Perhaps the soil isn’t very conducive to large forests, this valley is pretty isolated and it might run out of nutrients. Or maybe-”

“You make maps, my cartographic compatriot,” Rangifera said to Windrose. “Does this qualify as a forest?”

“What-? Don’t look at me,” Windrose said defensively. “I just record what goes where, not what it’s called.”

“Huh,” said Rangifera. “I would’ve thought that knowing what something’s called would be needed for a mapmaker. In addition to recording what goes where, obviously.”

“Well, no, not necessarily,” said Stalwart. “She’s a recorder, not a classifier. A librarian might know that books on, oh, caloric’s arcanodynamics go on these shelves, even though she doesn’t know what caloric’s arcanodynamics are. And she doesn’t need to, not really. As long as she makes sure everything goes in its proper place, which is all she needs to do, she can let other ponies — people, sorry, brain fart — argue about what everything is.”

“Does any of this matter?” grumbled Fallende. Her voice sounded like a wound-up elastic band was being plucked.

“Well, excuse me for trying to pass the time!” said Stalwart. “No, it really doesn’t. But after you’re walking down a stretch of river for too long, every bend looks just about the same as every other bend, and this is really just a stream, so you get the same effect, only doubly so, because-”

“Fine, whatever.” Fallende rolled her eyes. “It’s not a forest, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“The trees are too far apart, obviously! I mean, look at them. There’s no canopy. A proper forest needs a canopy.”

“There’s sort of a canopy.”

“If you tilt your head and squint, maybe.”

“Ha! So you do admit there’s a bit of a canopy!”

“Like one percent of one! A trickle of running water does not a river make.”

Daring tuned them out, focusing on the valley again. Trees dotted the floor, growing thicker as they climbed the mountain slopes, and that was about all there was of note. Every now and then, they’d pass a dry patch of rocks, like one might find in a quarry. There was nothing that looked out of place, nothing that made her coat stand on end (either by gut instinct or metaphysically). But she kept her eyes peeled. It didn’t need to be big; she could pick out smaller details as long as she was paying attention, and even something tiny could mean something huge.

Still, as the distance dragged on, every foot began to look the same as every other foot. Tree after tree, rock after rock, mountain after mountain. Daring couldn’t shake a feeling of déjà vu. But the wilderness could be like that, especially without landmarks. The only real landmarks close to her at the moment were the trees, and they all looked too similar to each other for navigation.

Suddenly, Windrose spoke. “Hey, um, do, do you think we could take a break for lunch? It’s… about noon.”

Daring squinted at the sun. Close enough. “Any objections? No? Lunch.”

They broke a small ways away from the stream, on a slope of scree with some large boulders. Windrose was sketching something out on her parchment before anyone else had even sat down. Stalwart and Rangifera ate slowly, but Fallende practically wolfed her food down. Daring had to stop herself from following suit; once she paid attention to it, her hunger was nearly unbearable. But with a manageable chill and little wind, they’d warmed themselves up so much through their constant walking that no one even suggested a fire.

“You’d think,” Stalwart said, “that after going through a spooky cave and climbing down a spooky cliff into a hidden valley, we’d see a lot more than those two things.” She rubbed an apple against her coat. “This is too nice, too normal for what those things set up. You know what I mean?”

“I know what you mean,” said Rangifera. “This is too nice. But I’m not complaining.” She shrugged. “We can handle spooky stuff later down the line. A change in scenery would be nice, though. I swear we’ve seen back-and-forth swerves in the stream ten times.”

“I know,” said Daring. She tore off a small chunk of bread from her loaf and swallowed it. “Is it just me, or is this valley a lot longer than it looked from above?”

“It’s not just you,” said Windrose, staring intently at her parchment. She’d stopped sketching. “We’re going in circles.”

“Going in circles?” Fallende snorted. “We’re following a river, you idiot. We can’t be going in circles.”

“Yeah, that, that’s the thing,” said Windrose, looking up. Her voice was a bit shaky, like she was trying and failing to psych herself up. “This river, it, it’s looping. Like, once we reach a certain point, we’re teleported back… I don’t know, a mile upriver. Non-Euclydesdalean geometry.”

Absolute silence fell over the group. Everyone stared at Windrose; she swallowed nervously but kept her head high. “Yes, really,” she said to everyone’s unasked question.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” asked Fallende. “Remember everything coming downriver?” (Daring quickly thought back; she, at least, did.) “Or maybe-”

“That’s crazy,” said Stalwart. “Absurd. Mad. Crazy.”

“Oh, yeah? Look, I’ve been mapping this place out, just like Daring asked.” Windrose unfolded the map so everyone could see it.. “And look!” She jabbed at part of the river, close to where they’d exited the cave. “You see this little-notch long-hook feature here, near where we started? It’s repeated — exactly — five times since then!”

The river did look like certain parts of it were repeating. Daring took a good long look at the map, trying to recall the trip downriver. It certainly seemed to match up with her memory and she didn’t have any obvious holes. She examined the map more intently. Yes, that part of the river definitely repeated itself. And not just on a large scale, either; Windrose had included a lot of little crinks and jinks in the river’s course, and when Daring looked at the river on a small scale, the crinks and jinks repeated, too. The river was repeating itself, over and over and over. “Just to play draconequus’s advocate,” Daring said tentatively, “could this just be a coincidence?”

“Oh, no, there’s more than just that,” said Windrose. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but these, these mountains…” She pointed all around them. “They’re in the same places relative to us since we’ve started. Like the background is repeating.”

Rangifera nervously licked her lips as she looked around and up. “You… don’t think that… maybe they have moved, and-”

“No, no way, not a chance in Prance,” interrupted Windrose. She sounded a little angrier. “I notice that sort of thing; mountains are landmarks, my talent’s cartography, and landmarks are important in cartography. Like, you see those two peaks, right over there?” She pointed sideways out of the valley. Two smallish, pointy mountain peaks loomed, one of them slightly behind the other. There was a small gap between the two summits. “If we were actually moving, the closer mountain would be blocking the further one by now. But they’ve stayed in that position ever since we started walking.”

Stalwart looked at the mountains for a long moment, then looked at Windrose, a “Really?” look plastered all across her face. “They’re probably farther away than you think,” she said. “It’s not like it’s easy to gauge the distance to mountains, special talent or not.”

“What does- that have to- You know what?” snapped Windrose. “Let’s test something.” Pulling out a knife, she walked over to one of the larger stones and flipped it over. As she dragged the knifepoint across the stone, she said, “I’ll… carve… my name… on here…” She held it up so everyone could see. Her name was crudely scratched into the stone, rough but legible. She carefully put the stone at the base of a tree. “Then,” she continued, “when we get back here, we can check for my name. Okay?”

“Checking for your name seems like a waste of time,” said Stalwart, “so I-”

“The time you took to say those words is more time than it’ll take to check,” said Windrose. She jabbed a hoof at the tree. “I know where the stone is. I won’t miss it.”

“It definitely won’t hurt,” mused Fallende. “Not like other pointless crap I’ve seen in my days. And if it’s right, we’re one step closer to whatever’s going on in here.”

“Oh,” groaned Stalwart, “not you-”

“Everyone!” yelled Daring. “Pack up your things. We’re leaving.” Everyone looked at her. She glared right back until they backed down. “Now. Windrose, keep an eye out in case we pass this way again.”

“Would it kill you to be a little more open-minded?” Daring asked Stalwart as they slid down a gravel-covered slope.

“How should I be a little more open-minded?” asked Stalwart, walking along just behind her. “Agree to everything you say? You obviously believed Windrose.” Her voice was biting.

“We’re investigating weirdness. Windrose points out some weirdness. And you blow her off like- like that?”

“Well, yeah, like that. Come on, do you really think that’s the weirdness we’re investigating? It’s got nothing to do with compasses, or weather, or-”

“Neither does amnesia, and that still happened.”

“You’re talking about warping space itself!” laughed Stalwart. “So seamlessly that no one’s aware of it! That’s not-”

Daring spun and planted a hoof on Stalwart’s chest, bringing her to a stop. “Then you know what we’re looking for?”

“What do you mean?” Stalwart asked, frowning.

“Well, if you know that warping space has nothing to do with Needle Vale, then you know what we’re looking for.”

The others caught up to them. Daring waved them on with mumbles of “We’ll catch up” without taking her eyes from Stalwart. “Well, do you?” Daring asked eventually. “Or are you just jumping to conclusions?”

Stalwart bit her lip and looked away. “I’m… jumping to conclusions,” she muttered.

Daring didn’t believe Stalwart had had a change of heart for a second. People didn’t drop their beliefs that quickly. But maybe she’d be thinking enough to stay quiet until the issue with the river was resolved, one way or another. “Good,” said Daring. “Now, don’t attack the others, okay?” She turned away without waiting for a response; a few long moments of flying took her to the front of the pack again. She wanted a better look at the land.

Once Daring was paying attention, the amount of repetition she’d missed was unnerving. She remembered climbing over this root, ambling along this ridge, passing between these trees… She hadn’t even bothered justifying it before, just thoughtlessly ignored it. Why hadn’t any of this occurred to her? Was Fallende right about the mental magic of the river and it was somehow affecting at a distance? The open space between the trees felt oppressive; she found herself examining nothing and examining it very thoroughly, as if she could see where reality had been crudely stitched together. She didn’t see anything.

She looked at the mountains. They hadn’t moved.

Behind her, the others also seemed to have noticed the loop. They started out talking softly, but as they walked, they grew quieter and quieter. Before long, the only sound at all was the crunch of their feet across the snow. Where were the birds? Where was the wind? Daring almost asked, but felt like her words would just be swallowed up by the silence.

They walked. Some parts, Daring definitely recognized. They were getting close, she thought. Any minute… Any minute… Any minute… Any-

“Wait, stop,” said Windrose abruptly. Everyone stopped instantly. “This… This is it. This is where we stopped for lunch.”

It was a nondescript stretch of stream, with just some water burbling over some rocks, yet Daring knew she was right. Windrose quickly ran off from the stream, towards- “Here!”

It was the same sloping pile of rocks where they’d had lunch. The exact same. Nothing had changed. Daring swore she could see crumbs on the ground where they’d fallen. Windrose was sitting next to a tree, the tree, the tree where she’d put the stone. Her hooves were twitching over the stone, always drawing close only to pull away the last second. She looked up at the others, her face fearful. She didn’t say anything.

“W-well, take a look,” said Stalwart, failing to sound cocky and confident.

Windrose nodded. She took a deep breath. She pulled the stone away from the tree. She rolled it over, her mouth tight. She held it up so the others could see it.

Her name was scratched into the bottom.

The cold got a little deeper into Daring’s skin. “Let’s not follow the river anymore,” she said.

“No,” whispered Stalwart. “Let’s not.”

8 - Forgotten Peoples

“So what’ll it take for us to turn back?” Windrose asked. “I mean, no, not, I can’t expect just the- river to…” She gestured back. They’d left the river behind them five minutes ago and were heading east. “It’s, that’s just… weird… space. But, but is there… anything that… you know?”

“When someone gets hurt,” said Daring, her eyes forward.

Eventually, Windrose nodded glumly. “Okay.”

In reality, it was hardly that simple. This was the main reason Daring liked working alone: she only had to worry about herself. Now she had the lives of four others on her shoulders. If anything happened to them, it’d be partially her fault for bringing them into Needle Vale in the first place. Was it really her right to keep them out here and possibly doom them? She didn’t even need the help, not really. She’d thought the terrain would be worse than-

Daring called a halt as they reached the eastern edge of the valley and the entire team gathered around her. “I’ve been thinking,” she said, pacing back and forth. “I hired you in case I needed help with bad terrain or animals. And so far…” She gestured out at the valley. “We haven’t had much of those. What we have had is sudden amnesia and twisted space. So…”

She looked at each person in turn. “If you want to turn around, go back through Needle Vale, and return to Light’s Edge, you can. You can keep the money I’ve paid you. This is probably going to get worse, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to stay.” She sat down. “What’ll it be?” Not the greatest of speeches, but that had never been one of her strong suits.

“Go back?” Fallende blurted. “Now? Are you kidding?” She put a hoof to her mouth and snickered. “Daring, it’s just getting good. I didn’t think we’d see any weird crap like looping rivers. Yeah, not turning around in a million years. Not now.”

“While I certainly appreciate the concern,” Stalwart said, flicking her ears, “I think it’s still a bit much at this stage of the game. We’re farther than anyone’s gotten before, seeing things no one’s seen, and while, true, we have encountered some, ah, issues, I hardly think they’re worth turning tail and running.” She shook her head. “No, I plan on staying, seeing this through for as long as possible, until we-”

Rangifera lightly bopped Stalwart on the head and shrugged. “Half interested, half too lazy to turn around. Staying, my practical pegasus.” She smiled, the wounds from the wolf attack on her mouth twisting slightly.

“I…” Windrose bit her lip. “I… kinda want to go back, but… It’s, like Fallende said, now? I’m… kinda curious, too. Besides…” Her voice dropped to a mumble. “…going back now means going back through that blizzard alone. Nope.”

Daring nodded. “Okay, then. Glad to hear it.” Partly. She wasn’t sure if any of this was a good thing or a bad thing, but she definitely felt a bit less responsible. “Now, let’s find us some more weirdness.”

The sun was about two-thirds of the way to the mountaintops when she saw it.

They were heading north again, following the edge of the valley. The cold clawed at her and the sun beat down on her and Daring continued to see nothing out of the ordinary. She kept a special watch on the landmarks; thankfully, nothing repeated, and when she glanced at the mountains Windrose had pointed out, the peaks were overlapping.

Then she spotted a dark shape through the snow spanning a tiny gully, distant, probably too distant for non-pegasus eyes to see. It wouldn’t have caught her attention except that it was suspiciously rectangular. She held up a hoof. “Hang on. I…” She squinted. Yes, it was rectangular, with clear right angles. “I think I see a…” What was she thinking of? “…a bridge.” She broke into a trot, bounding through the snow.

“It wouldn’t happen to just be a log that fell over, would it?” called Stalwart.

The shape was becoming clearer. “No, no, it’s definitely a real bridge!” yelled Daring. She slid to a stop at it, spraying snow everywhere. It wasn’t much of a bridge, just something to cross a small ditch, but it was obviously artificial, with the rectangular stones and clear arch. Daring brushed some snow from the top. The surface of the bridge was well-worn. By what, she couldn’t say.

Once the others had caught up, Stalwart cocked her head. “Huh,” she said. “Curiouser and curiouser. There goes the mystique of being the first people in this place. Kind of a disappointment, really. You get to be the first at something, and then, nope! Someone else did it first, and they did it years ago, too! And for some reason, they lied about doing the thing, and the lie didn’t even help them, not really, because-”

“Just for clarity,” Windrose said loudly, “this-” She jabbed at the bridge. “-should not be here, right?”

“Right,” said Rangifera. “This should not be here. Obviously.” She shot a Look at Windrose. “Juuust for clarity, my blunt backpacker.” She slid down into the ditch and crawled underneath the bridge to inspect it.

Fallende grinned at Windrose. “You’re not re-thinking not backing out, are you?”

“No, just… No, I’m not. Just… a way to get my thoughts in order.”

Rangifera pulled herself out from the other side of the bridge. “Whoever built this, they built it to last,” she said. “I didn’t see any signs of weakness.”

“Hmm.” Daring stared at the bridge, then up the slope, where a path leading from it would go. There was no sign of one, if only because the snow covered it. Her wings twitched; she knew exactly what she needed to do. “Who’s up for a little detour? Come on.” She headed up the slope, pushing through snow drifts, her team close behind.

It didn’t take long to find what she was looking for. The slope curved between two ridges and came to an abrupt halt at the bottom of a cliff, invisible from ground level. And set neatly into the cliff was a giant rusty steel door.

“Whoa,” said Stalwart. Somehow, that was all she could say.

“Whoa indeed,” said Rangifera.

Daring couldn’t believe it. An Equestrian bunker, here, where no one was supposed to have reached. And it had to be Equestrian; Celestia’s cutie mark was emblazoned over the door like a neon sign. The door itself was big and, in spite of the rust, obviously sturdy. Iron bands crossed it at the top and bottom and a rotating handle was set at one side. If there was a way for the ponies inside to see out, Daring couldn’t find it from this side. Aside from the cutie mark above the door, there wasn’t anything identifying, no signs or plaques or anything.

“That’s some building,” said Fallende. “They definitely didn’t do this by halves.” She rapped the door with a hoof. A deep, bell-like peal rang out through the valley. “That’s the butt tattoo of your princess, right?”

“Cutie mark, but yeah,” said Daring.

“Close enough. What do you think ponies were doing out here?”

“No clue.” Daring tilted her head this way and that. The door and frame continued to both look plain. “Maybe they were researching Needle Vale. Like we’re doing, but more thorough.”

“Maybe. But no one in Light’s Edge heard of anything like a pony construction group going in. Why keep it a secret?”

“Dunno.”

Everyone stared at the door. The wind howled through the trees below.

“So, uh… mysterious closed door, strange building, middle of nowhere. Should we be worried?” asked Windrose.

“I don’t think so.” Daring ran her hoof over the door as she examined it closely. No runes were carved into the metal. No warnings were etched into its surface. No blood coated it like paint. Nothing. Just an old door. “Maybe a little if it’s locked, a lot if it’s been welded shut, enough to run away immediately if it’s been welded shut from the inside.” She pushed hard at the handle and, with some effort, spun. Once it could spin no more, Daring grabbed the handle and tugged. The door wobbled, but didn’t move. She wrapped both front hooves around the handle, planted a rear hoof on the doorframe, and pulled with all her might. Groaning like it hadn’t been opened in ages, the door slid forward an inch.

“I could use some help,” grunted Daring; no matter how much she pulled, the door refused to move. Stalwart and Rangifera quickly added their own magical pull. The door wailed, a hideous metal-on-metal sound, as it ground open. Once there was enough space, Windrose darted forward and threw her strength into pushing. After that, the door opened easily, although it released a cloud of rusty dust.

Beyond the frame yawned blackness, like the maw of some great beast. Fallende lit up her antlers. A corridor stretched away, the beast’s gullet. The floors, walls, and ceiling were all the dull, utilitarian gray of concrete. Light gems were set into the ceiling; Daring fiddled with a switch just inside the door, but they didn’t come on.

After taking a few steps inside, Daring sniffed. The air was dry, still, and sterile, like an overclean operating room. She shrugged off her bags and set them carefully on the ground. “A bunker, built here in secret, long abandoned,” she said, half to herself, half to the others. “I think something like this is worth investigating. Don’t you?” Her voice echoed back at her. She walked down the hall without waiting for a response. She’d bet money that the others would follow her.

And once they’d gotten rid of their own bags, they did. Rangifera was behind her in a second, her antlers glowing even more brightly, still with her spear. Fallende and Stalwart followed in another second, and even Windrose quietly pulled herself along.

Daring sniffed again. No change in the air. After passing through the featureless corridor, they came to another door, lighter than the first but otherwise in the same design. This one opened more easily, revealing a large room that Daring guessed was some sort of lobby or hub. There was nothing on the walls or floor in the way of decoration. Several hallways led out from the walls, each with at least one plaque next to it. This deep underground, even their hoofsteps were echoing loudly.

“Find out what those signs say,” Daring said to no one in particular, pointing to one side of the room. “I’ll check the ones over here out.” She pulled out a portable light gem from her bags, rattled it, and trotted over to a hallway. The plaque was metal and the letters were raised, so she could still read them easily. “Dormitories and… Hydroponics,” she yelled across the room, then flinched at the sound of her echoes.

“Maintenance and Storage over here, my loud-mouthed leader,” said Rangifera from a circle of light on another wall. She managed to keep her voice down to a reasonable level.

“Laboratories, Offices, and Cafeteria,” added Stalwart from yet another wall.

The group reconvened back in the center of the room. “We’ll start with the dorms,” Daring said. “Anything the ponies here left might tell us what was going on here without us needing to go to the labs, because, well, nothing good happens in abandoned labs.” Everyone nodded at that, with the exception of the obvious.

Windrose was at the back of the pack as they walked down the corridor to the dorms, but Daring could still hear her easily. “Of course,” Windrose muttered to herself, “I just had to sign up for the trip where we have to go and do stupid things. Any other expedition, we’d be noping it straight out of here. But noooooooo, let’s go into the creepy abandoned underground facility that shouldn’t even be there in the first place! It’ll be fuuuuuun!” She snorted. “I swear to the Sisters…”

“You don’t need to stay in here,” said Daring, unable to keep a little bit of annoyance from creeping into her voice. “Just wait back outside. It’ll be-”

“Stars above, no!” squawked Windrose. The echo sounded a lot like a chicken. “We are not splitting up! The second we do, something’s gonna start picking us off one by one!”

“Picking us off one by one? You read too many horror stories, my panicky pansy,” said Rangifera. She lightly poked Windrose with her spear.

Windrose batted it away. “You don’t read enough!”

It was a mistake of her to yell; everyone flinched at the echo, which didn’t let up for half a minute. Rangifera and Windrose looked at each other and mimed zipping their mouths shut at the same time.

Daring had expected the hallway to the dorms to be less spartan, if only for morale, but was sorely disappointed. It was the same blank, austere gray everywhere else in the facility, made worse by the lighting from everyone’s horns, antlers, or light gems. All the different sources combined to make colors that, while not nauseating, definitely weren’t nice to look at. Daring was almost relieved when they reached a junction in the hallway. Several signs were up, pointing them in the relevant directions. Just a few feet into the hallway leading to the ponies’ quarters were more doors at regular intervals, wooden but still preserved from the chill and still air. Nothing that could make them rot could survive here.

There were more signs next to the doors. Daring peered at the first one. “Alpha Dorms,” she read aloud.

“This’s Beta Dorms,” Rangifera said, reading the sign across the hall.

Fallende pointed down the hall; another set of doors was visible at the edge of the gloom. “Who wants to bet those are Kappa and Delta Dorms?”

“I certainly don’t,” said Stalwart, “because they’d be Gamma and Delta. Kappa’s closer in position to K than to C.”

“You three check that room,” Daring said, pointing at Rangifera, Fallende and Windrose. “Stalwart and I’ll get this one. And stay close. We don’t want to get lost in here or-” She glanced sideways at Windrose. “-get picked off one by one.” (Windrose pouted and stared defiantly at Daring.)

Unfortunately, that method of splitting up meant Daring was down two of her three best light sources, and the Alpha Dorms were cloaked in darkness when she entered. She absently flicked at the light switch on the wall. She got exactly what she expected: nothing. She rattled her light gem to brighten it and did a circuit of the room. The walls were the same gray concrete as everything else. There were four sets of utilitarian metal bunk beds, all with simple, cotlike mattresses and a set of folded sheets on top. Steamer trunks sat at the foot of each bed; Daring eagerly brought her light gem up close and, after a bit of searching, found their name placards. Unfortunately, the names there meant nothing to her: Polar Vortex, Thaumic Current, Dynamo, Meniscus… She tried one, but it was locked.

“Reminds me of my time in the guard,” Stalwart said. She nudged one of the bunks; it wobbled slightly. “You’ll sleep on these piece-of-crap beds, and by thunder, you’ll love it. But I guess whoever was working out here didn’t do so for the amenities like the beautiful weather or the convenient location. Wonder if they knew just what they were getting into. They probably had an idea, at least partially. Can’t imagine somepony expecting a luxury resort out here, but you never know…”

Daring pulled open the drawers in the bedside tables, always coming up with nothing. She found a journal in one and eagerly opened it, only to find it completely blank. She threw it away in disappointment. “It’s like they stopped moving in halfway through and didn’t bother to take anything away,” she said. She took another look at the trunk she’d tried. “Think you can open this?”

“Most definitely.” Stalwart poked her horn at the lock and bit her tongue in concentration. “Ah… Eh… Ha.” The lock clicked and she tugged the lid open. Inside was mostly neatly folded cold-weather clothes with some books. Daring dug through to the lower layers of the trunk, but that was it. “Hmm. Bit of a disappointment, really,” Stalwart said. She looked around the room and shrugged. “Don’t think we’ll be finding anything more in here.”

Daring and Stalwart exited Alpha Dorms at the same time the others exited Beta Dorms. “There was some luggage, but otherwise, a whole lot of jack squat,” Fallende said. “Like they set up for ponies who never came.”

“Same in ours,” said Daring. “And those’re probably the same.” She pointed down the hall. “There’s no point in sticking around here. Let’s check out hydroponics.”

That proved to be an even bigger disappointment that raised even more questions than the dormitories. Tables with dry tubs for water were set out around a series of rooms, nice and neat and orderly, and that was it. There weren’t even any bags for seeds.

“Why would they set all this crap up,” Fallende said, running a hoof through one of the tubs, “if they weren’t going to do anything with it? It’s not like they left in a hurry.”

“What makes you think they didn’t?” Daring asked. She reached beneath the lower shelf of a table on the off chance there was something she couldn’t see. Nothing.

“Everything’s neat and the doors were closed,” said Fallende. “I’ve seen places that were quickly deserted, and believe me-” She wagged a hoof at Daring. “-this doesn’t look like any of those.”

“Yeah.” Windrose was flipping through cupboards, all empty. “It’s creepy as Tartarus, but I don’t think there was any mad dash to get out because they dug too deep or something.” She paused. “Unless the storage rooms are messed up something fierce.”

They weren’t. They were filled with large, still-sealed crates set up in neat rows on pallets, just waiting to be unpacked. There was no sign of panic. The group pried a few crates open one by one and found-

“Lots of cans in here,” said Fallende from one crate. “Stars above, how can someone like diced tomatoes this much?”

“Cleaning supplies,” said Stalwart from another.

“Toiletries,” said Windrose. “Holy crow, that’s a lot of shampoo.”

“They weren’t planning on running out of pencils,” said Rangifera.

“I think these are spare parts for maintenance and upkeep,” Daring said as she turned over a box of screws. This place was making less sense by the second. Stocked and ready to go, yet never used. What had happened here?

“Wait, hang on,” said Fallende. “These cans have expiration dates on them.”

Daring was looking over her shoulder in a second. “Really?” she asked, trying not to jump in place in anticipation. “What is it? What year?”

Fallende planted a hoof in Daring’s face and pushed her away. “It’s, uh…” She squinted at the bottom of the can. “1010, I think. That’s, what, two years from now in your calendar? Three?”

“Three, yeah.” Daring picked up another can. 09 15 1010. Hmm.

“I thought canned food didn’t have expiration dates,” said Windrose, examining her own can.

“Technically, canned food doesn’t have expiration dates, my confused cohort,” said Rangifera. She had decided not to partake in looking at can bottoms. “Canned food has ‘best by’ dates. You could eat those four years after that date, but they’d look unappetizing.”

Stalwart frowned as she looked at can after can. “This can’t be right,” she muttered. “This cannot be right.” Then she spoke up. “The ‘best by’ date on canned food,” she said, “is usually four to five years after processing. Trust me, you learn the weirdest things in the Royal Guard. So from these, this place can’t be much more than a year old.”

“There’s a lot of things in here that can’t be right,” said Daring. “They’re right anyway.” Truth be told, Daring had been hoping something that was more obviously not right, more measurably not right. Yes, the place was strange, but that was all she could definitively say about it. It had nothing that was more clearly wrong that she could put her hoof on, that she could examine.

“So…” Stalwart cocked her head at Daring. “We’re going to simply ignore the fact that the Crown had some kind of research facility out here, in the middle of nowhere, and for some reason, decided it needed to be so secret that no one in Light’s Edge knew about it.”

“This is Needle Vale. Until we find better clues, yep.”

“…Well, alright, then.”

Daring turned over a can in her hoof. Unfortunately, there was really only one more place where they could look for any sort of information. “Alright,” she said, tossing the can back. “We’ll swing by the labs, then we’re heading back outside.”

“Joy,” muttered Windrose.

It was probably Daring’s imagination, but the hallway to the labs seemed longer and darker than the others. The echo of their footsteps was deeper and the blackness pushed in more. She couldn’t deny that her throat got a little bit drier as she approached the labs. She was going to be either very lucky or very unlucky.

She proved to be very unlucky in a very lucky way. The labs weren’t mad scientist labs or experimental technology labs, but the same kind of plain-desked, random-piles-of-junk labs you might find in colleges. There were strange machines inside that briefly got their excitement up, but Stalwart was quick to put that excitement back down. “These are bog-standard oscilloscopes and arcanometers, things like that,” she said. “Good for monitoring environmental magic, but not much else. I’d say this was setting up some kind of long-term surveillance of the magic in the area if there were still ponies here.” She shrugged. “Sorry.”

Searching the first few labs was fruitless and made Daring even more sick of concrete. For all the expensive equipment, there were no records of any sort, nothing they could investigate, which might’ve been more tolerable if she hadn’t had to do all the searching with light gems. Fallende actually gave up looking halfway through and started testing the swivel chairs. (They weren’t that good.) Eventually, Daring decided to throw in the towel. “Come on,” she said reluctantly. “Let’s go back out.”

The problem with investigating folk mysteries was how easily they mushroomed into something far more complicated than most ponies could imagine, sometimes without any easy answers. Daring had known Needle Vale wasn’t going to give up its secrets easily, but wow. This place hadn’t opened a can of worms so much as suffered a malfunction at the worm-canning factory. Utterly deserted and nothing about why, nothing about what it did, nothing about Needle Vale. It didn’t even have a name that Daring could ask the Crown about. She sighed and glanced at the end of the hall, to the doors she knew wouldn’t have any answers but a little voice in her head kept saying, Maybe, maybe, maybe…

Then she saw the cobweb.

It was a simple thing, strung across the last doorway, looking just like an ordinary cobweb. Maybe a touch more silvery, its strands a little thicker, glinting in a way that grabbed her attention. There was nothing particularly special about it. And that made it out-of-place in this messed-up valley, with its amnesia cliffs and repeating rivers and deserted facilities. She knew from experience that some of the most dangerous things in the world looked incredibly mundane. That innocent little cobweb was so innocent that it made Daring’s coat stand on end and forced her ears back. And only now did she realize that the halls and rooms had all been void of webs before now.

“Anyone else see that?” Daring asked, pointing. She wasn’t sure she wanted to take another step forward.

“No,” said Fallende, “I-” Then she sucked in a breath. “Yeah,” she whispered. “Yeah, I see it.”

“That spiderweb?” Rangifera walked straight up to it, looked closely at it, then stared at Daring. “Yeah, I see it. What of it?”

“Something’s up with it,” Daring said. She knew it, even if it was nothing she could put a feather on.

“What, do think something’s going to happen to you when you break it? You think that’s what’s up with it?”

“It might. Why’s that the only web we’ve seen here? How come there aren’t more?”

Stalwart’s voice shook a little when she spoke. “Yeah,” she said, “we shouldn’t-”

Rangifera rolled her eyes. “Just because it’s the only web we’ve seen here doesn’t mean it’s the only web that is here.” She raised a hoof. “Look, if it scares you so much, my haunted headmare, I’ll break it for you.” Before Daring could stop her, she brought her hoof down through the cobweb.

And Daring swore she heard it snap.

Everyone waited five, ten, fifteen increasingly tense seconds for something to happen. Nothing did. An agonizing minute. Still nothing. “See?” Rangifera said with a grin, stretching the cuts across her mouth. “Nothing to worry about.” She chuckled as she walked through the door into the lab beyond. Daring hadn’t even raised a hoof before the laughter had died. “Girls,” Rangifera said quickly, “you need to come in here now.”

10 - The Spire

Daring woke up feeling almost terrified of what she’d see in Stalwart — what if her lateral reversal had just been the start of something much, much worse? But when Stalwart crawled out of her tent, she looked normal. Relatively speaking. As the group ate breakfast, Daring watched Stalwart intently. Her movements were smooth and natural. She didn’t look to be in pain. She wasn’t coughing. Her eyes weren’t bloodshot. She-

“You know,” Stalwart muttered, “if you’re going to watch me that closely, I’d appreciate it if you told me why. You look like a stalker.”

Daring twitched. She wasn’t sure why; it wasn’t like she was trying to hide what she was doing. “I just-”

“I’M GONNA GET A BETTER LOOK AT THE LAND OKAY BYE,” said Fallende. And she was scampering up the cliff face in seconds.

“Weirdo,” Windrose mumbled as she stoked the fire.

Stalwart stared up at Fallende, but shrugged and turned back to Daring. “So what’s up?”

Daring took a deep breath. “I’m just- I’m still worried about the- flipping thing, you know? And I didn’t want to ask you about it again, because then I’d sound like I was nagging or something.”

Stalwart nodded slowly. “I appreciate the concern — really, I do — but… I don’t know, do you think I can’t take care of myself? I can feel my feelings-” (Windrose had a sudden coughing fit.) “-much better than you can, and I’m fine.”

A few seconds passed. “Call it paranoia,” Daring said eventually. “You’re out here because I hired you. If you hadn’t been out here, you wouldn’t have been flipped in the first place. So, in a way, anything that happens to you…” Her voice trailed off.

“Ah. A sense of responsibility, then?”

“Yeah.” Daring halfheartedly stirred her oatmeal. “I usually work alone, because then the only back I have to watch is my own. Plus…” She folded her ears back and flicked her tail. “When I’m alone, I don’t need to wait up for anypony else.”

Stalwart grinned. “Although I’m guessing reason two matters more than reason one?” After a second, Daring nodded, and Stalwart chuckled. “I get that. I’m not sure what’s worse: being the fastest pony in the group or the slowest, and I’ve been both.” She tipped up her porridge bowl to slurp some of the dregs down. “But really, trust me when I say I’ll tell you if my health goes south. I don’t want to be sick out here any more than you want me to be.”

“Good.” But trust was a tricky thing. You needed to let yourself go for somepony else and just believe they’d do the right thing. And Daring wasn’t completely sure Stalwart wasn’t going to hide any symptoms of dimensional flipping until it was far too late to do anything about them; she’d already seemed pretty intent on exploring Needle Vale. How sick was Stalwart’s “sick”, and how sick was that compared to Daring’s “sick”? How much would being “sick” slow her down?

Although Daring figured she could just watch for the moment Stalwart started coughing or bleeding or her pace started flagging. She wouldn’t be able to say she wasn’t holding everyone else back. Then they could turn around. But until then, she wouldn’t press the issue.

Stalwart nodded. “Glad we’ve got that cleared up.” She wiped down her face and stood up, stretching her legs. “Well, no sense in merely sitting around while we wait for Fallende to return. I’m breaking camp.”

As Stalwart and Windrose disassembled their tents, Daring waited a little longer, occasionally glancing up the cliff. It felt right, somehow, for Fallende to return to a semi-friendly face. But after several minutes ticked by with no sign of her, Daring sighed, pushed herself to her feet, and made for her tent.

Then she heard a voice. “Hey, ponies! I’m back, my gallivanting girls!” Fallende was at the top of the cliff, looking just fine.

“Hey!” Daring yelled. “Everything’s fine down here! Come on, we’re breaking camp!” She ducked into her tent. Clothes, first. The air felt more bitter cold than usual this morning, and she’d woken up shivering. Daring pawed through her clothes, looking for-

“Hey.”

Daring yelped in surprise, nearly knocking over the tent as she jumped, and spun around. Fallende was leaning into the tent, somehow having snuck up completely silently. She tilted her head. “Aren’t you antsy,” she said.

“How did you get here from the top of the cliff so quickly?” asked Daring.

“I walked through the flap,” Fallende said sarcastically. “Anyway, there ain’t a whole lot around here, my avianish adventurer. Trees, trees, and trees. Oh, and trees. You know, for variety.”

“Uh-huh. Figured. Thanks, anyway.”

“Yep.” Fallende nodded and backed out of the tent.

Daring pulled a coat from her bag and was about to put it on when a question came to her. “Hey!” she yelled as she scrambled out of the tent. “Fallende!”

Vertigo hit for a brief second when she couldn’t see Fallende — how had she disappeared in those few seconds? — but then Fallende crawled out of her own tent. “Yo!”

“You didn’t happen to see how close we were to the end of the valley, did you?”

“Uh… sorry, didn’t get a good look at that.”

“ ’Kay,” Daring said with a shrug. “That’s fine.” She wasn’t that worried anyway. It had to come eventually, right?

Then she remembered the river and shivered.

There were times when “adventuring” just dragged. You traipsed through featureless landscapes on your way to the next plot point, but very little happened in the meantime. The sorts of things adventure stories usually skipped over in the name of pacing, and for good reason. The party walked through the sparse, nearly silent forest, with very little conversation and less problems. Of course, Daring could just fly and scope out the valley in a few hours, but that was hardly fair to the groundbound mares and deer (another reason she preferred working alone). Maybe in a few days.

The landscape wasn’t helping anything at all. Ever since Stalwart’s flip, everything seemed a little more ominous. The mountains reached up on all sides like teeth, as if they were walking on the bottom of some monster’s mouth. The trees were gnarled into claws groping at the air. Even the very wind felt worse, with more snow getting into Daring’s clothing coat and melting on her natural coat. The north sucked.

Daring just pushed through the boredom and the cold, focusing on putting one hoof in front of the other. At least the snow wasn’t deep. She turned her ears back in case she could pick up a few snatches of talk, but no. She could hear nothing but the two people behind her, crunching through the sno-

Two?

Daring stopped and spun on the spot. Three people behind her: front to back, Windrose, Stalwart, and Fallende. They all stopped on a bit when she did; Windrose and Fallende even looked behind them, where they thought Daring was looking. “You hear something, my alert adventurer?” asked Fallende.

“Maybe,” Daring said, stalling. Was she just being paranoid? She doubted it. Years of careful listening for guard patrols while on the job as a dynamic archaeologist meant she knew her footsteps, and she’d only heard two people behind her. So who’d been missing? Still looking back, she walked around the three, pretending to examine the valley. “You, uh… You three keep going. I’ll do some quick scouting to be sure nothing’s following us. I’ll catch up.”

“Okay,” Fallende said, shrugging, and set off. Windrose and Stalwart traded confused looks, then Stalwart shrugged as well and they followed Fallende. Daring kept her ears peeled: three different people walking. Daggit.

She looked back and forth in case anyone was watching. Her wing twitches were genuine, but not from anxiety over some monster jumping out and trying to eat her face like the last few dozen. Anywhere else, she would’ve discarded what she’d heard as a trick of the wind, but this wasn’t a place where you could take the slightly odd for granted, not after the cliff and the river.

Daring took a few steps forward, her ears firmly pointed backwards. Three faint sets of footsteps sounded behind her. She walked forward more. What was she looking for, exactly? A sign that someone hadn’t been there, somehow. So… She trotted several yards back and looked down at the snow. The tracks they’d left were still clear.She knelt down and examined the tracks more closely. Three sets of tracks, each from a pony. She crawled forward, looking for Fallende’s tracks, sweeping her gaze this way and that over the ground. Nothing after nothing. Just the U-shaped hooves of ponies-

And then, suddenly, there was something. Fallende’s tracks simply appeared from nowhere. But it was hard to tell if they looked any different from her normal prints, because right when they appeared, everyone had come to a stop. It was right where Daring had spun around.

Right when she’d noticed she was only hearing two people walking behind her and had wanted to check.

Daring looked back and forth between where Fallende’s tracks were and weren’t. There was nothing to suggest any magic, nothing out of the ordinary. It was like Fallende had stepped from a floating platform to the ground.

So what was she supposed to say about this? Hey, girls. Apparently Fallende vanished when no one was looking. But Fallende hadn’t said anything about-

Daring glanced down the path. They were distant by now, but she could still clearly see three shapes.

But Fallende hadn’t said anything about… being gone. How would she respond? Like Stalwart had when she thought they were heading in the wrong direction? Derisively? Curiously? At all? And what could even cause everything here? Nothing Daring had heard of had such disparate effects on the world. Although, Fallende seemed well-versed in esoterica…

Daring bounded forward in long half-leaps, half-flaps, switching her gaze between the tracks (still all the tracks she expected) and the group ahead (still all the people she expected). Fallende was trailing behind Windrose and Stalwart a little. She nodded at Daring. “Hey. Find anything, my pegasus patroller?”

“No,” Daring said, shaking her head. “I’m just getting a little paranoid from how empty this place is.”

“Yep.” Fallende looked around at the mountains. “Weird, ain’t it? There’s barely any animals or- anything. Just tree after tree after tree, plus that stream. You’d think there’d be something.”

“Heh. Yeah. But, hey, quick question.”

“Yeah?”

“You know that cursed deer herd, whatstheirname, the Alver?”

“Yeah…”

“Do they leave footprints?”

Fallende’s expression briefly scrunched into one of confusion as she glanced at Daring. “Well, yeah. They’re still physical, aren’t they? Why do you ask, my questioning questor?”

Because your footprints vanished when I wasn’t looking. Ha, no, not just yet. “Just curious. Do they interact with normal reindeer much?”

“Supposedly not. They think we’re beneath them or something. Somehow.” Fallende snorted. “And as we all know, turning up your nose at your own species has only ever resulted in happy fun times for all.”

“Uh-huh.”

After several moments, Fallende asked, “Seriously, what’s up? Why’d you get curious now?”

“Because- Because right before we stopped, I could only hear two people. When I went back to look at the footprints, yours weren’t there. It was like you didn’t exist until I turned around to look at you.”

The sheer lack of reaction Fallende had was, in all honesty, kind of impressive. “Well, okay, then.” And then she just shrugged and kept walking.

Daring actually stopped walking in shock, then trotted to catch up. “That, that’s it? You’re not-”

“I remember everything from leaving camp to now, my nervous navigator,” said Fallende casually. “So Needle Vale made me stop leaving footprints and making sound. Big whoop. It’s not hurting anybody, is it?” She shrugged again.

“No, but don’t you think-”

“Oh, sheesh, I think Windrose is rubbing off on you,” snorted Fallende. “Or maybe this place is getting to you and you’re losing it.” She smirked and made a cuckoo gesture at her head.

“It’s not like that at all,” said Daring, keeping her voice level. “If you’ll come back with me, I can show you.”

“Nah,” said Fallende. “Not really into-”

Suddenly, from up ahead, Stalwart started yelling. “Daring! Fallende! Get over here now and take a look at this!”

It was a stone pillar and it was suspiciously out-of-place.

“Huh,” Daring said. She tilted her head, as if that would give her a better angle on it. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“You’ve never seen anything like this before,” mumbled Windrose. “Well. Such a great sign.”

“Who knows, it might be,” said Stalwart.

It was standing in the middle of a… “Clearing” was probably the wrong word, given how sparse the trees were. But for a good thirty feet or so around it — a perfect circle, Daring noted — there were no trees whatsoever. Digging through the snow had confirmed that grass still grew. But trees? No. They all stopped at the edge of a geometrically-beautiful ring. Hmm. A fairy ring? The ground within the ring felt perfectly flat, as if it’d been cleared beforehoof. Double hmm.

“If I’d seen something like this before,” said Daring, “this would hardly be research.”

“Yeah, but… Gah, I’d just be repeating myself.”

“You would,” said Fallende. “So shut up.”

And the pillar itself was something else. It wasn’t really a “pillar” so much as a bunch of flat stone slabs (each almost as thick as a ream of paper but otherwise unique in shape) that looked like they’d been melted together somehow, all sticking out from each other at weird angles. They were all the same kind of stone, something that reminded Daring of obsidian but wasn’t smooth enough. The pillar was three or four feet across (it was hard to tell) and maybe twenty or so high. And it simply sat there.

“Is it magical at all?” Daring asked.

“I don’t think so,” Fallende said. “It doesn’t… feel right.”

“Same here,” said Stalwart. “Still, I’m not going to go up and touch it.”

Daring bit her lip as she looked at the pillar. This was the somethingest something they’d found yet. And that was precisely why she needed to take as close a look at it as possible and why she needed to avoid it as much as possible. It could be everything in the best or worst way, and she wouldn’t know unless she risked herself. She delayed herself as she thought. “Anyone know a thing about standing stones like this?”

“Not exactly like this,” said Fallende, “but close enough. Napakivi are standing stones used by reindeer to collect magical energy, but they don’t get cut or carved at all. Carving makes them more artificial and less efficient.” She tilted her head. “I’ve never seen one this weird, though.”

Daring bit her lip again, then took a deep breath. “I’m going to take a closer look,” she said. “Get ready to run if the sky turns black or something.” She took a few steps forward, ignoring Windrose’s and Stalwart’s protests. Every foot she moved, the hairs of her coat stood a little more on end and her feathers felt more like they were stabbing her wings. Her heart ignored her attempts to stay calm. There was something not right about this stone.

But nothing came out. Nothing changed. Nothing tore a hole in space and attacked her for intruding upon its domain. And suddenly she was less than three feet away from the pillar. “I feel fine,” she said to no one in particular. “I think it’s safe, but still, don’t touch it.” She wasn’t even going to touch it with her spear.

The pillar didn’t look like much up close, once you got past the weird design. The stones were all the same black color, smooth and unmarked. It was hard to tell if they’d been carved at all or if they were naturally smoothed. Daring cocked an ear; she heard nothing. She sniffed; she smelled nothing. As if to confirm that it’d only been her nerves, her wings stopped itching so badly.

Stalwart, after a moment’s hesitation, trotted up next to her and examined the pillar. “Hmm. Odd,” she said, making no move to touch it. She glanced sidelong at Daring. “Do you think this is… you know, it? The reason Needle Vale’s weird? I mean, I know I couldn’t feel any magic, but look at it. If that just happens to be here by pure chance, I’ll eat my hat. Well, buy a hat so I can eat it. Where did that phrase come from, anyway? It’s-”

Was it? Was this it? Was this all there was? Just some random spire in the middle of nowhere? It didn’t feel right. Daring surveyed the valley around them. As far as she could tell (which wasn’t very), they weren’t even at some numerically-important ratio of distances or anything. It was simply the pillar, its crooked design, and its lack of trees.

And yet… It didn’t feel right. It was hard to deny the oddness of everything. The pillar was just sitting there, but at the same time, it was just… sitting there. It was doing nothing, but it was also… doing nothing. Like a puzzle dropped in by some fickle god solely to mock her and her trying to find a reason for anything. Maybe it wasn’t the reason Needle Vale was so strange, but Daring had a hard time believing it wasn’t related at all.

She walked around the pillar to look at the other side. Nothing more unusual than before.

“So, um,” said Windrose, “are you gonna… I don’t know, study that at all? It looks important, but…”

“I think we should,” said Stalwart immediately. She leaned around the pillar to look at Daring. “Don’t you? It’s so-”

“Studiable, yeah,” said Daring, wishing she had a better word. She walked back around and gestured at Windrose and Fallende. “Feel free to take a rest. We might be here a while.” She spread her wings and flew to the top of the pillar. Nothing obvious.

“Excellent,” said Stalwart. Her horn began glowing and she trotted a circle around the pillar. “Finally, something worthwhile. Everything else has been too ordinary or too abstract, which hardly makes for compelling… anything, really. So, what are we looking for?”

“I have no idea.”

She didn’t hear anything, but Daring didn’t have to think hard to imagine Windrose groaning.

Daring had owned a certain… sculpture when she’d been younger. Most of the time, it looked like a disparate mass of gray shards, all differently-sized, all poking out from their base at strange, off-putting angles. But when viewed from the right positions, the different parts of the sculpture lined up just right to form distinct silhouettes. Here was a bird, there was a house, here was a sword… Daring had found six different silhouettes and she’d never been sure there weren't any more.

The pillar looked something like that: a confused amalgamation of stone slabs that almost made intricate shapes from the right perspective. But emphasis on the “almost”. It was maddening; she would step into this position, see all the right lines, the pillar would begin to look like something, and then a slab would poke out at exactly the wrong place and the pillar would be nothing again.

“Daring,” said Windrose.

She walked around and around and around the pillar for what felt like an hour, and Daring still couldn’t say whether or not there was something hidden in the pillar. Her mind refused to either give up (she was so close) or even rest until the matter was settled. So she walked around and around and…

“Daring!” said Windrose.

It looked like Stalwart wasn’t giving up either. She kept tapping at it with her magic, probing it, stepping back for a better look, stepping forward for better details, going around and around. She looked almost as invested as Daring, in fact. She alternated between sticking her tongue out in thought and moving her mouth soundlessly. If she’d had a pen and paper, she probably would’ve been taking notes like mad.

“Hey!” screamed Fallende. “Equus to Absent Archaeologist! We’re still here!”

“I hear you,” Daring said vaguely. “This is what I’m here for.”

“Then what are you looking for? You’ve been staring at that- thing for ages!”

“I’ll know it when I see it.”

“If you haven’t seen it yet, you ain’t gonna see it! It’s-” Fallende groaned. “Windrose, I need some help.”

Windrose twitched, but still spoke up. “Look, you and Stalwart have been looking at that thing for a long time. Between the two of you, don’t you think you’d’ve seen anything out-of-place?”

“Maybe, but…” Daring wasn’t sure they knew the feeling. The horrible itching in your mind that meant you were missing something. If you didn’t look into it, it’d gnaw away at you, always pulling your thoughts back to itself. She needed to scratch that itch. Even worse, it felt like finding that missing something was always one step away, no matter how many steps forward she took. Almost, almost, almost kept running through her head and anchoring her mind. Nothing could pull her away from it. The best she could explain it was, “I’ve got a hunch, okay?”

“So do I,” said Stalwart. She reared and squinted up at the top of the pillar. “Why is it here in the first place? It has to mean something. Or do you two both think it simply appeared here?”

“It might’ve!” said Windrose. “Magic, Needle Vale, weird place, right?”

“It didn’t,” said Daring. “I could feel it.” It was just so… unsatisfying. Like looking at clouds and learning that the shapes them hadn’t been-

“One hour,” Fallende said solidly. “Then we’re leaving. I’m sick of waiting.”

“Hmm?” Daring asked. In all honesty, she was just a bit surprised no one had tried putting their hoof down before.

“You heard me.” Fallende’s voice brooked no argument and she was less than an octave away from growling it out. “You have an hour, my laggard leader.”

Daring almost responded, but she could understand Fallende’s frustration. (And from the look on her face, so could Stalwart.) If you weren’t an archaeologist, the slow, painstaking “investigation” phase was easily the most tedious part of uncovering ancient civilizations. Priceless magical artifacts were exciting, but it was the trash heaps that actually told you about a culture. If she could just figure out what was up with this pillar…

Well, she had an hour. Maybe she needed to stop looking blankly at the pillar and actually think about it. She wanted to examine it more closely still, but she managed to tear her gaze from the pillar and glare at the ground instead as she walked. She noticed its shadow.

Daring woke up screaming through her gag and thrashing against her bonds.

11 - Ever Deeper

Daring screamed, twisted in her ropes. They cruelly dug into her, biting into her skin, her flesh. Her heart was beating itself to death and she needed to run. She’d never been so scared in all her life. The terror slithered down her spine and sank its thorny claws deep into her nerves. She needed to run. She needed to get away from here. No matter what it took.

She felt lightheaded. She forced herself to stop screaming and look around. On either side of her, the sides of a tent sloped upward to a point. One of the poles was a bit askew; she must’ve knocked into it somehow. Nothing else in the tent could do that.

Daring’s breathing was light, shallow; hyperventilation. The gag ensured she was soon sucking down her own carbon dioxide. She started beating out a slow metronome in her head: inhale… exhale… 3… 4… inhale… exhale… 3… 4… inha-

The tent flap was swept back and Windrose leaned in. She stared at Daring, and Daring stared back. Windrose looked back over her shoulder. “She’s alive!” she yelled. “She just stopped screaming.”

After a second of confusion, Daring started wriggling away from Windrose. She didn’t know why she’d been tied up, but that didn’t matter. Windrose and Fallende were trying to stop her and she needed to run.

“Whoa, wait!” Windrose was kneeling by her side. “Listen, you- Are you doing okay? You stopped screaming. You better be doing okay.” She laughed nervously. “It’s either that or you’re not okay at all.”

Daring stopped trying to get away. Anypony could see the confusion on her face. A long moment, and then she shrugged as best she could.

“Good. Um, sorry about, you know, tackling you. I didn’t dislocate your wing, did I? Heh. Um. Please don’t start screaming again, okay?” Windrose’s hoof went to the knot on Daring’s gag. “You better be lucid,” she whispered, and undid the gag.

The air that flooded Daring’s body stuck her throat with frigid needles, but she didn’t care. She took giant gulps of clean air. Her legs started twitching in their ropes. She needed to run. They needed to run. “We need to run,” she gasped. “Now.” That much was certain. Nothing else was.

Windrose pulled her head back in shock. “W-what? What do you-”

“Running,” snapped Daring. “It’s not that hard. We can’t stay here.” She leaned forward and gnashed her teeth, but she couldn’t reach any knots.

“Why? What’re we running from?”

Daring laughed bitterly. “You don’t know? From-”

Her brain skipped a few thoughts and words suddenly refused to come. She rolled her thoughts back a bit. “We’re running from- From…”

From what?

She was scared. Daring was well aware of that. But when she thought about it, what she was scared of was a gigantic blank. She kept thinking and came up with nothing. Zilch. Nada. She was just scared. She couldn’t even think of anything that might have made her scared. She just remembered seeing the spire’s shadow and then waking up bound and gagged.

It was like a switch had been flipped in her head. The fear bubbled away so quickly it was like she’d never been scared in the first place. “I don’t know,” she admitted eventually. “I was scared of something, but I can’t remember what.”

Windrose tilted her head and frowned. “Okayyyyyyy…”

“That’s it, really,” said Daring. “It must’ve been left over from some nightmare I’d had while unconscious.” She couldn’t think of anything else. She wiggled a little in her ropes. “Could you, uh, untie me?”

“Okay,” Windrose said, but she sounded skeptical. After a moment, she untied Daring. Daring rubbed at her fetlocks, but they didn’t hurt that much. She must’ve not been out for too long.

They were still stopped not far from the pillar, the sun not far from its zenith, and Fallende was pacing outside the tent. When Daring and Windrose came out, she looked up. “She just stopped screaming?” she asked Windrose.

“That’s what it looked like, yeah,” said Windrose. “And I don’t think she remembers what she was screaming about.” She turned to Daring. “Do you?”

“I don’t remember anything,” said Daring. “I was walking around, looking at that pillar. Then I was tied up, gagged, and terrified of I don’t know what. What happened to me?”

Windrose and Fallende Looked at each other. Fallende shrugged and said, “I- We don’t know, we don’t know, really, my comatose comrade. You stopped walking, stared at nothing on the ground for a little while, and then just started screaming.”

“It was… It was real bad,” said Windrose. “I honestly thought you were going to suffocate. You never stopped, never even took a breath. I tried to shake you out of it, but you lashed out at me. You nearly cut a gash right along here.” She traced a line just below her cheekbone. “You didn’t say anything, didn’t stop screaming, didn’t even move except when we tried to touch you.”

“So I used magic to gag you and tie you up,” said Fallende. “When it stopped being scary, it was really annoying. Oh, don’t look at me like that, my angry ally,” she said in response to Windrose’s stinkeye, “it was! I couldn’t think enough to care!”

Windrose huffed and continued, “We decided that if you didn’t stop, we’d carry you back to Light’s Edge. I, I mean, you can’t seriously think about still going on. …Right?”

Daring looked at her hooves. It was hard to say. On the one hoof, she’d just been struck with a bout of panic so severe that her brain apparently felt the need to black it out, and for no obvious reason. On the other… that was it. Her head wasn’t pounding. Her heart wasn’t racing anymore. She didn’t feel the base, instinctual terror she once had. She’d just been super scared for a while. She stalled. “How long was I out? Between starting to scream and getting untied, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” said Windrose. “Maybe ten, fifteen minutes?”

“Something like that, yeah,” said Fallende.

Fifteen minutes. She’d been scared literally out of her mind for a full fifteen minutes. And she didn’t even know by what. Could she justify going on after that? But she wasn’t remotely frightened now. Could she justify turning back? She’d come all this way through Needle Vale, unlocked more of its mysteries than any pony or reindeer before her, only to turn right around because she was scared?

She looked at Windrose and Fallende. The former was shuffling on her hooves and chewing her lip. The latter looked like she was waiting in line at the grocery store. Fallende probably wouldn’t be hard to convince, one way or the other. Windrose, though, was another matter. She definitely wouldn’t agree, but would she go along with it anyway? “Well,” Daring said slowly, “I feel fine now, so-”

“I’ll get started packing,” said Windrose sourly. “I know when I’m betting on a dead horse.” She immediately walked over to the tent and began dismantling it.

“…Okay, then,” said Daring. “Fallende, do you think you could… I don’t know, scout to the north for a bit or something? For a campsite for lunch. It’s almost noon.”

Fallende grinned. Or maybe just bared her teeth at Daring. Those teeth looked awfully sharp, either way. “Finally,” she said. “I’ve been sitting around waiting on you for ages. Back in five.” She began trotting northward.

Daring turned to Windrose, but then remembered something. “Hey!” she yelled as she turned back to Fallende. “Remember to-”

But Fallende was nowhere to be seen. Her tracks stopped several yards away.

Daring grimaced, prayed that she could ignore that for a little while, and walked up to Windrose. Already, the tent was almost packed. “Hey,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“Obviously not,” said Windrose, not looking up as she haphazardly stuffed the poles into the tent bag. “Do you have a death wish or something? Is that why you want to keep going even though you nearly lost your mind?”

“I’m fine now.” And she was. Right?

“Are you?” Windrose looked Daring in the eye. “Needle Vale is weird. Okay. So what? In trying to investigate it, we’ve lost our memories, nearly gotten stuck in some kind of spacetime loop, found a deserted facility, and you just got so terrified of something that you don’t remember it. And you still want to keep moving. Is nothing going to stop you?”

She returned her attention to the tent bag and tried zipping it up. “No, I don’t want to hear your excuses. They’ll just be something like ‘we’ve come so far, we can’t stop now’. Yes, we can. But, hey, I’m just a lackey, what do I know?” She smashed down a portion of the tent that was sticking out. “At least we’ll get away from here.”

Daring wasn’t sure Windrose had ever experienced the feeling of having to work just a little bit longer to finish a job. That extra hour of overtime on a project, those sleepless nights of research, they stuck with you. You knew when to keep at it because you close to the end. And Daring had so many puzzle pieces, they simply had to fit together somehow. She just needed to think a bit more.

And yet, she couldn’t deny that Windrose was making, had always made, some very good points.

“We’re getting close to the end of the valley,” she heard herself say eventually. “If, if there’s nothing obvious, we’ll turn around, go right back to Light’s Edge, and I can look for some more experienced ponies. Are you still making that map?”

“Yep.”

“I mean, just that will-”

“Hey!”

Daring and Windrose turned around. Fallende was skidding back into the campsite, not breathing especially heavily. “There’s a good site about half a mile from here-”

“Half a mile?” Windrose asked. “You were gone for barely a minute.”

Fallende shrugged. “I’m a fast runner when I want to be, my sulky skeptic. Anyway, it’s flat and it’s near a cliff for some shelter. It’s perfect for lunch. Nothing’s wrong with it. I don’t know about you, but I’m just dying to get away from here.” She looked at Daring and all levity she had vanished. “Seriously,” she said, her voice flat, “if I have to hang around this rock for another minute, I’m gonna hurl.”

“Fine,” Daring said. “Sounds like a plan. Let’s get going.”

As she hitched her bags across her withers, Daring couldn’t shake the feeling that she was missing something important at the pillar. But Windrose and Fallende were right; she’d spent too much time here. At least she had a good starting point for if she ever returned.

Fallende led the way out of the clearing, Windrose close behind, Daring lagging. It was hard to leave such an obvious mystery unsolved. She glanced at the pillar one last time, then turned ahead. “Hey, do either of you-”

She whirled back to the pillar, breathing heavily. She examined it intently from top to bottom, looking for the shape she knew she’d seen in there. Almost, but not quite… Almost, but not quite…

“Do either of us…?” prompted Fallende. She looked over her shoulder and twitched. “Daring!”

No… There was no way she’d seen that… right? Her eyes began watering, she was staring so intently. She leaned left. Almost, but not quite… She leaned right. Almost, but not quite…

“Hey! Daring! Wake up, you equine egghead!”

It was taunting her. It was almost the right shape, all the time, but the lines never quite matched up, like a badly-drawn optical illusion. And if she was right-

Wham. Fallende clouted Daring hard on the head. “Ai! You’re not having another episode, are you? Windrose, get over-”

Daring pushed Fallende away. “I’m fine,” she said. “Give me a second. I thought I saw something.” But the shape refused to solidify. Where was it?

“You- You want us to wait again?” gasped Fallende. “Windrose and me, we’ve already been waiting on you for ages, and-”

“Give it a rest, Fallende,” said Windrose. “It won’t take long.”

“That’s beside the point! I don’t want to sit on my tail here any longer!”

“I only need a sec, honest,” said Daring. She took a few steps towards the pillar. Maybe she just needed a better look at it.

“…You know what? No.” A magical haze surrounded Daring’s head and she was wrenched to one side, muzzle-to-muzzle with a snarling Fallende. She prodded Daring hard on the chest. “If you don’t snap out of it now, my dimwitted dope,” Fallende said, her teeth bared like fangs, “I am going to take all your crap, and I am going back to Light’s Edge, and you can freeze to death out here, grazing on your own pubic hair for all I care.”

Daring smacked Fallende across the cheek, disrupting her concentration enough to pull out of the telekinetic grip. “Just hold on for one second,” she said, pounding on the ground with her spear. “There’s something here, I just saw it, and I’m not going to leave-”

“Do I look like someone who gives a rat’s ass? I am not going to sit on my butt all day watching you drool at some stupid column of rock!” yelled Fallende. “A sec’ll become a minute’ll become an hour! At this rate, you’ll die before you can get back, and-”

“Whoa, hey!” Windrose yelled. She forced herself between the two of them and shoved them apart. Daring couldn’t have resisted even if she’d wanted to; earth pony magic was a potent thing. “Break it up, you two! Fallende, for Celestia’s sake, quit whining!”

“W-whining? Whining? My dedicated dearie, I’m not-”

“Yeah, you are,” said Windrose bluntly. “I know the feeling. I’ve been whining for the past few days and I’ve been waiting on her every second you have. But, sweet Sisters, don’t act like it’s the end of the sunblasted world! She just wanted to stop for a little while longer, and, yeah, that’s annoying, but you’d think you caught your significant other cheating on you with her! Calm down.”

“I will if she moves,” said Fallende, her ears back. She pawed at the ground and her sharp hooves carved furrows in the snow. “I’m sick and tired of waiting.”

Daring opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, Windrose turned on her. “And I know she’s overblown in her whining, but she’s got a point. We spent like an hour watching you walk around that stupid rock, then we had to wait another fifteen minutes while you screamed your head off, and now-” She clamped her mouth shut and took a few forced breaths. “Look, if you’re so sure that that’s the key to Needle Vale, can’t we just all head back and you bring in more trained ponies or reindeer later? Then you can at least have more eyes on it and us two won’t be sitting around doing jack squat.”

“That’s my vote,” mumbled Fallende.

For all she liked self-reliance, Daring knew there were a few advantages to working with somepony else. Like having a different perspective to slap her around if the tunnel her vision was in got too narrow. It was easy to get lost in her own thoughts, and that wasn’t nearly as fun for anyone else. “Sorry,” she managed to say. “I… thought I saw…” She glanced at the pillar again. Nothing. “I thought there was something there, and I just- got caught up in it, I guess.” She flicked her tail and shuffled her hooves. She suddenly felt like an anchor, dragging everyone else down. Even though this was her expedition.

After a second, Fallende’s jaw slackened and she sighed. “Fine, as long as we keep moving. I ain’t the best at sitting still. Also sorry, I guess.”

“Good,” growled Windrose. “Now kiss and make up.”

Daring and Fallende looked at Windrose, then looked at each other. “Uh…”

“It’s a joke,” sighed Windrose. “A joke.” She set off down the valley, contemptuously flicking her tail at the two of them.

Fallende quickly trotted after her. Daring waited a few moments more. She looked back at the pillar, tilting her head this way and that, but she couldn’t replicate that one second that had caused a double take. For a single instant, the slabs had lined up and she’d thought she’d seen the silhouette of a writhing pony. She couldn’t find anything like that anymore.

Must’ve been her overeager imagination.

Lunch was supremely awkward. No one wanted to look at anyone else, and conversation was a whole lot of nothing. Everyone sat as far away from each other as they could without being far from the fire they’d decided to put together. For noontide, the wind was awfully cold.

Daring picked at her vaguely food-ish mush. Her argument with Fallende felt like it’d been seared into her mind. Fallende was completely correct about her actions. She had been hanging around that pillar for a reason she’d known was false. She had been holding up her own expedition for no real gain. Really, one of them should’ve spoken up sooner. And now that she was away from the pillar, that nagging feeling that’d been driving her now felt hollow, forced.

And then there was Fallende’s… extreme reaction. Hostile, aggressive, overblown. Fallende hadn’t struck Daring like that. A bit uncaring of others and crass, perhaps, but not frothing-at-the-mouth crazed. Maybe it was the idea that she’d finally been leaving only to stop again that’d made her snap, but Daring wasn’t sure.

Which got her thinking: was the valley getting into their heads?

They’d already gotten amnesia from the cliff; skewing their emotions or thoughts wasn’t that far away, metaphysically speaking. And assuming that was true, was something deliberately causing it or was it just a side effect of… ley lines or whatever? Was it only this deep into the valley? Was it detectable with magic?

Or was she just being paranoid? Stressed? So unwilling to admit her disappointment in finding concrete causes for Needle Vale that she was blaming vague forces of otherness rather than just packing up, going home, and losing? Daring hated losing, even if that losing didn’t doom the world or result in some scumbag getting filthy rich. And when she “lost” to just her own expectations, well, she couldn’t even punch her expectations in the face.

The end was near, though, one way or another. The valley wasn’t much longer. They’d reach its northernmost point tomorrow evening, at the latest. And if there was nothing easily understandable, they’d turn around. Period. Sometimes striking out blindly rewarded you with hidden paths, and sometimes it rewarded you with endless work beneath constant promises of, “Just a bit more…” Daring was good at field work, but she saved the specifics of artifact arcanoanalysis for the experts.

Fallende shoveled a bite of bread into her mouth and stood up. “Mind if I do a little more scouting?” she asked, jogging in place. “You look like you won’t be done for a few more minutes, my munching mares, and I still don’t like sitting around.”

“Go ahead,” Daring said, vaguely waving her away. “Just don’t take too long.”

The words had barely left her mouth before Fallende took off, galloping to the north. Daring glanced after her. There were footprints.

“Daring?” asked Windrose.

“Yeah?”

“Is this worth your life? Or your mind? You’re so… focused that I bet you’d still crawl forward if both your rear legs were broken.”

“I haven’t lost either yet.” Technically. Besides, she’d been through worse.

Windrose grunted. “It’s only a matter of time.”

“Then let’s find the heart of Needle Vale before that time comes.”

“Your rousing speech leaves a lot to be desired.”

Daring couldn’t argue with that. She’d never been good at speeches. She pulled her cloak around herself and stared into the fire.

12 - The Divide

Lunch and a little bit of relaxation gave Daring a jolt of determination. After that pillar, she was so close to finding the secret of Needle Vale. So close. She could feel it in her bones.

Or was that her mind acting up again?

But the negative feeling was soon gone. She’d find the answer soon enough. Once she reached the other end of the valley, she’d either have something to study or a decent story about how she was the first pony to plumb the depths of Needle Vale. (If she discounted that facility, anyway.)

Daring stood up and flexed her wings. They’d been sitting around long enough. “Ready to go?”

“Sure,” said Windrose. “I think we’ve…” Then she frowned. She looked around the makeshift campsite, over and over, as if she was missing something important. “It’s… just us two?”

“Sure,” Daring said. “Same way it’s been for the past week. Why?”

“I don’t know.” Windrose rubbed her head. “This doesn’t feel right.”

“Why not?”

“Dunno. It’s… Never mind. I’ll get the fire.”

But while Daring stopped minding, she could tell Windrose didn’t. As they headed north, Daring kept an ear tilted back, occasionally picking up low mutterings from Windrose. She couldn’t make sense of it. Something about memory and being introverted. Well, Windrose’d bring it up if it was important.

The trees were growing denser, and Daring couldn’t tell why. By now, it almost resembled a proper forest. But the trees felt like rough splinters sticking up out of the ground, as if simply brushing against them would get Daring stabbed with needles in a dozen places. The valley was beginning to feel threateningly empty in that way only forests can: no one visible, yet dozens of places to hide. And watch.

Daring took a closer look around at the forest. It felt different, even setting aside the tree density, but she couldn’t say why. It was through that sixth sense that told her to duck beneath traps, that told her she was about to be stabbed in the back. The forest was… angry, almost. She and Windrose weren’t supposed to be here. Nothing was supposed to be here.

Even the cold felt different. Daring’s boots were soaking through and her coat wasn’t doing much good anymore. The slightest puff of wind curled down her neck, tore at her trunk with frigid talons, and shot out next to her tail, as if there wasn’t anything there. Pegasus weatherproofing could only go so far. She thought Windrose was probably miserable, but Windrose didn’t say anything. Not to Daring, anyway.

Daring and Windrose walked. The snow crunched. The sun lowered. Windrose muttered to herself. The wind blew. Shadows lengthened.

Their miniscule group felt oddly empty. They needed at least one more person, Daring thought. An adventuring “party” with only two people was strange. Three was better for conversation, keeping eyes out for detail, keeping watch at night (if it came to that), and so on. Why’d she only hired one other person to help? She might as well have just gone by herself. It’d definitely be-

“Oh, shit,” whispered Windrose, her footsteps stumbling to a stop.

Daring twitched at Windrose’s voice, but she didn’t look back. “Noticed something?” she asked.

“W-we need to stop now,” said Windrose. “Please.”

“Why?”

“You wouldn’t b-believe me. We can’t keep moving.”

“Walking and talking’s not that-”

“Daring, if you don’t stop right this second, I swear to Celestia and Luna both, I’ll break your legs.”

It was Windrose’s voice that did it. It was hard, solid, aggressive, hostile. Daring had heard weaker threats from crime lords. She almost stumbled as she came to a halt. It wouldn’t have surprised her to see Windrose casually swinging a sledgehammer to make good on her promise.

But Windrose didn’t look angry. She looked scared out of her mind. Her eyes were wide, her legs were shaking, and she was breathing heavily. When she collapsed onto her rump, all Daring could do was blink in surprise. “Whoa. Are… you okay?”

Windrose giggled nervously. “Nope. No. Not at all. Nope. This’ll sound crazy, but just… h-hear me out, okay?”

“You don’t need anything?”

Windrose’s voice grew steadier as she said, “Only for you to listen to me.”She took a deep breath. “Why did you hire me?”

Daring cocked her head. “You needed the money and volunteered. Plus, you were a cartographer.”

“How did I know you were heading out? Why did you hire me and only me?”

“Well, you…” But somehow, when Daring thought back to when she’d met Windrose, she came up with just a vague haze. “I… don’t know.” In fact, an awful lot of her time in Light’s Edge was a vague haze. It was like her memories had been badly blotted and crudely rewritten. “Must’ve had a lot of beer to drink.”

“Did you actually get beer or whiskey or- any sort of liquor?” snapped Windrose. “Or did you get something warm and dry, like spiced cider or hot cocoa? Because you came from way down south, and after I’ve spent days traipsing through the Frozen North nonstop, the last thing I want to do is feel woozy from alcohol.”

“Um…” Yet Daring clearly remembered ordering hot cider. After that, the bartender had directed her to a corner, where… And then everything turned hazy again.

Windrose didn’t wait for an answer. “See, I’m… my initiative’s not the greatest. I wouldn’t’ve just walked up to a stranger and started talking about getting hired.” She started making shaky gestures. “But maybe if, if I’d heard you talking to somebody… Can you remember trying to hire any, I don’t know, freelancers or something?”

Daring had asked the bartender for some tips, and then… nothing. She’d spent an entire day lounging around after that, something she normally wouldn’t do unless she was waiting for someone. But who or what was she waiting for? She couldn’t remember.

Her conclusion must’ve shown on her face, because Windrose said, “You can’t, can you?” She started pacing, waving her hoof at nothing in particular. “So I can’t remember how we met,” she continued, her voice growing in speed and pitch, “and I don’t even see how we could’ve met if you hadn’t been talking with someone else. Then there’s all the rough-and-tumble adventurers you could’ve hired in Light’s Edge, and for some reason you only go with a single cartographer?”

She stopped pacing and looked Daring in the eye. “We came in here with other people. I know we did. We had to. I wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t. And I don’t remember anything about them. They… I don’t think they exist anymore. They never did.”

A little warning flag went up in Daring’s head. Maybe Windrose was just talking crazy. But if she wasn’t… “You think Needle Vale’s rewriting history?” Daring asked.

“Or- something.” Windrose rubbed the back of her neck and looked away. “I… know it sounds crazy, but I never would’ve come out here alone. I get holes in my memory whenever I try to remember what I was doing when I met you or at other times in the past week. I mean, how did we get back to our bags after that wolf attack?”

If Daring had been somepony else, she probably would’ve dismissed the idea out of hoof. But she’d seen too much weird stuff in her time for that. And once she accepted that, it made far too much sense. The gaps in her memory, heading into Needle Vale with only a cartographer, her behavior in Light’s Edge… It felt like she was missing something because she was missing something. Someone.

Daring thought, trying to remember a name, any name. But she came up with nothing, every time. She only remembered herself and Windrose. Sometimes, she caught strange spots where there should’ve been someone else yet wasn’t. She’d hired others. She wouldn’t have done it any other way. And now they were gone. Because they’d followed her in.

Eventually, Daring got enough control over herself to swallow. “Just to play draconequus’s advocate,” she said, sounding not quite as nervous as she felt, “you don’t think that maybe it’s just our memories that are getting messed up, and-”

“No, it’s way worse than that,” Windrose said quietly. “It’s not just things in this valley. How many other groups have come in here and vanished?”

And Daring swore she felt her heart stop.

However many people she’d taken in here, they were gone now, like they’d never existed. All of them except Windrose. There was an entire Equestrian facility set up to study the place, stocked yet unstaffed. That cave at the tail end of the first valley hadn’t been hard to find, if you were persistent. The weather wasn’t even that bad, once you got used to it. And yet, somehow, everyone in Light’s Edge had said that no one found anything in Needle Vale. That no one vanished in Needle Vale.

But that was only true for people they remembered, wasn’t it?

Windrose was still talking, pointing out the obvious. “I, I mean, do you really think you’re the first pony who’ll, boy, give it the old college try and really get it done this time? The first one who’s that determined? The first one to make it this far? The first one that-” She gestured at Daring with a shaking hoof. “We. Need. To leave. Now. Before- Before anything happens to us.” She looked around the forest and pulled her cloak tight.

How long had this place been swallowing ponies and reindeer up? Decades? Centuries? Even longer? Stories about Needle Vale went back to before Celestia and Luna taking the throne. Surely somebody would’ve taken it upon themselves to investigate. And then they’d vanish and no one would remember them anymore. Over and over and over and over and over and over.

It must’ve happened recently, even. That facility had been well-supplied and built to last. Celestia had known something was up, so she had a station set up to monitor it, and then… Had they all gone at once, or slowly, one by one?

She settled down onto her rump and took long, deep breaths. It felt like the air was crushing her. It was one thing to see someone die in front of her. It was another to realize reality itself had apparently decided to forget them. It was… Daring couldn’t put it into words. Wrong. Like the universe was lying to her and she had no evidence against it.

But maybe- Daring dove for her bag and started throwing things out. Where was her journal? Where was it where was it where was it…

“It’s not gonna help, whatever you’re looking for,” Windrose said humorlessly. “This is-”

“Not that,” said Daring. Her journal was mashed at the bottom of her bags. “Maybe, if I wrote something about them…”

But the only names in the journal were hers and Windrose’s. Her writing felt stilted, like somepony was trying to imitate her and doing a poor job of it. It wasn’t just their memories the others were missing from. It was probably everything. Not just here, either, but far, far beyond the valley. All traces of them. Whoever they were. Gone. Wiped from history.

“They’re not there, are they?” Windrose’s voice was devoid of hope.

Daring felt like she was being judged and found wanting as she put the journal away again. “…No.”

“If we stay in here,” Windrose said, “it’s only a matter of time before-”

“We can’t leave,” Daring heard herself say. “Not yet.”

Silence fell. The wind didn’t blow. When Windrose blinked, Daring wasn’t sure she couldn’t hear it. “I… I’m sorry, what?” asked Windrose. One of her ears was so far back it was nearly pointing straight down. “But… you… We…”

“There’s still something in here,” Daring insisted. But she wasn’t feeling it. “If we can find it, we can put a stop to this, and no one will vanish again.” Her words were hollow. Was she just a glutton for punishment?

“You know what else can do that?” snapped Windrose. “A great big sign that says-” She swept her hooves wide. “-‘If you enter here, you will definitely die.’ We go back, tell everyone, and the place is sealed off. Done.”

Daring wondered if her desire to stay back was reflexive, born from a prior lifetime of not knowing when to quit. Of course, then, everything had worked out just fine. “But if I- we don’t find anything, everyone else who came here will have… vanished for nothing.”

“THERE’S NOTHING OUT HERE!” screamed Windrose. “We came to this place, and all that’s happened since is- is- Oh, Celestia.” She collapsed onto the ground. She turned her face towards Daring, but her eyes were unfocused, like seeing was too much effort. “I’m gonna die out here,” she said tonelessly. Sobs wracked her chest. “I… I’m gonna die… and… and nopony’s even gonna r-remember me. N-not even my f-family.” Tears trickled down her face. It was hard to tell whether the sounds that escaped her were from her crying or laughing. “I j-just wanted t-to make some sunblasted money…”

“Listen,” Daring said. “It…” She shuffled from hoof to hoof, awkwardly staring at the ground. She walked up to Windrose and laid a hoof on her shoulder. “It’ll be-”

Windrose swung, catching Daring in the jaw. Daring toppled away into the snow. “You get the fuck away from me!” Windrose roared. “This is your fault! You brought us out here! You didn’t turn around! You’re the only other one left! Nothing would’ve happened if not for you!”

“I didn’t know!” But the chill of the snow was getting to her where Windrose’s words weren’t. She didn’t know, but the decision to keep moving after the amnesiatic episode was on her. Any others would’ve been hers, too. When had her other team members vanished? Where? Had anything strange happened then? “I- didn’t think…” Her voice trailed into silence. She didn’t know Needle Vale would erase them from history, and even with her memories getting yanked from her mind, she’d still assumed she could handle it.

“How many times did I say that we needed to turn around?” Windrose asked. “Six? Seven? Maybe ten times that and we just can’t remember. I told you something was up! And you said that was the point! And now you’re-”

Windrose suddenly stopped talking and turned as still as a statue. She stared at Daring, her eyes filled with determination. “I’m going back. Goodbye,” she said decisively. She turned around and walked south.

“Wait, hold on.” Daring quickly flew around and landed in front of Windrose. “What’re you doing?”

“I’m going back to Light’s Edge alone,” said Windrose calmly, “and I’ll rip your wings off if you try to stop me.” She pushed Daring aside and kept walking. “I only came for the money. You didn’t pay me enough to die.”

“But-” Yet Daring knew nothing she could say would slow Windrose down. It was for the best, probably. She didn’t want to be here; why try keeping her? She took a deep breath. “Fine. Be seeing you.” What else was she supposed to say? She turned her back on Windrose and headed north.

“And you’re still walking?” yelled Windrose. “Don’t bother! There’s nothing up there! But, oh, you don’t care, do you? You’re just so close, just like you’ve been for the past week, and it’s never worked before, but this time! This time! This time! Somehow, you’ll find out what’s going on and that’ll make it allllllll better! Just like everyone else who’s come in!”

Daring’s wings stiffened and her jaw clenched. Her walking became automatic, stilted. But she said nothing and she didn’t stop.

Trees and mountains passed her by as the sound of Windrose’s footsteps dwindled away. After walking with her for so long, the quiet was deafening. Nothing was around Daring except the land. It was a bittersweet feeling: she was finally unburdened, yet she was letting somepony walk away into the wilderness. She pushed the thought to the back of her head and walked and walked.

And walked.

After about a minute, far in the distance, Windrose screamed out one last parting shot. “Even if I remember you, I won’t mourn you, you stupid, sunblasted stot!”

The echoes faded.

Silence fell.

The forest closed in.

Nothing moved.

And Daring was alone.

It was almost a relief, in a way. She could keep walking and she’d only have to worry about herself. And Windrose could take care of herself. She’d be fine. She was tough, she was an earth pony. She’d fended off that wolf days ago with no problem. She’d be fine. Right?

Right?

Daring’s mind kept going back to Windrose as she walked. She’d never had a split quite like that. No matter how much she told herself otherwise, she felt like she was abandoning Windrose. Even though the other way around was more likely.

The land felt far too still, cast in stone and painted over. There were no animals, no winds to make the trees so much as twitch. Nothing. Daring found herself missing the sound of Windrose’s footsteps. It was probably the cold. It was too easy to get caught in the open and die from frostbite or hypothermia this far north, and company made it easier to stay alive — from shared body heat, if nothing else. Deserts felt the same way. And two more eyes made it easier to watch out for predators.

Daring stopped walking and turned in a circle. No predators. Hopefully, she wouldn’t meet any that night.

Dinner was quiet. Darkness pressed in around her, in spite of the fire’s valiant attempt to hold it back. Alone with her thoughts, pressing on seemed less fun than it had a week ago. If she turned around, the world wouldn’t end. No evil force would take over; Needle Vale had sat for millennia and might sit for millennia more without affecting those around it. She was only satisfying her own ego by continuing to move on. And her ego definitely wasn’t-

No. She couldn’t go back. Not now. She needed to find the source of Needle Vale. To end this.

But did she need to do it alone? She knew nothing about time magic. Or whatever kind of magic this was. She needed experts, a team, skilled arcanists- No, she needed to stay out of the way of the experts, the team, and the skilled arcanists. It wouldn’t be hard. She could turn around tomorrow, fly to catch up with Windrose, and be back in Light’s Edge in four or five days, and tell some relevant pony in Equestria — some relevant reindeer in Tarandusia, too — about what was happening, then sit back and let them take care of the problem.

No. She couldn’t go back. Not now. She needed to find the source of Needle Vale. To end this.

Daring hit herself on the head. Her mind felt like a broken record. Maybe some sleep would fix it.

When she turned in, she absently flipped open her journal. Windrose’s name was still in there. She knew she ought to record what she’d found, on the very off chance someone else found it, but she didn’t feel like it. She was too tired, too burned out, too confused. She wanted nothing more than to lie down in her damp, frosted-over clothes and sleep.

Sighing, cursing herself and the entire sunblasted valley, Daring put quill to paper and began to write.

That night, nothing bothered her. Nothing stalked around the campsite. Nothing howled into the darkness. Nothing added its own harsh cries to the wailing wind. Nothing shrieked at the forest. Nothing kept Daring from sleeping.

13 - Nothing's Wrong

If nothing else, at least being the only pony around meant Daring could fly. Windrose was an earth pony. She was hardy. She could get back, no problem. She’d be fine.

It was as unconvincing now as it’d been yesterday. At least Daring remembering Windrose was a good sign.

Daring woke up feeling woozy, like she’d been sleeping on a merry-go-round. At first, nothing seemed familiar, and she had to look at the sun three times before she was convinced it was in the right spot. But after a quick meal vaguely resembling breakfast, she packed up in as orderly a manner as she could.

With her supplies hitched over her back, she looked north, then south. One way led to her goal, the other to safety. Fortune favored the bold, but was she pushing her luck too far? She’d been lucky so far in life, but every adventurer was lucky until the one time they stepped on the wrong pressure plate, camped beneath the wrong overhang, grabbed for the wrong rock on the cliff face. She still had no idea of what she’d run into. Maybe-

No. She’d come too far and she only needed to worry about herself, now. She was so close. She needed to head north.

Daring cringed at how rote and generic that sounded, but she was flying north before she realized it.

She was flying slowly and still going faster than she would’ve been on foot. The miles whisked by and the end of the valley approached. The mountains were closing in around her; it seemed part of the reason the forest was getting denser was simply because there was less space for trees to grow in. Daring couldn’t make out anything irregular on the ground. She wasn’t that surprised. If she found anything, it’d almost certainly be right at the end of the valley. It always was. The universe liked to be dramatic that way.

Daring absently looked back over her shoulder. Nothing. She couldn’t see anypony. There had to be something she could do to make sure she remembered Windrose on the off chance she got swallowed up by the valley. The bad terms they’d parted on didn’t mean she deserved to be forgotten about. But it had to be indirect. If it was obvious, it might get changed if Windrose vanished.

Then Daring got an idea: write some banal entry in her journal and hide Windrose’s name in there somehow. The first letter of each line, maybe. At least that way, some part of her would survive. And if it didn’t work, what would she lose besides a minute? Daring folded her wings and dropped into a clearing.

The trees loomed above her, trying to block out the sky. The wind grabbed at her book in an effort to turn the pages. When she took the pen in her mouth, the cold screamed into her throat to make her shake. Daring didn’t pay any attention to them. Her mind was flying away as she came up with a proper entry. It’d look strange, but that was half the idea: to draw attention to its oddness, get her to look closer. When she was finally ready to write her message, she popped the cap off the pen.

But something felt off about the book when she pressed the nub to the paper. She didn’t know what until she took a closer look at the pages: her bookmark had been placed far too close to the end for some reason. And she was sure she’d put it in the right place last night. She shook her head and flipped back a page, just in case.

Her own writing screamed back at her from where there should’ve been nothing.

I must be sleepwriting again. I can’t remember anything in the previous pages.

There was more to it than that, but Daring didn’t bother reading it. Her eyes went back and forth over that one line, over and over, as her mouth slowly dried up. She hesitantly flipped back again.

I’m missing time. I remember nothing of-

She leafed back through the journal…

Something’s up. I can’t recall-

…more and more quickly…

I didn’t write that, at least not that I can-

…as the sound slowly leaked out of the world…

Nothing makes sense. I should remember-

…with each new entry.

How long have I been in here, to write all-

And she wasn’t even halfway back.

Daring slammed the book shut, almost threw it away, then changed her mind at the last moment and stuffed it into her bags. The pen rolled away and was forgotten. She didn’t bother looking at the rest of her supplies for any signs of lost time. She didn’t need to. She’d seen enough, one way or another. She’d have to be an idiot to not turn around after seeing that. Maybe she already was an idiot; she hadn’t followed Windrose yesterday. She turned south, flared her wings, and-

-didn’t take off. She was so close to the end. She could see the end of the valley. If she was doomed anyway, why not go all the way? If she had to choose between vanishing and learning the secret of Needle Vale before vanishing, she’d pick the latter, every time. She needed to head north.

But she still remembered Windrose. She might not be doomed if she turned around.

But to give up now?

Slowly closing her wings, Daring rubbed her temples. The cognitive dissonance physically hurt. She knew she needed to go home, but she wanted so badly to find what was up with Needle Vale, but, but, but. She took a step south, and the completionist in her screamed for leaving something unfinished. She took a step north, and she remembered how stupid she was being. For all the logic she applied, she simply couldn’t get rid of the idea of reaching the end of the valley. It was like a catchy song: it ran through her head, over and over and over, until she couldn’t help but sing along with it, no matter how much she didn’t want to.

And yet… really, aside from that idea, nothing was stopping her from just turning around and walking (or flying!) back home. Right? She’d wanted to head north from the beginning, after all. Right? She wasn’t going to let some bad ideas stop her. Right? She’d come so far — even the landscape was changing as the trees got hemmed in by the narrowing valley — it’d be a shame to turn back now. Right?

She needed to head north.

She needed to head north.

And so, in spite of her own protests and better judgment, Daring headed north.

Her wings beat with a strange automaticity. Even as the valley narrowed and the end approached, Daring couldn’t get any more joy from the idea of discovery. By now, it was just the rote action of moving forward to see this stupid journey through to the end. She felt like she had a ring in her nose that was constantly jerking her forward. Whenever she looked back, her own head screamed at her to stop. It was just getting to the finish line. Nothing more.

The trees rolled past beneath her, sticking up like quills on a porcupine. Daring could hardly see the ground anymore, simply from the density of the branches. She didn’t look down much. There wasn’t much to see. Not far ahead, the walls of the mountains slammed together into a sharp “V” shape. More trees climbed their steep, craggy slopes. It was a relief, in a way. Daring could stop, her curiosity satisfied, and turn back around. And all she needed was for there to not be anything on the ground.

There was something on the ground.

Daring probably wouldn’t have seen it if her stupid adventuring eyes weren’t attuned to that sort of thing. Ahead of her was a particularly steep, particularly smooth section of mountain. Far below her, the valley floor climbed irresistibly into foothills. Winding beneath the trees away from the cliff was a thick, dark line. Possibly a path of some sort. It dead-ended at a convenient clearing. Purely on instinct, Daring folded her wings back and dove.

She landed at the base of an ancient stone staircase, roughly made, starting at nothing and stretching towards the mountains, towards the northern end of the valley. It was long enough that she couldn’t see the end of it; trees obscured it as it continued up and up and up.

Daring breathed heavily. You didn’t need to be an adventurer to know this was a bad sign. Curiosity was overridden by her survival instinct. She was going to turn back.

In the unending second before she put her hoof on the first step, she thought clearly, WHY am I doing this? Why can’t I stop me?

The steps were smooth, but from weathering or polish, Daring couldn’t say. Whatever technique had been used to fit them together was unfamiliar to her; it almost looked like the properly-shaped stones had just been dropped in place. She stumbled up them, equal parts thrilled and terrified at what she’d find. But for what felt like ages, she found nothing. Except for more stairs.

The steps zigged and zagged their way up the foothills and through the trees. The branches above her grew closer together until it was like they were weaving themselves into a roof. Daring climbed and climbed and climbed. Her heart pounded in her ears and her breath began coming in gasps. Still, the mountain approached behind the trees, step by step, inch by inch, until finally it was upon her. For a moment, as the cliff loomed above, it seemed the staircase was going to stop right at the rock wall and go no further.

No such luck. A doorway was standing the cliff. It was hard to tell whether it’d been carved or built. Strange, abstract patterns Daring couldn’t make heads or tails of decorated the frame. The only light inside was from bits of sunlight that managed to claw their way through the trees. The portal yawned open, so invitingly, so threateningly. She walked in and was swallowed whole. The corridor beyond extended into the dark, revealing nothing.

No.

Daring finally managed to stop walking by locking her legs in place. It hurt. She didn’t care. Deep breaths. Closed eyes. Utter focus. She was not going to walk forward.

One step at a time. Left front hoof, one foot to the left and a few inches back. Right rear hoof, one foot to the right and a few inches forward. Right front hoof, one foot to the left and a few inches back. Left rear hoof, one foot to the right and a few inches forward. Repeat.

Daring blanked out her thoughts as best she could, focusing solely on turning around. She could see the light filtering through her eyelids as she moved. When it was at its brightest, she opened her eyes and took a step forward.

But she wasn’t walking out. She was still walking in. Cold blue torches flickered in sconces ahead of her. She looked over her shoulder. Somewhere in the distance, she could make out the bright rectangle of the door. She already knew she’d never reach it.

The world lurched beneath her as Daring slouched forward. She wasn’t walking straight. She didn’t know if she was trying to and couldn’t, or if she was trying not to and being forced forward. She stumbled, fell against the cold wall, pushed herself drunkenly up. The hallway was growing. Or was it shrinking? No, neither. Both. Definitely both. Daring walked. The boot-muffled impacts of her feet on the floor were the only sounds, but they were plenty loud. Definitely loud enough to block out her forced breathing. Flickering blue light danced across the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Daring’s shadow felt delayed by half a second. It was hard to tell. She swayed into the other wall, stood back up, and continued.

After an instantaneous hour, the corridor opened into a room. Daring staggered in and collapsed. She lay panting on the stone. It was nice and cool. She didn’t want to get up. But she was forced to her feet and took in the room. It was large and circular, with a domed ceiling, like some sort of chapel. The walls had sconced, blue-flamed torches illuminating a relief that stretched all around the room. Daring couldn’t tell what it depicted. She didn’t care, either. A tall dias sat in the center of the room, an altar in the center of the dias.

Altars were good. Altars were bad. Altars were everything. Altars were nothing.

Daring’s legs walked her to the dias. Her wings flapped, bringing her onto the stone. Up close, the altar didn’t look like anything special: a large, rough slab of stone, completely clean. Nothing was carved into its surface: no glyphs, no pictograms, no reliefs, no letters. Daring’s hoof brushed over the altar’s top, feeling the tiny ridges in the stone. This was it. This was the heart of Needle Vale. It had to be. She could feel it in her bones.

And yet, after all this time, Daring’s expedition had still been for naught. Nothing was waiting for her. Nothing was on the altar.

But finally, finally, her own foolish mind had stopped pushing her onward. Finally, if she was lucky, she could turn around, rejoin… Windrose? Yes, that was her name. At least Windrose was still around. Now, if only the temple and the valley would let her leave. The whole place was making her skin crawl. Paranoia told Daring to take one last look at the altar, just in case. As before, there was nothing to be afraid of.

Nothing scrutinized her with colorless eyes. Nothing looked into her mind with impunity. Nothing spoke with a voice like a gale. Nothing told her what she would do. Nothing moved into her. Nothing overtook her. Nothing subsumed her. Nothing ate away at her. After all, she’d been chasing nothing since the very beginning.

As with all who had come before, when Daring Do left Needle Vale, she brought nothing out with her.

9 - Aftereffects

This particular lab had many of the same machines as the others. When Daring entered, she noted that it was a lot larger than the others. There were tables obviously meant to hold large objects, possibly artifacts of some kind. There were even blackboards set up along one wall, chalk still resting in the trays.

But none of that was what caught her attention.

Taking up one wall was an enormous gray bas-relief, depicting row after row of ponies of all three tribes in a heavily stylized fashion. The angles were hard, the perspective was off, and aside from stallion being slightly chunkier than mares, the only differing features between ponies of the same tribes were their cutie marks. Yet the carving itself was smooth, probably the work of a master, and one might even consider calling the intricate designs of the marks beautiful. There wasn’t any unifying theme to the picture as far as Daring could see; just ponies set in regular rows and columns, looking to the right. In another context, it might’ve been a fantastic find.

But here, carved into the concrete of an abandoned facility, it was something else.

“Wow,” whispered Stalwart. She sent out a few balls of light to the corners of the picture to illuminate it more thoroughly. “That’s something, alright.” She took a step forward-

“DON’T TOUCH IT!” Daring, Windrose, and Fallende yelled at the same time.

Stalwart yelped; everyone clapped their hooves over their ears against the echoes. The sounds were amplified, bounding and rebounding back on themselves, over and over and over. A good two minutes passed before Daring took her hooves from her ears. Stalwart glared at them as she got to her feet. “Was that really necessary?” she hissed.

“Do I need to tell you to not touch something like that?” asked Daring. She gestured at the carving with her spear. “Look at it! Even if it weren’t in the middle of an abandoned laboratory, just look at it! It’s got a style like nothing I’ve ever seen — and believe me, I’ve seen a lot of styles — and it’s… just… creepy. I’d bet it was some kind of ritual focus item.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know! Do you want to risk it? Maybe it drove the researchers insane!”

“Maybe the researchers went insane beforehoof and carved it themselves,” said Fallende. She leaned forward, getting as close to the wall as she could without actually touching it.

“Maybe we need to leave this whole sunblasted place right now before anything happens to us,” said Windrose flatly. She took a step towards the door and glared at everybody, one at a time.

“You can leave,” said Stalwart in a tight voice. The shadows made her scarred face surprisingly intimidating. “There’s nothing stopping you from-”

“Picked off one by one! I’m toast the second I’m out of your sight!” It sounded like Windrose was making every effort to not yell at the top of her lungs, and her words still echoed hollowly throughout the corridors.

“Think pairs’d be okay, my properly paranoid partner?” asked Fallende. “You and I can go out and let these two-” She nodded at Daring and Stalwart. “-sort out their differences over a wall together.”

“No,” Windrose said immediately. “Once we leave them, they’re the vulnerable ones, and-”

As Windrose and Fallende discussed (not) splitting the party in hushed voices, Daring walked up to Stalwart, who had taken another step forward, and reached out with her spear to keep her from getting any closer to the carving. “Listen,” Daring whispered. “Do not touch it. No, don’t-” she added, seeing Stalwart’s horn start glowing, “-don’t try to… probe it or scan it, either. It could react to magic.” She looked at the relief again and suppressed a shiver. Stalwart’s balls of light made the carvings cast twitching, elongated shadows. She half-expected the ponies to come to life, but nothing happened; they kept staring hollowly forward.

“So are we just going to leave it?” Stalwart asked. She gestured at the relief. “That is, that’s exactly the sort of thing you were looking for, and-”

“And we’ll study it when we have more than just a few people I happened to pick up at a bar for reasons other than ‘in-depth study of magical artifacts’. Can you analyze magic any deeper than ‘it’s good’ or ‘it’s bad’?”

“Well, I-” Stalwart sighed. “Not really, no,” she admitted. She licked at the cuts across the right side of her mouth. “Nothing we could use here, at any rate.”

“If we hadn’t found it in… a place like this, I’d say go right ahead. But not here.” One last look at the carving. She felt like the ponies ought to have some kind of expression, at least in their minimalist style, but she found nothing. “Come on. Let’s head out.”

In less than a minute, they were back outside, blinking in the sunlight. Clear skies plus white snow made for a bright environment. Once their eyes had adjusted, they collected their bags again. “Remember that,” Daring said, waving at the vault door with her spear. “Something about that place is important.”

“Wouldn’t forget it for the world, my memory-minded master,” said Fallende. “Couldn’t forget it.”

“Me neither.” Windrose adjusted her bags and tightened her straps. “I mean, what, did you think that-” She stopped and frowned at one of the straps. “Huh. There’s another tag on here.”

“What’s it say?” Daring asked.

Windrose shrugged and tossed the extra tag away. “Just a name. Don’t recognize it. Rangifera.”

They made their way down the slope easily, although Stalwart kept looking back and frowning. When they reached the valley floor and Daring turned right again, for the north, Stalwart spoke up. “E-excuse me, shouldn’t we be headed that way?” She pointed left.

“No,” said Daring. She looked over her shoulder. “Why?”

Stalwart bit her lip. She looked a bit odd, but Daring couldn’t say how. “…Aren’t you headed south? Isn’t-” She jerked a hoof behind her. “-that way north?”

“No,” repeated Daring. “This is north. See the sun?” Said sun was slipping behind the tallest mountains by now.

“But…” Stalwart said quietly. “If… that’s west, then-” She shook her head. “Never mind. I… must’ve gotten turned around in that place. Never had much of a sense for direction, you know. I hated trying to navigate buildings back in the guard, and…”

Daring shrugged. She knew the feeling from labyrinths. Granted, she didn’t have any problems at all keeping her directions straight in the bunker, and was kind of surprised Stalwart could get that turned around, but still. Although, in a place like this-

On a whim, she went over her memories again, from when they first entered the facility to when they left. Nothing was wrong. She wasn’t missing anything.

Then Stalwart spoke up again. “No, no, no, we are not going north!” she said loudly. “We can’t be. Even I can tell that.” She trotted in front of Daring, bringing her to a halt. Again, Daring got the feeling that something was wrong with her face. “How in Celestia’s name,” snapped Stalwart, “can you think we’re going north when that way is west?” She pointed at the sunset.

Daring looked at the sunset, squinted. It looked fine. It was on her left, so she was going north. “Because this is north,” she said. She looked back at Windrose and Fallende. “Right?”

Fallende nodded. “Right, my oriented officer.”

“Yeah,” said Windrose. “I mean, north east south west, right?” She pointed at each direction in turn.

“Wrong,” Stalwart said immediately. She stared at Windrose. “I thought you knew your directions! You’re a cartographer, for Luna’s sake!”

“I do! What makes you think I don’t?”

Fallende whispered to Daring, “If you don’t mind, I’m just gonna climb that cliff there and look for a good place to stop for the night while you three get in a shouting match over directions, okay?” Daring nodded, but Fallende was already pulling herself up the cliff.

“You got east and west mixed up!”

Daring and Windrose exchanged Looks. “No, I didn’t!” protested Windrose.

“She didn’t,” confirmed Daring. What was Stalwart’s problem?

Stalwart blinked. “But- But you-” She groaned and ran a hoof through her mane. “Okay, look,” she said, “I’ll draw out a compass in the snow with…” She looked around and telekinetically plucked a thick branch from a tree. “With this so you can tell me why you think we’re going north. Okay? Okay. Here we go.” Without waiting for an answer, she drew a cross on the ground, muttering angry nothings under her breath.

Daring and Windrose looked at each other. Windrose opened her mouth, but Daring shook her head and made a zipping motion across her mouth. Windrose made a face, but nodded. They looked back down in time to see Stalwart scratch an И at the top of the cross.

“Oh, don’t go and reverse those, too,” groaned Windrose.

“Reverse what?” growled Stalwart. She scratched an Ƨ at the bottom.

“The letters!” said Windrose. She pointed at the И and Ƨ in turn. “Look at that! And that! Why-”

“There’s nothing wrong with it.” On the left side, Stalwart scribed an Ǝ.

“Oh, not only is that backwards, it’s on the wrong side! Are you trying to say something?”

Stalwart whirled and not-very-lightly jabbed Windrose on the muzzle with the stick. “None. Of my letters. Are backwards,” she said as Windrose stumbled back. “So shut up.” She swished the stick like a sword, narrowly missing Windrose, and whipped around to glare at Daring. “And I suppose you want to say something to me, too?” she said. “Something about how obviously I’m screwing up?” Now, more than ever, there was something wrong with her face, like it’d been made by someone with half a memory of her.

“No,” Daring said. She nudged Stalwart’s stick aside with her spear and didn’t even think about taking a step back. “I was going to let you-”

Then she realized the problem with Stalwart’s face: the cuts across her mouth were on the right side, not the left side. And just like that, the penny dropped. “Hang on a sec, stop,” she said. “Raise your right hoof.”

Stalwart tilted her head and dropped the stick. The other scars on her face were also flipped. How had Daring missed that? “Why?”

“Raise your right hoof.”

“Is this about that carving? I feel fine.”

“Just humor me,” Daring said, her voice low, “and raise your right hoof, okay?”

Stalwart rolled her eyes. “Fine. But you’re getting worked up over nothing,” she said, raising her left hoof.

Daring’s throat went dry. She tried swallowing, but her heart had taken up residence in her throat.

“Oh, Tartarus,” whispered Windrose. She took a few steps back from Stalwart.

“What?” asked Stalwart, her voice filled with sardonicism. “I suppose this is my left hoof?” She lowered it.

“I-” Windrose clamped her mouth shut.

Daring dug through her bags, looking for- There. Her compass. The needle was still pointing at nothing, but she didn’t need that. A quick look at the cardinal directions confirmed that they were labelled with correctly-oriented single letters. “Take a look at this,” she said, pushing the compass at Stalwart. “Don’t say anything until you look at the directions, okay?”

“I- Fine.” Stalwart snatched the compass away from Daring and looked lazily at it. She did a double-take and held the compass closely to her face. “Why… Why are the letters backward?” she asked tonelessly.

“It’s not the letters,” Daring forced out. “It’s you. It’s- Your left side is on your right and your right is on your left. It’s like you’re a mirror image of yourself.”

Now that Daring knew what she was looking for, it was like Stalwart didn’t belong with them, like she’d been cut out of one photograph and crudely pasted into another. Doubt crept into her mind a little bit at a time; was she accomplishing anything by staying? The only thing she knew she was closer to was the other side of the valley, not the source of the anomalous properties of Needle Vale, and now someone had been bodily affected by it. Yet… she’d come so far, could she really turn back now? She could come back, true, but spending a day, maybe two, marching through the storm of Needle Vale again would be a pain enough just getting to Light’s Edge, let alone coming back here and going out again.

The turmoil in Daring’s mind certainly didn’t match the casualness of Stalwart’s behavior. She turned her hoof over in examination, like it was something she hoped was new and interesting. “Hmm,” she whispered. She looked closely at Daring, then Windrose. “Odd. Very, very odd.” She paced back and forth for a moment. “As far as magic alterations go, this is definitely one of the less intrusive ones. Sorry for losing my temper with you, by the way. I guess, technically, I was wrong, even if I had no way of-”

“What, that… that’s it?” asked Daring. She nervously rustled her wings. Was the valley getting into Stalwart’s head somehow? “You get mirrored and your only reaction is, ‘weird’?”

Stalwart scratched her head. “Well, it’s… Why is this a problem? My left and right are flipped, and… as far as we know, that’s it, really. I certainly don’t feel any different. Do I need to worry about anything else? Directions will be strange, but that’s it. So…” She spread her legs wide. “What do we need to worry about? Is there even anything? I don’t think so. Even my magic’s working fine. But you two-”

“Your entire body was altered,” Windrose said, “and you’re just… okay with it?”

“Your puberty must’ve been fun,” scoffed Stalwart.

“Alright, fine.” Windrose put up her hooves in surrender. “But this definitely happened in the bunker, right? So we know the bunker either is or is near the source of whatever’s going on-”

“We don’t know that yet,” said Daring. “Granted, I’d be a bit surprised if that wasn’t the case, but it could just be a coincidence. If the bunker’s the source, what’s up with the river? How did we get amnesia? We only have a single visit there to go on, and it’s still too early to be making assumptions.” But it felt like she was only saying that to convince herself. She’d said she’d turn back once someone got hurt; did this qualify as “hurt”?

“Effh.” Windrose reluctantly shrugged. “I guess. But I still think we should get out of here before anything worse happens to Stalwart.”

“What happened to Stalwart?”

Everypony jumped; Daring spun around to see Fallende standing right behind her, a vaguely interested look on her face.“How did you get down here so quietly?” Daring asked. She hadn’t heard even a single footfall, a single hoof-on-rock scrape as Fallende climbed down the cliff; it was like she’d popped out of the air.

“I walked up behind you, my questioning questor,” said Fallende. “What’s up with Stalwart?”

“She’s, um…” Windrose glanced at Daring and quickly looked away.

“Left and right are backwards for me,” Stalwart said with a shrug. “We don’t know why.”

“They are?” Fallende squinted at Stalwart. “They are. Huh. Anyway, there aren’t many places to stop for the night that are better or worse than here, so I say we just camp here. It’ll make no difference, and we’re already stopped.”

“Yeah, let’s make camp,” Windrose said hastily. “Just so that if something comes up with Stalwart, we’re already prepared.”

“I’ll be fine,” Stalwart said, waving a hoof. “If I was going to fall apart screaming into a puddle of goo or something, don’t you think that would’ve happened already?”

“Maybe not,” said Windrose. “We don’t know.”

“Well, if I feel like that’s about to happen, I’ll let you know.” And it sounded like Stalwart meant it.

Dinner that evening was a bit more strained than usual. Daring kept a close watch on Stalwart, waiting for… something out of the ordinary; she wasn’t sure what. She saw nothing. Windrose stayed quiet, answering minimally, until Fallende and Stalwart simply started ignoring her. She didn’t seem to mind. Everything Daring said to Stalwart sounded forced, like someone’s ex-friend trying to repair some damage of the past without actually acknowledging it. Fallende and Stalwart, at least, got along well.

Windrose scooted up next to Daring and whispered, “Are we going to do anything about Stalwart? I mean, she seems fine, so… I guess now I’m not completely against staying here.”

Easy for her to say. She wasn’t the one who’d dragged Stalwart out here. “Let’s wait until tomorrow,” Daring said. “If something’s changing her slowly, we should probably see it in the morning.”

“How reassuring,” said Windrose. “But I get that.”

Darkness fell astonishingly quickly once the mountains fully blocked the sun, with day turning to night in what felt like seconds. Fallende and Windrose retired to their tents as Stalwart set up her anti-predator spell again. Daring almost ducked into her tent as well, but turned around for Stalwart. She was pacing around the edge of camp, her magic tracing a thin line in the ground. “Hey,” said Daring. “Your magic’s working okay?”

“So far,” Stalwart said with a nod. She didn’t look up from her spellwork. “Fallende and I, we did some tests, and it doesn’t look like my horn now spiraling counterclockwise has made any change from it spiraling clockwise, to me or her. You know, I never really thought about that before. What does cause our horns to twist one way and not the other? Maybe magic has something to do with it, and that’s why-”

Tuning her out, Daring stared up at the black nothingness of the night sky. Back and forth her mind went, treading the same path over and over and over: should she stay or should she go? Even with Stalwart perfectly fine with it all, Daring knew she wouldn’t sleep well tonight. “Well, let me know if anything goes sideways.”

Stalwart saluted. “Will do.”

After a few more moments of looking up, Daring crawled into her tent, pulled out her journal, and began writing.

Stalwart’s spells seemed to work. That night, nothing bothered them. Nothing physical, anyway.