Daring Do and the Temple of Betrayal

by AtomicClop

Rating: mature
Tags: Daring Do, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Drama, Porn, Dr. Caballeron, Sex
Length: 15578

Before Caballeron was Daring Do's rival, he was her first mentor, lover, and betrayer.

Before Caballeron was Daring Do's rival, he was her first mentor, lover, and betrayer.

Contains: Masturbation; wet dream; virginity loss/first time; oral and vaginal; creampie.

Trigger warning: Daring is seduced through lies, flattery, and manipulation. This story deliberately raises questions about power and its misuse. Be warned. 

Daring is about a month past her 18th birthday.

Thanks to RDT, Raleigh, and Steel Quill for pre-reads, the Discord crew for brainstorming, and Damaged for (in addition to brainstorming) also kindly removing the background from the cover art.

Published 2021-04-26 09:40:00 UTC
Last updated 2021-04-26 09:40:00 UTC

Mentor

Editor's note: This is an unpublished manuscript found in the basement of the Yearling family winery in the Foalumbia River valley, where A. K. Yearling spent her summer before college recovering from unspecified health problems. It was intermixed with papers verified to be from her last semester of high school. Multiple experts conclude that the penmareship of the annotations on the typed copy is unquestionably hers. Despite that unimpeachable pedigree, Ms. Yearling has refused to confirm the authenticity of this manuscript.

The logical conclusion is that an eighteen-year-old Ms. Yearling tried her hoof at erotic writing but ultimately chose not to publish this novelette. However, it does provide an interesting backstory to the characters of Daring and Caballeron. In particular, this Daring Do attended the same private high school as Ms. Yearling, was similarly the child of a mixed working-class pegasus/unicorn aristocracy marriage, and, like Ms. Yearling, grew up among Baltimare's monied Old Families. These details were all left undefined in the canonical novels published later.

One can only wonder what real-life events inspired young Ms. Yearling to pen this erotic novelette.

"You're excited," Minor Scale said, flicking Daring Do's swishing tail with a hoof.

"Am not." Daring didn't turn around. She kept her nose pressed to the train's window, watching the piedmont zoom past them, all low hills and fields of corn or cotton. She crossed her forelegs on the windowsill and rested her chin on them. She considered hopping off the train and stretching her wings for a few miles, but the train would be arriving before long.

"Are you going to let him screw you?"

Daring jerked upward and whirled to stare at her friend. "No! This is an expedition. Doctoral Candidate Caballeron wanted me—me, not one of the other Ph.D. candidates, not one of the undergrads, me—as his assistant. I'm not here to get laid."

Minor Scale raised an eyebrow at that. "You've said he's cute."

"That's just a scientific fact."

"You've said he's packing a cannon under his barrel."

"Fact. Not passing judgement."

"I've never been with an earth pony," Minor Scale mused.

"I'm not going to sleep with him."

Minor Scale levitated Daring's left foreleg up and pointed her nose at the recently-healed incision in her armpit where, five weeks before, the school nurse had implanted the crystal. "Then why did you go to Nurse Onyxheart's clinic?"

Daring pressed her elbows together, yanking away from Minor Scale's aura. Daring's tail thrashed and her ears drooped. "Everypony else on this trip already had a birth control spell, I would have felt odd-pegasus out."

"That was before your birthday. You were still seventeen, so your parents had to sign off. What did they say?"

Daring looked at the floor. "They were happy I was going somewhere with others my own age, for a change, instead of hanging out at the university all spring break." What Daring thought, but didn't say, was: I was born four weeks after my parents' wedding. Mom looked like a zeppelin in a dress in the pictures. They just signed the form without a word.

"Ha, I bet. Do your parents know you're meeting him down here?"

"I... no. No, I just told them it was a beach week with you and the others from school. They don't like him very much. I've stopped telling them when I see him at Horsekins."

"One hour to Maretle Beach. You gonna screw any of the guys? Or gals?" Minor Scale smirked, brushed Daring's tail with a hoof again, and tilted her head towards the others, playing cards around a table on the far end of the train car.

Daring said, "Well, not Diopt, obviously."

"Obviously not." Diopt Do was one of the card players. Besides being classmates, she and Daring were second cousins and lived on different floors of the family mansion. "You need to pop that cherry, Daring."

"No comment." Daring looked back out the window. The corn and cotton were getting thinner as the piedmont faded into the swampy South Coltolina Lowcountry, marsh grass now growing up to the trackbed, Maretle Beach the train's last stop on the line.

That evening, Daring, Minor Scale, and nine other seniors from Horseshoe Bay Preparatory Academy found an oceanfront restaurant specializing in Coltolina Lowcountry Boil. Their home of Horseshoe Bay was world-famous for its crab, one of the few places where ponies considered shellfish a dietary staple, so they all wanted to try the famous Lowcountry Boil with its shrimp, crawfish, corn, potatoes, onions, seasonings, and who-knew-what else.

A waiter brought Daring a bib and a shellfish mallet to open the crawfish, whereas her friends all levitated steel shellfish crackers to get at the meat. Daring was accustomed to it, really. Of the forty students in her senior class, she was the only non-unicorn. Well, Baltimare's Old Families were unicorns and Daring had been the odd filly out in this little herd since kindergarten. She smashed a crawfish open and dug in.

An hour and a half later, they all drowsed at the table, bellies full, and chipped in bits from their purses. An unspoken competition always seemed to be there, between them, of who could spend more of their parents' money, and the gratuity for the wait staff grew prodigiously.

Minor Scale pulled a flask out from under her cape and passed it around the table, each of them taking a shot of the apple brandy they weren't old enough to legally possess. Except Daring. She waved a wing dismissively and yanked off the greasy bib. She was planning to be awake and on her wings an hour before dawn and she didn't like alcohol very much, anyway.

After they exited the restaurant, Goldenrod sidled up next to her, his muscular flank brushing her left wing, his cutie mark rubbing hers as they walked.

"What's on your agenda tonight, Daring?"

She turned away from him and covered a burp with her right wing, tasting red pepper and crawfish, then tucked her wing back to her flank. "Digest and sleep. Before dawn, I'm taking a day or two inland, doing... a thing I arranged."

"I could arrange a thing for you to do," Goldenrod said. A soft hint of magic brushed the feathers on her right wing, then her left.

Daring closed her eyes for a moment, her ears perking straight up. His magic tickled her just so, right on her alulae, and his flank warmed hers against the chill evening breeze off the ocean. She had taught him that spot on her wings, the two of them horny pre-teens, making out way back in seventh grade, but they'd never gotten any further than deep kissing and a little wingplay. Daring smiled, remembering explaining the hickey on her neck to her parents.

That was about the same time Daring drew away from her classmates and friends and more and more into the world of the library and the outdoors, researching artifacts or exercising and defeating practice traps and obstacles, while Goldenrod and his rod cut a swathe through the fillies—and even a few of the other colts—in school.

Goldenrod was cute. Daring hmmmmmed deep in the back of her throat and the chill ocean breeze seemed to be chilling one part of her body more than the others, due to some sudden dampness...

"I'm going to sleep when we get back to the house," Daring said. Then she grinned at him. "I'll be back in a day or two, though."

His tail brushed against hers and he sidled off to hit on Diopt, apparently wanting one of the Do cousins that night but not caring too much which.

The eleven of them walked along the dark streets of Maretle Beach. Daring closed her eyes, enjoying the smell of the ocean and calls of the night birds. Six of their little herd peeled away, pulling out their fake IDs for access to a karaoke bar. Next to the karaoke bar was a sex shop. The dildos in the display window drew Daring's eyes for a split-second.

The remaining five of them returned to the rented beach house. Goldenrod and Diopt headed to his bedroom, Goldenrod already nibbling Diopt's ears and fully erect before they even closed the door. Minor Scale and Lime Light headed to Lime’s bedroom.

Daring brushed her teeth, set three alarm clocks, and climbed into bed.

As was Daring's long-standing bedtime routine—ever since puberty had hit her like a mallet between the hind legs seven years before—she pulled the blankets up over her head, reached down between her legs, found her clitoris, and rubbed herself off. She didn't date, didn't mess around, didn't get laid, but she was a healthy and hormonal eighteen-year-old who needed to get off in order to sleep, so she took care of her needs quickly and quietly.

With the sounds of her friends' rutting through the walls on two sides of her bedroom, she finished faster than usual. Her wings tightened to her flanks and her nipples hardened, her abdominal muscles clenching. A tiny squirt of her pleasure wet her left hoof. She sniffed the wetness deeply and sampled it with her tongue, rolling the strongly scented, slightly honey-like fluid around her mouth, and then fell asleep.

The alarm clocks weren't even necessary. About thirty minutes early, she woke up from a dream. The details faded as soon as her eyes opened, but her snout had been under another mare's tail, licking and sucking a stallion's seed from her channel, with a stallion rutting Daring as she squirted prodigiously across his balls. Her partners might have been Minor Scale and Goldenrod, but they might not have been, either. The dream faded too quickly.

Her inner thighs and upper tail were soaked. That hadn't happened in years. She couldn't remember ever having had a dream that wet. Daring sniffed and turned on the lamp, examining the bed. Ew. She pulled the sheets off the bed, crumpled them into a wad and dropped them on floor, and left a five-bit coin for the maids.

She headed down the hallway to the shower, shuffling awkwardly to keep her thighs closed and tail clamped over her vulva so she didn't drip on the carpet.

After showering, Daring smiled at the mare—no longer the filly, but the mare—in the mirror. Her mane and tail were still damp, double-shampooed and conditioned, and brushed exactly into place. She straightened her new olive-green vest and settled the new pith helmet precisely onto her mane. Her ears poked jauntily through the holes in the helmet's brim.

She'd mail-ordered the vest and helmet for this trip. Her old vest was too small, Daring having filled out, especially her flight muscles, over the last six months, reaching her adult body shape and leaving her filly's body behind.

The mail order delivery had been to the beach house, not home, so her parents didn't ask what expedition she was going on, or ask with whom.

Sniffing, she sampled the hints of rose and tangerine on herself. Besides the mane and tail, she'd double-washed under her tail. The wet dream had been strong. But now? Spotless and smelling of the best soaps and conditioners from Baltimare's finest boutiques, everything would be perfect for her first real expedition. Yeah, yeah, she'd spent last summer with Uncle Adventure at a dig site—but that was a dig, not a penetration.

A flash of charcoal-gray magic popped the lock and Minor Scale barged into the bathroom, hustled to the toilet, and plopped down.

"Hey!" Daring said, staring at her own reflection instead of the other mare. "I'm using the bathroom. I could have been on the toilet myself, for all you knew."

Minor Scale grunted, peed loudly and with a contented sigh, then said, "Someone has a hot date in the ancient temple."

"Do not."

"You're getting kinda spiffed up to go spelunking. By Celestia, Daring, that outfit looks good on you, and you've put on weight."

"What?"

"Not like that. Your chest and flanks are turning into solid muscle. How much have you been exercising?"

Daring looked at her forehooves, which leaned against the sink.

"Daring? Flap your wings."

Daring gave an impatient flick and glared at Minor Scale.

"No. Show off your wings. Slow. Majestic. Princess-y."

Daring raised her wings and gave a single, slow wingbeat, like a condor riding a thermal high above the desert. Her flight muscles strained against the fresh fabric of her new vest. She smiled at herself in the mirror and gave a second, stronger wingbeat. The gust of air shook the soap dishes on the countertop.

Minor Scale whistled. "You really are something else, Daring. He's a lucky stallion."

"I'm not going there to get laid."

"Riiiiiight."

Daring raised her nose an inch, taking a deep sniff. "What's that smell?"

Minor Scale, still sitting on the toilet, raised an eyebrow at Daring. "You literally don't know what cum even smells like? You've never even given a wingjob?"

Daring swished her tail and looked over her shoulder to stare at Minor Scale's vulva, which was matted and sticky. Daring's mind flashed back to her dream, where she had licked a stallion's cum from a mare's channel. Her tongue licked her lips before she forced it back in and clamped her jaw shut. "No comment."

Minor Scale levitated a wad of toilet paper to wipe herself. A long white string of what Daring assumed was Lime Light's cum stretched between Minor's labia and the paper before she dropped it into the bowl. She gestured a hoof at her sticky mess. "Sex is really, really good, by the way. You need to try it."

Daring turned back to the mirror and tilted the pith helmet to a jauntier angle. She simultaneously pulled her tail low, covering the sudden warmth in her own vulva.

"You know you're the only virgin in the senior class, Daring? Probably the only one in the school past seventh grade, to be honest."

"I never said I was a virgin," Daring countered.

"You don't need to say it. You know, you're also the only pegasus in the senior class..."

"I'd noticed that, actually."

"You could get anypony you wanted. I've wondered what feathers feel like, myself. And those flight muscles... very sexy."

"I'm a busy pony."

"You need to relax."

"For all you know, I screwed all of Cloudsdale at Flight Camp."

Minor Scale laughed. "You're a terrible liar."

Daring glared at herself in the mirror. "See you tomorrow or the next day, Minor. Cover for me if my parents telegram, please."

"You got it. Don't come back a virgin."

Daring sighed, blew a kiss at Minor, grabbed her kit bag, and headed upstairs to the fourth-floor porch overlooking the beach. The sea was still dark, although the first hints of nautical twilight should be visible any minute. A stiff breeze blew in from the sea, which would make her takeoff easier, a not inconsiderable help with such heavy bags slung over her slim hips. She faced into the wind. Flaring her wings, she took a step to prepare her leap into the air—

And stepped in a puddle of mixed cum and marejuice.

"Oh, for Celestia's sake!" Daring shook her hoof, trying to fling off the mixture. Then she raised her hoof to her nose and sniffed. "Now I know what cum smells like."

Daring shivered, flapping in a hover in the thin air a mile or so up. She compared Caballeron’s hoof-drawn map to the landscape below her, squinting against the low morning sun.

There. The lone line of hills that led down from the Smoky Mountains into the Lowcountry. As the hills faded into the swampy plains of grass, a single last hill towered above the others, its long shadow in the rising sun stretching across the landscape.

Flapping to turn in place, she looked east. The ocean was a film of sunrise-flamed red on the horizon. Miles and miles of swampy Lowcountry stretched between her and the beach, the pools of standing water near the mountains glittering with rainbow sheens in the sun.

Despite being miles inland, the billiard-table flat landscape had allowed a hurricane to roll over this stretch of landscape last autumn. She and Doctoral Candidate Caballeron speculated the wind and flash flooding probably uncovered the entrance to the temple that all the mainline archeologists said was just a myth.

Daring circled down toward the swampy plain east of the hill. She flared wings and landed softly, hooves sinking into the sandy muck.

She swished her forehoof around in a deeper pool, making sure all the cum from the porch was washed off.

All right. Where was she? Daring pushed the pith helmet back on her head and turned a full circle in place. She paced back and forth, flicking her wings and whipping her tail, a deep frown on her face. This hill was big, bigger than it had seemed from altitude. Well, everything looked small from a mile up.

Sawgrass and low pine trees swayed in the stiff breeze and her legs were soaked to the knees with swampwater. Where was he? Where was the entrance? Did she have the right hill at all?

Celestia, what a horrible thought! She was trying to impress him, what if she never found the correct hill and he had to do everything himself? He'd invited her, her of all the ponies he could have, and what if she showed herself to be a useless—

Tracks. He was an earth pony, had she seen tracks?

Her ears tucked and her breath turned ragged and fast. Cantering, she started a circuit around the hill's eastern face, mud kicking up behind her and splashing her vest and legs. Where, where, search the hill and if there's no entrance, no Caballeron, no tracks, take off again and re-check the map—

After about a half-mile run, she found a taller-than-usual lobe of stone... and it was penetrated through with a low granite archway leading into a deep black cavern, sloping sharply downward.

The breeze stiffened, ruffling her feathers and whipping her mane and tail. Cold bit deep into her, setting her to shivering. She had chosen to wear her summer-weight vest. The pith helmet did nothing to protect a pony from a chill. Wet mud splattered her legs and vest and belly after all the trouble she'd gone to getting spiffed up, and wasn't that a stupid thing? She got muddier than this on a weekly basis: the family mansion was right on the water of Horseshoe Bay, the maids having to hose her down before the head maid allowed her back in the house, Diopt—the prissy cousin—laughing her head off the whole time, Daring soaked to the bone, feathers matted and tail bedraggled, just smiling back at her.

Why was Daring suddenly worried about how she looked?

Because I'm meeting him, said a tiny voice in her head.

Daring paced, staring at the black entrance of the cavern under the hill, her hoofsteps now delicate to avoid splashing anymore mud on herself.

No hoofprints. No Caballeron.

She was early, is what had happened. He wasn't here yet.

The sun was creeping up, the morning well begun. Daring wasn't the fastest pegasus in the world, her wing shape being more conducive to darting and tight turns. It had taken almost two hours to get from Maretle Beach to here, following the compass in her vest pocket.

She recognized the runes carved in the lintel: The Temple of the Fire Maidens. It was real, after all! Uncle Adventure was going to owe Daring an apology when she got home with the Wand.

Pacing, pacing, pacing. She kept checking the watch that shared the vest pocket with her compass. An hour passed and the cold wind billowed her vest and mussed her mane and tail. She shivered more violently.

After an hour, with Caballeron nowhere in sight, Daring decided she could start the expedition.

("Don't enter that cavern without me," Caballeron had chided her when they planned the expedition in a private reading room in the subbasement of Horsekins University Library over the last several weeks, "or you will die.")

With steady flaps, bringing herself to a hover, she pulled her legs tight to the underside of her barrel, making herself as small as possible. She advanced and poked her head into the cavern, the opening being about five pony-heights in diameter.

Torches flickered dimly, starting about fifty paces in. Warm air met her, a steady rush of wind. The cavern was downright hot but the air smelled damp and stale, like the still, hazy air under the swampy mangroves of Horseshoe Bay in high summer. The torches were probably eternal flames, gas jets tapped into an underground reservoir. Petroleum deposits would explain the rainbow sheen on the swampy water around the hills.

Something twanged down her spine, raising the hairs between her shoulder blades. Her eyes narrowed and she took a deep breath to calm herself. She flapped, shifting her hover down, then up, then back down. And... there. The sunlight caught it just right. A thin tripwire, about knee-height for a pony coming in on hoof. Whatever sense it was that allowed a pegasus to instinctively dodge branches or vines that might clothesline them while flying in tight country had also alerted her to the tripwire.

How it had survived the rush of water when the hurricane uncovered the opening was more than Daring could guess. Magic, presumably. Eyes straining, pegasus magic reaching out to seek any other tripwires, she slowly flew over the trap and down the entrance corridor.

The stone corridor widened as it drove deeper under the hill, almost funneling down toward Daring's location at the entrance. And... there. A high shelf of stone. The kirin who presumably built this temple were hoof-bound, no equivalent of pegasi in their race. That high shelf would be a safe enough place to rest and look around.

Warm air rushed from the depths of the temple and she had to flap harder just to hover against the stiff breeze. Sweat broke out across her face and back, under her wings and under her tail. The temple must sit on a volcanic vent or a geyser, some sort of geothermal phenomenon, and the ancients tapped the heat to keep it warm.

It was a nice change from the cool spring wind outside. She flapped and landed on the outcropping, ducking her head to miss the curving roof of the corridor.

Her weight settled on her hooves and she folded her wings.

The hidden pressure plate under her left-rear hoof clicked and her eyes were just starting to widen when the booby trap fired. She dropped to her belly. Most of the arrows missed her, but one clipped her left ear, punching clean through the flesh, the fletching ripping her ear down the middle. Pain flared and she thrashed, and the hissing sound of gas at her hooves as billowing yellow vapor spilled from the cracks in the stonework above her.

She rolled off the stone shelf and fell to the hard floor, a drop of a good four pony-heights. The impact stunned her, knocking all her air out and leaving her head fuzzy. Her nose burned with the sharp smell of fresh-mown grass and her lungs heaved, her chest spasming as she coughed.

The yellow cloud billowed over the edge of the outcropping, lazily rolling down the wall toward her. She stood and collapsed again, coughs racking her body and eyes watering, she tried to crawl towards daylight—

"¡Celestia mía!" shouted a deep voice. Hooves pounded on stone and Daring was lifted, slung over muscular withers, she was coughing still and now her nose and mouth watering as violently as her eyes, she bounced as she was carried deeper into the temple—

"No!" she gasped. "Air! Fresh air!"

"The breeze blows that direction, we go deeper in, let it carry the gas away."

A few dozen galloping steps, two leaps over other booby traps, and she was gently lowered to the cold stone. He uncapped a canteen and poured water over her face, washing out her eyes, the water sweet as it cleared the flaming pain. Her wracking coughs slowly subsided.

"Hold still, hold still, my little assistant."

"Partner," she gasped, then dissolved into coughing again. The heat billowing from the depths of the temple was even stronger, sweat dripping along her back and chest and under her wings and under her tail as her body struggled for air.

"Hold still," he commanded and pulled off her pith helmet, tossing it to the side. Even blinking through tears and in the weak light of the temple's sconces, she saw the helmet was soaked, absolutely soaked, with blood, especially around the left ear hole. He continued, more quietly, "Ear wounds bleed nastily, but it is nothing I can't stitch up. Let me light my lantern."

She stared for another few seconds at the bloody mess of the new pith helmet, tossed onto the stone floor. What had that arrow done to her ear? Mom and Dad were going to freak when she got home, never mind what Uncle Adventure would say!

With a last cough, she said, "Uggh. Maretle Beach. I'll claim, hmm, I'll tell Mom and Dad somepony got drunk and threw a glass bottle off a balcony and clipped my ear. I hate lying to them, but... "

"Of course, Daring." He pulled a first aid kit from his saddlebags and set about pulling out what he needed. "This is going to hurt rather a lot, I'm afraid. Ears are very sensitive and I have no anesthetic."

She couldn't help but stare at the needle and thread, so focused that she barely flinched when he poured antiseptic over her ear. Scrunching her eyes closed, Daring tried instinctively to pull her ear away from the sizzling pain—only for Caballeron to maintain his grip on it.

He wiped the ripped ear clean with gauze and poured more disinfectant over it, the cold liquid running down the left side of her head and dribbling on the floor. Then Caballeron stitched the torn ear.

She bit her lips as he stitched, tears rolling down her nose no matter how hard she fought them. Every push of the needle through her skin burned like another arrow strike and then settled into a sharp ache as he pulled the needle and string through. Her breaths sharpened, fighting not to sob. Even her tail couldn't hold still, thrashing as her right forehoof tap-tap-tapped on the stone floor. But, she was pleased at herself: Daring didn't utter a sound.

"All done," he said. "Head wounds are very bloody, but I don't have enough spare water to wash your coat off. How was Maretle beach?"

"I liked the crawfish," Daring replied.

He snorted. "Rich ponies and their shellfish. Tell me, young Daring Do. Why didn't you wait outside like I commanded you to?"

She stood, facing him and raised her wings and flagged her tail. She was still sweaty from the hot wind and the pain of getting stitched up without a local anesthetic had just made her sweat even worse. Under her tail was particularly uncomfortable, she felt really soaked down there, and shifted her position to point her rump at the breeze.

"I... I..."

"Thought you would impress me by meeting me inside the temple?"

She lowered her head.

"You nearly died," Caballeron said. "Your parents have already threatened me, through the University's Chancellor, to stay away from you. That's why we had to plan this little expedition in the basement of the library, in the room next to the furnaces."

"Threatened?"

"Your family donates ludicrous amounts of money to Horsekins. Threats were... implied. But most clear."

"I'm... hmmm. Sorry. I've told Mom and Dad you never... uh... have been inappropriate."

"Imagine if I return to Baltimare with your dead body, hmmm?"

Daring's shakes hit. She looked up-cavern at the clout of arrows stuck into the stone wall, where they had just barely missed her. "It-it-it was close, huh?"

Caballeron put a forehoof on her shoulder. "I like you, Daring Do. You're the most dedicated of all the students and you're not even in the University. I would miss you. I would never forgive myself if you died."

Daring opened her mouth, realized she had no words, and closed her mouth.

"Come, come," he said. "I wish to be a professor and you are my most dedicated student. I will teach you. Why was there a trap higher than anycreature can reach on their four hooves?"

Daring tapped a forehoof. "They were worried about pegasi?"

"Indeed. These kirin are long gone, extinct I suspect, but centuries ago they lived in close contact with ponies. They knew flight was something to defend against and laid that trap at ceiling-height to lure and kill arrogant pegasi who weren't thinking."

Daring hung her head and her wings and tail drooped.

"We are not far from Cloudanooga, so the kirin interacted with pegasi more than the other two tribes. This temple is far safer to navigate on four hooves than two wings. Not that it is... safe, generally speaking."

Daring flicked her ears in annoyance. Pain lanced down into her skull and she gasped.

"Body language really depends on the ears, indeed, Daring Do?"

Wiping another tear from her snout, Daring said, "Are we going to go find an artifact, or what?

"You lost a lot of blood. Eat something." He rummaged into his pack and pulled out a hard biscuit wrapped in old newspaper.

She recognized the writing as Espoñol but wasn't fluent enough to read more than the headlines. It took her quite a while to chew the dry biscuit, along with several swigs from her own canteen, but she did feel better after eating it.

"Come, Daring Do. I will teach you how to live through a trap-infested temple."

It was five hours later when Daring screwed up and nearly killed them both.

She was tired, she was dehydrated, and she didn't want to ask Caballeron for a rest break when the earth stallion was obviously having a good time at her inexperienced expense.

Daring frowned and dried blood crinkled in the fur of her left cheek.

This stretch of corridor was narrow enough that Daring's wings brushed the walls. Caballeron, behind her, brushed the walls with his broad shoulders.

Daring found herself swishing and flagging her tail unconsciously, her body trying to fidget to keep herself awake and focused, and she kept having to remind herself there was a stallion right behind her butt. Daring sniffed. She hoped she didn't smell as sweaty as she felt. At least she was a good two weeks past the end of her last estrus and her pheromones were gone. A new birth-control implant immediately kicked off a particularly strong cycle as the magic took hold of your hormones. It had been so humiliating to sit at school and see every colt within a three-desk radius pop a boner, bah!

She watched every step, as Caballeron had been teaching her for the last several hours. Her pegasus magic was actually far better attuned to catching tripwires than she had previously realized. The pegasus instincts that helped avoid flying into vines, branches, or other flying animals rang down her spine whenever she approached any tripwire.

Pressure plates, however, she needed to really watch for. No magic helped her there, so it was all vision and attentiveness. She slid her left forehoof along the stones, feeling for the raised edge or wobble that indicated such a trap.

She stopped, feeling a stone move as the edge of her hoof touched it. Her tail flagged itself up again as she halted and Caballeron stopped his own forward momentum just a second before he would have crashed his face under her tail.

"What do you find, Daring Do?" he asked. When he spoke, his breath tickled her—

She slapped her tail down, covering herself and bopping his nose.

Taking two deep breaths, she centered herself on the problem of the moment. She'd—she spent every free minute of her last five years either out in the woods near her home or in the library. She never even had been on a date and she certainly hadn't ever had somepony breathe on her... treasure chest... before. Focus.

"The stone... it moved a little when I touched it. It might have... might have clicked."

Caballeron exhaled, rustling the long hairs of her tail. "Don't move."

"Okay." Daring's stomach twisted and she was suddenly glad it was empty. More sweat broke out, across her brow, and she missed the pith helmet she'd left behind after bleeding all over it. It would have kept the sweat out of her eyes.

"I need to see the pressure plate," Caballeron said. "Brace yourself."

"What?"

"I'm heavy." He leaped up, mounting her, his forelegs on her back and his hips just above hers.

"Hey, now!" Daring said.

"Shush, do you wish to kill us both?" He leaned down, his right ear brushing her left cheek, glaring at her forehoof and the stone tile in the poor light of the gas sconces. The hallway was so narrow that his forelegs scraped the walls and pressed sharply in on her ribs.

Her legs trembled as she supported his weight—this was a muscular pony, here! "This—awkward—you—" she felt his weight across her back and what she feared were his gonads pressing against the base of her tail.

"Quiet!" His ear brushed the dried blood on her cheek and her wings tried to flare, flight-or-fight instinct grabbing her hindbrain. Breathing fast, she fought to keep her legs straight and her tail unmoving, but her tail kept swishing, rubbing against his... his... his balls and her wings were trying to flare upward but his forelegs were holding them down to her side and she felt something stiff along her spine and—

"You've triggered it," Caballeron said. "When you lift your weight, it will fire."

"Celestia..." she breathed.

"Go ahead and put your full weight on the plate, so you don't accidentally release it when I... dismount you."

She felt an odd throbbing along her lower spine. He... oh dear.

With a deep breath, she clenched her eyes shut and pressed firmly down on the plate. It clicked, it definitely clicked.

"Okay," Caballeron said. "I will get off... you now."

He wriggled down her back, forelegs brushing her feathers, and her eyes bugged as what could only have been the tip of his cock brushed the top of her tail. She'd noticed his cock before—she'd noticed every colt or stallions' cock, since almost nopony ever wore pants—and her teenage hormones has mentally filed him away as 'gifted' some time ago, but she'd also considered him a friend and a teacher and never really thought about his cock... oh, who was she kidding. But she really didn't want his cock touching her rump when she was about to die.

Daring stared straight down at her hoof. The pressure plate was noticeably recessed, now, with her full weight on it. Her breathing rasped through gritted teeth and a single tear blurred the vision of her left eye.

She blinked it away.

"I shall grab you by the tail. On three, I will yank as hard as I can and you will leap backwards. We both then drop flat to our bellies and hope the trap is aimed at head level."

"Oh... okay." Daring gave a jerky nod. Her whole body dripped sweat, her coat sopping wet and the reek of her own terror surrounding her and filling her nose. "You should—you should get out, get clear, and then I try to avoid it on my own."

There were a few seconds of silence. Then, Caballeron said, "I should, yes. That would be the smart thing. But you are my... partner. And I shall not leave you."

"T-thanks."

Caballeron bit her tail—not down low, but right on the dock, his stubbly chin brushing her labia.

"Hey, now!"

He spit her tail out. "I need a good grip. Do you wish to have your tail dislocated, instead of me pulling you away from the blast radius?"

"No..."

"The underside of your tail is soaking wet. I shall have to bite hard to get a solid grip, please do not complain."

"I pissed myself in terror."

Caballeron chuckled. "The taste of what is under your tail is not tinkle."

"Oh, shush." Her vision seemed to dim with every heartbeat and her pulse filled her own ears.

He bit down on her dock again and his chin brushed her clitoris. Her clit was engorged by her raging blood pressure and poking out of its hood, so the stubbly beard against its hypersensitive nub actually hurt. Daring bit the inside of her cheek.

"One," Caballeron mumbled around her tail.

She bowed her forequarters, getting a spring ready in her front legs.

"Two," Caballeron said.

Daring took a deep breath and scrunched her eyes shut. Goodness, she thought, what if I actually do piss in terror with his face right under my—

"Three!"

Many things happened at once.

Caballeron yanked on her tail, up-and-back, with all his earth pony strength, and pain lanced up Daring's back, from dock to skull, and she saw stars. She pushed off with her front legs as he yanked, a leap like trying to take off with the wind to your rump while carrying a heavy saddlebag, throwing herself backwards with as much force as she could. Her wings flapped instinctively, but the narrow walls fouled the wingbeat and they just ended up adding drag, not thrust, to her leap.

A series of sharpened wooden stakes exploded from the left wall, smashing just through the space she had occupied a fraction of a second before, smiting into the right-side wall.

She arced up and back down, doing a flip over Caballeron, every instinct screaming at her that she was falling not flying, and slammed chest-first onto the stone floor behind him.

Caballeron twisted and dove, landing on her and crushing her flat to the stone. He pressed her skull flat to the floor with his chin and covered both their heads with his forelegs, his large body shielding her smaller one.

Daring was just pushing up against his tackle when the fireball blasted down the corridor. The rush of air feeding the conflagration quenched the sconces. Heat rushed over them—how much worse must be for him, if Daring could feel it past his tackle?— as Caballeron's weight smashed the air from her lungs and she fought to breathe but the rushing flames above the heads stole all the air and her head spun, her chest and diaphragm straining as dizziness hit her.

The fireball receded, leaving her ears ringing. Her eyes were open, staring into the stygian blackness. The air rushing from up-cavern filled her eyes with grit. She blinked, eyes watering, and rubbed at them with a fetlock.

All right. Any pain? Any injuries? Daring took stock of herself.

Ears: ringing. Eyes: watering. Spine: stinging, from Caballeron's yank on her tail. Wings: sore. He was heavily on top of them, but no pain, just pressure. Legs: fine. Tail:

...oh. Oh, dear. "Cab—Caballeron..." she whispered.

"Shush, be still," he said and started squirming on top of her. "I must find my lantern."

"But, Caballeron—"

"Quiet, we have no idea what new traps or tripwires were put in play by your little... oopsie."

"Your—your—your—"

"Quiet, Daring Do!"

"Can you move your hips? Your penis is touching my vulva."

Silence. Then, "When I get the lantern lit and I can look for traps, I will... dismount you, Daring Do. Until then, be still and quiet."

"Can you do something about the erection, at least?"

"...no."

"Draw your hips back?" Daring covered her eyes and fought back a sob. His cock throbbed with his heartbeat, pressing against her opening.

Caballeron shifted his hips, drawing back, and his cock moved from making contact with her vulva to touching the underside of her dock.

"Better?" Caballeron asked.

"Slightly."

He rummaged his shoulder bag, his body rubbing against her back and wings, and then she heard the snck-snck sound of a flint striker. A soft whoosh was accompanied by a flickering light as he got the lantern lit.

Caballeron twisted his spine, looking behind him—back in the direction they had been traveling before Daring set off the trap—and the motion pressed the tip of his cock against her anus. Daring gasped and stuck her hooves in her mouth, eyes wide.

He stood, finally pulling away from her, reared up to shimming around in the narrow corridor and took a step. "I think I shall lead us to the next gallery, Daring Do. You're getting fatigued and likely to miss another trap."

Daring twisted herself around and stood behind him. She lowered herself to the floor, folding her legs underneath her, knees too shaky to stand.

"Are you okay, Daring Do?"

"I, I need a minute."

"Take all the time you need."

Eyes still clenched, she waited out her trembles. The swirling lava in her guts subsided and the pain that ran up her spine from Caballeron's yank on her tail decreased from sharp agony to a minor ache. She tucked her tail low, over her privates, and felt the long black-and-gray hairs get instantly soaked. She told herself the wetness was sweat, and maybe terror-piss, even though she knew better.

"Okay," Daring said, opening her eyes. "Okay, I'm ready."

As they walked, he carried his tail flagged high and she found her eyes bouncing between the tiles of the floor and his massive, pendulous balls.

Deep under the temple, the breezes fed by the geothermal vents no longer brought in hot air, and the cool dampness of any deep cavern surrounded them. Dew dripped off Daring's coat and olive vest and she shivered in the clammy air. Caballeron flipped up the collar of his shirt.

They stood where the stone-paved tunnel met a large underground gallery. Daring concentrated, closing her eyes and drawing on her personal magic. Her compass rose-shaped cutie marks tingled and her wings went limp, her tail swishing slowly...

... the hill. They'd passed clean through the hill and were deep underground now, perhaps two hundred pony-heights beneath ground level.

Well, this surely wasn't an artificial construction. The gallery—a cave, really—was lined on its ceiling and walls with long sword-like shards of greenish-white crystal, sticking out at every possible angle, all dripping with humidity. The floor was rough-hewn from the same crystals, bumpy and irregular. It must have taken millions of years for the crystals to grow, atom by atom, and mere months for the kirin to destroy three-quarters of the beauty to hack out this gallery.

"How do they keep these galleries dry?" Daring asked. "We're far below the water table."

"Magic. We must not set hoof into the gallery, Daring Do," Caballeron said. "There's no hope to spot pressure plates amongst that jumble."

"How were you planning to get the artifact?"

"I did not know it would be this bad. The tomes I studied were—" he twirled a hoof "—incomplete."

With a flick of her wings, Daring said, "Good thing we're working as a team." She bumped her shoulder into his. He barely moved and she bounced right off his muscular side. Very muscular.

Across perhaps four hundred hoofs of floor was a large altar, carved from the raw crystals, its once-polished top now dingy with hundreds of years of condensing humidity. Eternal flames in sconces splashed weak patches of light amongst the gallery's shadows, soot-blackened reflectors behind the flames no longer providing their spotlight effect.

"I wish we had a unicorn," Caballeron said.

Daring smacked him on the back of his head with a wing. "Hey."

"Yes, yes," he said, then looked into her eyes. "You call yourself a mare rather than a filly, and perhaps by the calendar, that is true. But you are still very inexperienced in the art of the artifact. I shall feel most distraught if you kill yourself. Especially because I shall make no attempt to retrieve your body if it falls among traps."

Daring swallowed again and flicked her ears. The stitches in her left ear twinged with pain.

"Do not attempt to retrieve my body, should the situation reverse itself, Daring Do," he continued. "It is a safe bet that the rough floor is seeded with traps, but also there will be traps meant for those who fly."

Daring closed her eyes and let her pegasus magic reach out. "Tripwires. Gossamer-thin ones and close together."

"The legends imply that a few, a very few, kirin self-levitated, so they can pass through a narrower opening than a pegasus and her wings. Even wings as... sleek... as yours."

Daring opened her eyes and saw Caballeron was ogling her wings. "Do you mind?"

He smiled, deliberately moved his gaze to her rump, and then turned back to look at the gallery.

Now that she knew where to look, Daring could see the tripwires. It was a safe bet her vision was far sharper than Caballeron's. Even by pegasus standards, Daring was eagle-eyed and agile. She wasn't a particularly fast flier, nor a distance flier, but her status as the only pegasus in the upper grades meant she could pick her event for the school team, and she had placed ninth in the province sky slalom finals. Between the school team, Uncle Adventure's treasure-hunting games for her as a filly, and the real expeditions he'd taken her on as a teen, Daring's muscles were toned and her instincts sharpened. Uncle Adventure, after all, was a unicorn and depended on Daring's wings quite often.

She took a deep breath, filled her chest, held it, exhaled, deep breath, held, exhaled. Her pounding heartbeat slowed, her eyes narrowed, Caballeron was talking, yammering about something-something, tripwires and pressure plates and spring traps and poison gas, and Daring took one last deep breath.

"...so that is our plan, which you don't appear to have been listening to, so how about I suggest we just sit here and start a kumquat plantation?" Cabelleron concluded his speech with an expansive wave of his left forehoof. "Any questions?"

Daring leapt into the air, rolled on her long axis, inverting herself, and pushed off with all four legs from a crystal stalactite. She tucked her wings and arched her back, arrowing through a narrow gap in the tripwires about halfway up from the rough floor, between two of the largest stalactites. Flaring wings, deep breath, land and balance on one hoof, hope there's not a pressure plate right there, push off, arc up like a buckball, flap flap flap, limbo under a tripwire, tuck wings again, and through another gap.

She landed, four hooves spread, on the altar.

Daring looked across the gallery at Caballeron. He gaped, eyes wide and jaw slack.

"Daring Do!" he shouted. "Are you quite suicidal?"

She bowed and flared her wings in salute.

A saluting pinion brushed a stalactite. The crystal's tip fell off, landing on a pressure plate in the floor.

Things began to happen quite quickly. A deep rumble sounded in the bones of the earth above her. Daring looked down, staring at the artifact. It was polished diamond or moissanite, about the length of her foreleg but narrower, a perfect cylinder and rounded on one end. She leaned down and bit on it, grabbing the middle of its shaft like a dog retrieving a stick.

A glance up-grotto told her several of the passages between stalactites or tripwires were too narrow for her to make it through with the artifact gripped sideways in her jaws. She flipped it end-on and bit down on it, like a giant, heavy cigar between her teeth.

A blob of lava dripped from the ceiling and splattered onto the altar next to her. She turned her head away from its incandescent heat.

She leapt airborne. Caballeron was screaming and pacing back-and-forth at the entrance to the grotto. Her eyes focused forward, on the first web of tripwires to dodge, but the greenish-white stalactites in front of her turned bloody red with the glowing incandescence of the lava dripping from the ceiling behind her, the red burgeoning as a wave of lava flowed. Even as she accelerated, it warmed her bottom and dried the seemingly permanent moistness she'd felt back there since entering the temple.

Flap, tuck wings, arch back, dive, bounce, flap—

A stalactite fell and she rammed hard into it while it was dropping, the back-end of the artifact smacking hard into the crystal. The impact drove the smooth artifact two hooves-widths down her throat. Daring's eyes bugged out as it filled her throat, squeezing her windpipe, but she flapped, flapped, dodged, rolled, and skidded to a belly-landing on the stone tiles outside the grotto, next to Caballeron.

"Come on, Daring Do!" he shouted.

Eyes wide, face twisted in panic, she pointed a hoof at the huge diamond cylinder crammed into her mouth.

It took perhaps two seconds as he stared at her, evaluating the situation. During those two seconds the lava's heat on her rear intensified to the point it felt like she was sunburning her labia, the deep rumbling and crackling of the flowing lava reaching the point she tucked her ears tight to her head against the sound.

Caballeron stomped on her withers with a forehoof. Pain lanced down her shoulder into her right leg. He bit down on the artifact's butt end, his lips brushing hers with a warm tickle. He pulled forward on the diamond while pushing down and back on her shoulder blade.

The pain in her throat, mouth, and shoulder flared, but he yanked the massive weight from her airway. She gasped for breath as he galloped back up-cavern, waving a hoof for her to follow.

She stood and her right foreleg collapsed, the muscles in the shoulder spasming. She flapped after him, legs tucked tight to her barrel.

Author's Note

Comments are always welcome!

Lover

Daring sat on her haunches, the shakes not nearly as intense as those after the gas trap or the pressure plate in the corridor.

Maybe she was getting better at this adventuring stuff.

"Wow... I was really... that wasn't smart." She took a deep breath. "I nearly got us killed." Daring swallowed hard, fighting down the sour acid that threatened to evacuate her guts in an embarrassing mess.

Caballeron bucked another one of the empty bookshelves into kindling and added the pieces to the fire.

Perhaps the room had been a library. Domed, about ten pony-lengths in diameter, it had a tall chimney cutting vertically through the stone of the hills to the starry night sky, far above. Usually Daring would have been poring over the ancient tomes and scrolls, but instead, she just hugged herself. "If lava had hit my feathers, I wouldn't have been able to fly, and running across the grotto, I would have hit a pressure plate for sure—"

With the fire now well stoked, Caballeron sat down next to her and placed a foreleg over her shoulders. Daring stiffened, but when the warmth of his body melted into her, against the subterranean chill of the temple's depths, she found herself leaning into him.

"Shhhhhh," he whispered and put his other hoof to her lips. "Shhhhhh. The first time I found myself in a situation with traps, running afoul of the ancients' spite? After I was safe, I shook even worse than you are now shaking, and I vomited. You have done well, Daring Do. You are younger than I was, too."

Daring buried her face into his chest. "I—we—I almost died. What would have happened to my parents? I'm an only foal..."

"This is the risk we take, Daring Do, if we wish to play this game." He gestured at the artifact, wrapped up in a blanket near his lantern and the campfire.

She nodded, face still buried into him. The fire crackled, driving back the chill of the room, and slowly her shakes ended.

"What..." Daring said, sitting up and looking at the wrapped shape, "what is that thing, anyway? Some sort of rod or scepter?"

Caballeron stared at her, one eyebrow raised.

"....what?" Daring asked.

"Your research did not tell you how the kirin harvested their greatest magic?"

"No."

"What," Caballeron asked, "is the name of this temple?"

"The Temple of the Fire Maidens," Daring replied instantly.

"Maidens," Caballeron said. "From puberty until their thirtieth birthday, they were sequestered here, studying their magic and building their power."

"Yes, I knew that."

"So, then, what did they do with their power?"

"I... I don't know."

Caballeron smiled and leaned in close, his nose less than an inch from hers. "They gave up their maidenhood on the altar, releasing twenty years of stored up... magic... to be harvested into artifacts and devices."

Daring looked at the wrapped-up rod, its size and shape and rounded tip suddenly clicking into place. Her uninjured ear vibrated. "It's a giant diamond dildo?"

"Uncouth, but accurate. Their high priestess took the maiden's, ahem, maidenhood with the Rod as the maiden summoned her magic for storage. Then the no-longer-maiden returned to the kirin's society and married an upper-class twit and made foals."

"It's a dildo," Daring repeated. "How do I tell my parents and my Uncle that my first actual artifact was a dildo?"

"I could teach you to say the sentence in Espoñol."

"Wait... I had it down my throat!" Daring's mouth opened wide and she stuck out her tongue, scraping across her tastebuds with her outermost pinions of both wings.

With a laugh, Caballeron drew his foreleg back and scooted about two hoofs away from her.

Daring stood, walked across the chamber, and took a long drink from one of their canteens. She sat down at the fire, opposite Caballeron.

Caballeron then took a long swig from the same canteen, emptying it, and then put it back into his bag. "Get some sleep, Daring Do. We will need to be alert in the morning, to find our way back out to fresh air and sunlight. We can expect the rattling from the lava trap to have shifted the traps we ingressed past."

"Yeah," Daring said.

"The old... ingress and egress," Caballeron said, staring into her eyes. "Ingress and egress, that's what we do, you and I, isn't it? Ingress and egress, infiltration and exfiltration, in and out... these ruins. Always with a climax at the deepest point, it seems."

She nodded and scooted about thirty hooves away. Daring rolled onto her right side, her back facing Caballeron and the fire, letting it warm her wings but far enough away there wasn't any danger of setting her feathers alight. Pegasi were taught from kindergarten to fear and respect fire. "Good night," Daring said.

"Good night, Daring Do," he said from his piece of floor, close to the fire. Caballeron blew out his lantern and then the chamber was lit only by the fire's coals.

Daring stared at the wall, the dim red illumination reminding her of the lava that had nearly killed her. Her mind rocketed from thought to thought, the day's events swirling together—

Her flared wings in triumph, stupidly initiating the lava trap—

The wonderful joy of flying through the tripwires and stalactites—

Caballeron dragging her from the poison gas trap—

Caballeron's pendulous balls, right in front of her nose as they walked single-file—

A pressure plate clicking under her hoof—

Caballeron, tackling her and protecting her from the fireball, his cock accidentally touching her virginity—

Stitches in her ear, no anesthetic—

A long day. A terrible day. Maybe she wasn't cut out for this adventuring stuff after all. Maybe she should change her planned major from archaeology to mechanical engineering. She was good at math, after all. The scholarship wouldn't transfer to the College of Engineering, but she could try to join the sky slalom team as a walk-on and get an athletic scholarship, or maybe the Guard Reserve Officers Training Corps, or, or... or, just ask great-grandpa for the money. It wasn't like he ever told any of his grandfoals 'no,' and unlike so many of her other relatives on her dad's side, Gray-Gramps didn't mind that Daring was his only non-unicorn descendant, or that Daring had been born rather less than eleven months after her parents' wedding. He was, frankly, the best great-grandpa a filly could ask for. Or mare. Daring needed to stop thinking of herself as a filly. She was starting college in a few months.

Caballeron started snoring, very lightly, on the far side of the fire.

Sleep, sleep, need to sleep. Her eyes were crusty and her ears drooped with exhaustion. Daring closed her eyes, tucked her right elbow under her head as a substitute pillow, relaxed her wings, and took long slow breaths...

...she couldn't sleep. And she knew why. Damnit.

She would have to do it, wouldn't she? The habit was too ingrained. She'd never been on a date, hadn't kissed a filly or colt in school in several years, because she was too busy, spending every waking moment in the Horsekins University Library in downtown Baltimare, or else off in the woods or swamps, exercising, traipsing through mud, and tuning her skills for what she knew her life's calling would be. (Or had known, before this round of second thoughts.)

But her chaste life, so far, didn't mean she didn't have the hormones normal for her age. Didn't mean she didn't want several of her classmates at school. Didn't mean she didn't have... desires.

She always rubbed off after going to bed. Always. The release, after the stress of the day at school or in the woods, always put her out like a snuffed candle. When was the last time she tried to sleep without first rubbing one out? Six years ago? Seven? Yeah, seven.

And Caballeron did tell the truth: they would need to be sharp and well rested to get out of the temple alive tomorrow.

He snored again.

Daring, still lying on her right flank, slowly lifted her left leg, opening up her hips, and planted her left hoof on the ground, in front of her right knee, to lever her hips open. The cold subterranean air hit her marehood, chilling the dampness. Goodness, she was already wet. She flagged her tail slightly, lifting it away from herself. The long gray hairs of her tail's skirt pulled away from where they stuck to the wetness. Her left forehoof reached down.

She could smell herself, a combination of stale excitement from earlier—being so close to the muscular stallion had kept a low-level pilot light under her tail all day—and her own sweat.

What she really, really wanted was a shower, but in a life of adventuring, she was bound to smell worse than this plenty of times to come.

Reaching her left wing down, she stroked the tip of her longest primary feather across the bottom of her labia. Warmth flowed through her as it brushed up her slit and then a shock blasted deep into her belly when the feather lightly teased her clit.

With short motions, up-and-down, she played that feather across her clit. The nub grew firm and poked from its hood. The shocks of pleasure turned into a continuous crackle and the fluffy fuzz around her pussy grew warm as her new flows soaked into it. Turning her head, she bit hard on the inside of her right foreleg to muffle any noises. Her tail lifted, brushing her back as it instinctively got itself out of the way of the stallion her animal instincts expected.

Sorry ladies, she thought to her nethers, it's just us again tonight. Maybe we'll meet a nice mare or stallion someday after we retire... I'll buy us a dildo tomorrow at that sex shop near the beach house, I promise, but not as big as that giant diamond monstrosity...

Her wing moved away from her treasure and she touched the wet pinion to her nose, breathing in the thick scent of her own pleasure.

Sniffing herself helped build some more steam pressure in her boiler and the dream from that morning—her muzzle under another mare's tail—came back to her. Her mouth watered with the memory of that imagined taste, slick and honey-sweet and thickened with a stallion's seed. Daring then forced her thoughts to the poster, hanging in her bedroom, of her new favorite singer, Songbird Serenade, with her tail raised and her wings flared and her bottom in the tight, tight spandex shorts filling the middle of the poster, and Daring imagined she was smelling Songbird's snatch instead of simply her own.

Her tongue reached out and sampled a drop of her own flow, her imagination telling her it was the singer's.

Powerful abdominal muscles—toned by years of continuous hiking, flying, traipsing, and crawling—clenched. Her channel ached and a the soft thwap-thwap-thwap of her tail slapping the stone floor sounded through the cavern.

She touched her left hoof to her clit and her entire body spasmed. Her tail whipped against stone and her wings flapped, out of time, feathers rustling. Her left rear hoof, planted against the floor, slid an inch with a soft scraping sound. Fire filled her her her pussy and ran up her spine. Her abdomen contracted and the muscles around her uterus clenched. Her teats were particularly tiny, even compared to other mares her own age, but her nipples hardened painfully in the rush of blood and sensations. Teeth clamped down on the skin of her foreleg, painful and sure to leave a self-hickey, as she fought not to scream in pleasure.

Celestia, she was hot! Daring hadn't realized she was that turned on. Why was she so—

No, don't think about Caballeron. He's a business partner and a mentor, but not a... don't. Just, don't. Think about Songbird. Or someone from school. Rose Garden, perhaps, and her long, wispy tail... Daring imagined putting her nose under her tail, stopping to 'smell the roses.' Or Goldenrod and Daring gasped as she thought about his... rod. Goldenrod getting on top of Daring as she sucked one of his loads out of Minor Scale, feeling the slickness of Minor's pussy juice on Golden's cock as he took Daring's virginity...

Her tail raised a little more, making room for a stallion. Stop! Stop that! Think about Rose Garden or Minor Scale or Songbird. Tonight, just tonight, don't think about stallions. As her left hoof bore down on her clit, driving even more deeply into the depths of her own fire... she imagined rolling onto her belly and Caballeron's thickly muscled weight on her back, smashing her flat onto the hard stone. Daring whined deep in her throat and a massive gush of pussy juice flowed out of her, soaking her thighs and her tail, and she rubbed harder, smearing the juices across her clit and her nipples and sniffing deep and imaging the smell was—

"Daring Do?"

She froze, heart pounding and breath ragged, her hoof mid-rub on her clit.

Her pussy squirted again, this time with enough force the liquid splashed loudly against the stones of the floor just past her bottom.

"Daring Do, you could borrow the Rod."

"What?"

"It's diamond, we shall wash it off before we sell it."

"To a museum?"

"Sell it, yes."

"Why would I need the Rod?"

"Because you're masturbating."

A pause. "Am not."

"Then what smell is it that woke me?"

Daring felt a flush, as red and as hot as the embers of the fire, cross her cheeks. "I'm... I'm sorry."

"Don't be, masturbation is healthy."

She said nothing.

"Do you wish to use the rod?"

"Wouldn't that be dangerous?" Daring asked.

"It's not as if you're a virgin. That would cause magical concerns."

Daring bit her tongue and hunched her back.

"Really?" Caballeron said. "So the stereotypes about rich teenagers and their elite preparatory school are not accurate."

Unable to hold back any longer, Daring's hoof began a slow circle around her clit again. Pussy juices squelched in the fluff on her pubis.

"I don't suppose you would like something better than masturbation?" Caballeron asked.

She gasped and bit down on her foreleg again. Her pussy squirted, but not as violently this time, the hot flow sluicing down her labia and soaking her asshole and her dock. "No," she squeaked. "Do you—do you mind if I finish and then get some sleep?"

He chuckled. "You leave me marinating in your stew and then fall asleep? That is an interesting decision, Daring Do."

She fought against it, but her head turned and her back twisted. She looked over her shoulder, past the fire, and saw him. He laid flat on his back, a forehoof rubbing his shaft, erect and huge and throbbing and his balls hung low over his dock, throbbing in time with his cock.

He smiled at her as they made eye contact. "Surely you don't mind if I relieve the pressure you're responsible for, then, do you?" His hoof moved down and shifted his balls around. Oh, oh dear Celestia, his balls were huge. And his... his... his penis was tremendous. It's not like the other students in school ever wore pants, and the colts got random hardons all the time, and she spent every summer up at Great-Grandpa's mountain retreat around the swimming pool with all her innumerable cousins, so she had a pretty comprehensive mental database of penises and that... that... that one was big.

Her forehoof rubbed desperately against her clit as she stared, eyes wide, at his underside. Her tail rose a little more and she realized that, the way the angles worked, he was staring at her ass. Specifically, her asshole.

"Come now, Daring Do. Do you mind if I...?"

His forehoof rubbed his balls again and his other played up and down his shaft.

Daring swallowed, her ears tucking close to her head. Her channel clenched and her abdominal muscles, as hard as armored plates, strained against the pressure rising from her groin.

"I... I... would..." she rolled onto her belly, lowering her chin to the floor and spreading her forelegs wide in front of her. Of its own volition—for she was surely not doing this consciously—her rump rose high and her tail moved itself to the left, getting out of the way of her pussy.

She remembered sex education class in eighth grade, when Mrs. Cumulus took her, as the lone pegasus filly, into private to talk to her without inhibitions: Protect your wings.

Her wings flared forward, past her head, making room for his forelegs.

"I have an idea," Daring said, not sure why she was talking when her brain was blank and her head spinning like after getting caught in a tornado and tossed across the landscape.

She looked forward, away from him and clenched her eyes. His coat rustled as he flipped up to his hooves and then he clop-clop-clopped across the stones to her, hooves ringing on stone.

Clop, clop, clop, he approached. She squeezed her eyes tighter.

Warm breath played across the long hairs of her tail, then across her dock, then over her asshole and labia, tickling her downy fuzz and cooling the soaking juices of her flow. "Daring Do," Caballeron said, his breath hot on her clitoris, "are you offering to let me relieve my pressure?"

She nodded her head. "Y—yes."

He stomped one hoof, loud against the stone. "An excellent capstone to an exciting day. I accept your offer."

Daring folded her forelegs together on the stone floor, elbows wide to balance herself, and lowered her chin to rest on her fetlocks.

"Ya know," Daring said, with a hint of a desperate chuckle, "I thought I was going to be the only one in my senior class still a virgin after this week."

"Indeed?" He touched his tongue, very lightly, to her clit. Daring gasped.

"Y—yeah. The others, my friends, at Maretle Beach this week, are probably having a drunken orgy by now. My cousin's there, she's been having sex since eigth or ninth grade. I could be there with them, but... the Temple called."

Caballeron's lips brushed the fuzz on her pubic mound.

"Don't—don't do that, I need a shower," Daring whispered. "I stink."

"You know what they say, Daring Do."

She wiggled her rump and flicked her tail farther left, completely out of his way. Her wings burned with tension and she let them relax to the floor. "'They' say lots of things."

"Virgins, they say"—his tongue poked against her clit again and her thigh and abdominal muscles tensed in pleasured shock—"are like hard-boiled eggs: easy to eat, but take some effort to crack." His lips clamped around her clit and he sucked.

Daring's eyes popped wide and her mouth opened in a silent scream. His strong jaw worked, lips brushing her labia as his tongue circled her clit counter-clockwise. She beat the floor with her wings and her tail thwacked the side of his head. Lightning shot up her spine and thunder rumbled in her skull. She thought her pussy had been juicy already, but the flows that poured over his face and down her labia were now even more copious. Drips pattered against the stone floor and the only other sound was his wet sucking against her pleasure and her own ragged breathing.

As her tail thwacked his head again, she realized: I'm wagging like an excited puppy. She buried her face into her forehooves to hide the blush that erupted across her cheeks.

Her rear legs shook and her head spun as the sensations doubled and tripled and her eyes clenched again. Her flows wet her pubic fluff and soaked down into her belly fur. His sucking turned desperate and his tongue slid up, into her channel, and sounds like a starving cat with a bowl of milk came from under her tail.

Her pussy burned like lava and she bit down on her tongue as pleasure built. Every muscle below her wings throbbed in time with his sucking. She knew it was going to hurt when he finally mounted her, but she didn't care. She wanted this. Daring was a mare, an adult, and this was her first solo adventure, her first adventure with a partner who wasn't a blood relative—it was only fitting she should take him as her first lover, right? What could plant her flag more firmly in her marehood?

And, she thought with a smile, she was about to really get something planted in her marehood. She could feel the fresh scar of the birth control implant, in her left armpit, rubbing against the stone. She would have to apologize to Minor Scale later: she had been planning to fuck him the whole time, hadn't she? Minor had seen that before Daring had.

"Do me," she commanded.

He pushed his tongue deeper and her whole body clenched, her pussy clenching involuntarily down around him. He said, "You taste as sweet as sopapillas in honey, Daring Do," his breath cooling the flames between her pussylips.

"You're just saying that."

Caballeron moved around her right side, took a step, and leaned down, his flank brushing hers, his head next to her head. A mixture of smells swirled around her and she breathed in, deeply sampling them. His sweat and her own, but even more, the smell of her juices coating his face.

Opening her eyes and turning her head, she kissed him, lightly. First kiss, she thought. Not quite what the story books tell you to expect!

He pressed his lips firmly into hers and their tongues met. Daring's ears quivered as she tasted her own flows, sweet and thick, like spiced honey, on him. She extended her tongue, licking his lips and his cheeks, sloppily getting every drop of her own juices off him.

"Wow, I do taste good."

With a stretch of his neck, he nibbled on her right ear. Her eyes clenched and a chill ran down her back, making her hackles stand up and her feathers poof out. She giggled—giggled, dammit!—as his teeth hit a ticklish spot on the inside of her ear.

Her left ear flexed in sympathy and a stitch popped. She felt a dribble of blood but just ignored it. That was a later problem.

"Cab—Caballeron?"

He bit hard on her uninjured ear, sending another chill down her spine, and then asked, "Yes, Daring Do?"

"Fuck me. Cum inside me. Now."

"As you command, Daring Do."

He scooted backwards and Daring clenched her eyes again, settling her chin onto her crossed forelegs. Breathe, deep breaths, don't forget to breathe. This will hurt but it'll also be great... He was huge and she was a virgin.

"I've gotta fly back, remember," Daring whispered. "Please watch the wings."

"You think I've never made love to a pegasus before, Daring Do?" he said with a chuckle.

Oh... well, obviously he wasn't a virgin. She should have thought about that, huh?

The air burst from Daring's lungs as he mounted her, his heavily muscled earth stallion weight suddenly on her back. Her hind legs strained, muscles tensing to hold the weight of his torso, and her chest ground into the stone of the temple's floor.

She took a deep breath and his forelegs rubbed against her ribs, just behind her wings.

"Ready, Daring Do?"

"Yeah, go ahead."

Deep breath in. Breathe out. Deep breath in. The fire's smoke tickled her nose and their mixed sweat provided earthy undertones. Her own love juices, smeared onto her snout by his kissing, gave a flowery bouquet. The coals crackled and Caballeron breathed deeply. Daring's tongue poked out and licked her nose, getting another taste of herself, and—

His tip pressed against her opening. Her breath caught, deep in her chest, and she forced herself to exhale. Oh, oh that felt... felt... it wasn't like earlier, when he tackled her to protect her from the fireball and accidentally poked his cock into her. That had been awkward, uncomfortable, awful.

This was... this was perfect. Her wetness dripped down, across her clit onto the floor as his tip brushed the insides of her pussylips and the opening of her channel.

Pressure built as he shifted his weight. No sharp pain, thank Celestia, but she felt her virginal opening stretching as he pressed forward. Something like a deep ache, but also so much more...

Strong legs rubbed her flanks, from the bases of her wings down to her cutie marks and back up. "Just relax," Caballeron said. "I know that is, perhaps, easier said than done, but try."

Eyes still clenched, she gave a tiny nod. The entire bottom half of her body burned, like having been dipping in the lava from earlier, and his strong legs left tingly-jangly tracks of gooseflesh along her ribs as he rubbed up and down.

His legs shifted to the soft flesh below her ribs and above her hip bones and squeezed.

"Ohhhh..." Daring gasped.

He pushed in, deep but not all the way, a sudden and brutal thrust, timed with a squeeze of those powerful forelegs.

Daring's eyes popped open. That felt... that felt good. He stretched her out, for sure, but she didn't feel the pain she expected.

"Good, Daring Do?"

"Yes! It doesn't hurt at all."

Closing her eyes again, she just luxuriated in the sensations. She licked her own lips, tasting her residues from his kiss, and her pussy dripped, the hot flows soaking her rump's fur and sliding over her clit and splattering on the floor like a drippy faucet and she breathed, pulling in the scent of her own excitement and she tried one set of muscles, then another, then a third, and that third set of muscles clamped down on his—

"¡Dios mio!" Caballeron shouted. "I did not expect such a sensation from a mare so new to the ways of love."

She looked back, over her withers, and stared into his eyes, then clenched her pussy down on his cock again. "I read lots of smutty romance. I mean, I read lots of everything, but I like smutty romance."

"Let us see what else you might know." His hips shifted forward and he hilted, his balls slamming into her clit.

She gasped and her wings flared straight up. She felt—she felt so full. Every muscle in her body clenched and her tail, tucked far to her left to make room, thwap-thwap-thwapped his flank. He rubbed her sides, massaging the hard muscles. Her abdominals burned, clench tight as if to take a kick to the solar plexus and she couldn't relax them, her breathing sharp and shallow. Nipples, soaked with her flows, throbbed in time with her heartbeat.

He pulled back, slowly sliding his cock from her, inch after inch receding, and a forlorn sadness filled her as that wonderful fullness retreated, feeling like a piece of her soul was being pulled away from her—

"You," Caballeron said, "are very, very wet. You shall have to drink a whole canteen when we finish, lest dehydration carry you away."

"Good?"

"Wonderful. You've slicked my cock most expertly." Caballeron slammed himself forward, his hips battering into hers, and Daring screamed.

The sudden assault hurt, slightly, but the sensation as his massive rod refilled and re-stretched her tightness and was unlike anything she'd felt before. Her entire body lit up, hair sticking straight up from her rump to her forehead, wings beating the floor. Pressure built in her belly, unlike anything she quite recognized, and he stroked out and back in again. She squirted, a massive gush of pussy juices squelching and she gasped, eyes wide and ears erect, ignoring the pain and dribbling blood from the popped stitches in her left ear.

Stroking again and again, a quick rhythm of deep thrusts, his powerful hips slamming forward as his muscular forelegs squeezed just above her hips, pulling her back onto his implaning thrusts.

She saw stars with every thrust as his thick cock split her fresh pussy wide, the huge head of his cock bulldozing her velvety walls open. Every third or fourth thrust he got that extra fraction of an inch and bumped her cervix, a tiny bolt of pain from the collision mixed with the pleasure and all swirling together, her head going light, her pussy now a continuous squelching wet mess as her juices flowed.

"Good," Daring whispered, "so good..."

That's when it occurred to Daring: she was just there, letting him rail her. She wasn't really doing anything.

She let him thrust twice more, judging his rhythm, and then used her forelegs, planted solidly on the floor, to push off and she slammed her hips backwards in time with his thrust forward. A wet smack echoed across the cavern as his hips slapped into her sopping-wet rump.

Stars lit her vision. He'd clobbered her insides, the deepest thrust yet, but the combination of pleasure and pain made her dizzy. She shook her head, clearing the stars, and just luxuriated in how his massive cock filled her.

Caballeron paused for a moment. Then, "You learn fast."

"I told you—lots of smutty novels."

"Do your parents know what you read?"

"Don't mention my parents while we fuck." She pulled her hips forward, off his cock, and gave a little moan as the pressure against her cervix relented and then the fullness in her channel retreated, leaving a deep emptiness that she... wanted... to... fill.

Together, in perfect time, they slammed their hips together, she going backwards as he went forwards, and the wet smack filled the cavern again.

Then again.

And again.

Deep inside her belly, the fullness doubled and redoubled as the head of his cock flared, expanding as his excitement burgeoned and her vision seemed to go dim as the sensations battered her mind. Her nipples hardened painfully and she wished for a free hoof to rub them with.

Daring raised her head and howled as tension deep her own belly released, her pussy clenching and relaxing, her wings stiffening and stretching out horizontally.

Her rear legs went weak and collapsed. Caballeron fell down on top of her with a gasp of surprise, mashing her hindquarters flat to the stone, the cold of the floor meeting the heat of her belly. Her nipples spasmed as the cold stone hit them.

His forehooves landed in front of her wings, to either side of her head.

Pounding, not missing a beat despite the new angle, Caballeron grunted in her ear and made a last thrust, deeper than any before, his cock and the massive flare of its head smashing painfully into the bottom of her womb and he ground his hips up and down against her rump, his cock growing even larger and pulsing inside her, his balls rubbing her clit as they clenched. New squelching noises replaced the wet smacks as he pressed forward.

He thrust one last time and the squelching noise was even more pronounced.

"Ahhhh," Cabelleron said and bit her right ear. "So nice, Daring Do. I suspect we can both sleep, now."

Daring opened her eyes and stared forward at the wall lit by the glowing coals.

He pushed up and withdrew from her. A splort came from under her tail and hot stickiness flowed across her clit, soaking the fluff of her pubic mound. Caballeron flopped bonelessly down, between Daring and the fire.

Looking over her shoulder, she saw him on his back, eyes already closed. His cock—still huge but softening noticeably—was glazed with Daring's pussy juices and dripping a thin stream of his white thick seed from his tip.

Daring thought about her smutty romance novels. She scooted towards him, opening a wing to hug him with, so that they could sleep the night in each other's embrace, warming each other against the chill of the cavern.

Eyes closed, he rolled away from her.

Daring blinked and slowly pulled her wing back in. She stood and twisted her body to look under her tail. Every single hair of her coat from her cutie marks to her knees was soaked with her juices or her sweat and a wad of cum slid out from between her labia and plopped to the floor.

Moving a few hooves away, she laid back down, curling into a ball and closing her eyes.

Her body still burned, her entire lower half twitching and spasming as the muscles came down from the orgasms, her body unsure what had happened and wanting more. The smell of their lovemaking—is that what it had been, or had it been animal rutting, just fucking?—filled the small room. The scent of her own arousal, familiar from years of nightly masturbation, was different, this time, stronger, and the smell of a stallion's seed—which she now recognized—new to her.

The feeling of his seed flowing viscously from deep inside her, over her vulva, was also something new.

Thank Celestia for birth control spells, she thought. Did you really let him cum inside you?

More slick cum dribbled across her urethra and clitoris.

Yes, you did.

Caballeron was snoring.

Daring slipped down the corridor fifty paces, peed onto the stone floor, and then returned to curl up several paces from the fire. She closed her eyes and let herself drift off the sleep, remembering how wonderful the rutting had felt in the moment, and letting the worries about the wisdom of the whole situation wait for morning's light. She rolled onto her side and, with the sensation of another wad of thick cum sliding out of her and stickily into the fuzz of her inner thighs, she, too, fell asleep.

Author's Note

I live for comments!

Betrayer

The fire had died in the night. She awoke, flat on her back and shivering.

Daring stretched, her back and abdominal muscles sore from the exertions—both amorous and archeological— of the previous day, and her pussy a bit sore, too. She frowned. Ouch. She had... she had bruised her cervix. That was probably going to bother her once she got up and moving.

She rolled over and stood up, shaking her wings out. Dried bodily fluids crinkled in the fuzz of her coat. "Hey, Caballeron?"

A single small lantern and the narrow shaft of daylight from the chimney lit the room.

Silence.

He was gone.

His bags were gone.

The artifact was gone.

All that was left of him was the puddle of cum that had leaked from Daring in her sleep.

The small lantern and two canteens sat near the ashes of the fire. On the floor, in red chalk, was a note.

Daring Do,
I marked the path out with white chalk and the traps with red. Be sure to drink plenty of water.
Until next time~

She shoved the canteens into her bag, grabbed the lantern's handle in her teeth, and followed the first white chalk arrow.

It led her to another, then another. Jump a pressure plate marked in red. White arrow. White arrow. Duck a tripwire, also marked red.

She dared not run, but she moved at a fast walk, almost a trot.

Her nose sampled the air. She smelled her own pussy wafting along Caballeron's trail. He wasn't far ahead of her.

"You!" Daring shouted and surged into the air as her hooves met the muddy loam outside the temple's half-hidden entryway.

Caballeron, two hundred yards beyond the temple, stopped and looked at her. His tail smashed a mosquito.

Daring buzzed over him, close enough to smack one of his ears with a hoof as she zoomed past. She landed in front of him and flared her wings in rage, hindquarters tensed to pounce. "You! You... you used me and fucked me and left me! We found that artifact together!"

"This is the capstone to my dissertation, Daring Do. If I wish to be Doctor Caballeron, and no longer Doctoral Candidate Caballeron—I must produce it."

"That's fine," Daring snarled, "but I want half the credit when it's in the museum. I want to be first author on the publication. You can be senior author, I don't care. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Canterlot, I think."

Caballeron laughed, raising his head to the sky and holding one free hoof against his belly. His entire body shook. "Barely even eighteen and already thinking like a jaded academic. Fine," he waved a hoof dismissively, "you may first-author the paper, I don't care. But it will not be in a museum."

Fury drained the blood from Daring's head, the bright morning sun dimming as her eyes narrowed. The pain in her pussy and her ear receded. She ground her right forehoof into the dirt, fighting the urge to beat him upside the head with her wings. "What?"

"My PhD, it is funded by an... anonymous philanthropist, shall I say? The dildo—"

"Wand!"

"—dildo shall be going to his private collection." Caballeron gave her a wide grin and raised his eyebrows. "But I will not tell if you should like to try it once, before it disappears from the face of Equestria, again."

"No!" Daring shouted and leaped, forehooves pawing for his backpack.

Cabelleron sidestepped and pushed her away, forehoof on her chest. "Do not do that, Daring Do. I am taking the artifact. You are not."

"Were you planning to betray me the whole time?"

"I was planning to take the artifact, yes. We never agreed on a split, so I find your accusation of betrayal to be a base canard. I will not stand for it."

"Were you planning to fuck me, too?"

Caballeron spluttered. "You were masturbating! Right in front of me!"

"We've known each other for years. Since—since I was fourteen. Have you been planning to fuck me the whole time?"

"No. I've seen you as a potential asset. You proved yourself, yesterday, as brave and resourceful, but also proved you need more training... which I can give you."

She leapt at him again, landing solidly on his withers and scrabbling for the backpack once more.

He batted her aside. Daring landed in the mud with a splash and leaped back to her hooves.

"Daring Do, stop that. You are half my size, you will not take the artifact by force."

Daring reared to her hind legs and kicked him right on the snout with a forehoof. He grunted and stepped back, blood dribbling from his nose.

"I have warned you, Daring Do." Caballeron's forehoof lashed out twice. With a crunch-snap, Daring went down.

Flat on her back, she cradled her face with her wings, gasping and cursing, right foreleg tucked to her chest. Stars spun around her and her entire head burned. She tried to stand and the foreleg collapsed underneath her.

"Still, still, Daring Do." Caballeron's forehooves forced her wings away from her face. She stared at him, her vision doubled and blurry. "Ah. Damn."

"W—what?" Daring said, realizing she was flat on her back in the mud. She tucked her tail over her genitals, unwilling to expose herself to... to him.

"You rushed me, Daring Do. I'm sorry, I broke your zygomatic bone."

"What?"

He dug into his pack and removed a first aid kit. He crunched down on an instant cold pack with his teeth, releasing its spell, and pressed it against her face.

"Ow!"

"I do not think the bone is displaced, but you must see a doctor. An orthopedic surgeon. Go to the Maretle Beach hospital emergency room." He then examined her foreleg. "I think I dislocated your knee, too. Here, take this."

Daring flipped over and sat, haunches in the mud, and focused one-eyed on him. Caballeron held an open bottle of pills and a canteen.

"Painkiller and anti-inflammatory," Caballeron explained. "You shall want it."

"Fuck you." Daring stood on three legs, injured leg tucked high and one wing pressing the icepack to her face. "Fuck you."

"We already have, Daring Do. I am sorry about the eye and the knee, but you did hit me first."

"I'm going to learn to fight," Daring said. "The next time we meet in a temple..."

"Of course, Daring Do. How is your direction sense?"

Daring blinked. She pulled the icepack down and glanced at the sun. Her left eye seemed to be working all right, if blurry.

As she scanned the horizon, Caballeron put the unused painkiller back in his bag. "At least take the canteen. A pegasus with a head knock can have trouble navigating for a few hours. Maretle Beach is that direction." He pointed just north of the rising sun, indicating east-northeast. "Go straight until you hit the beach, then turn left and follow the strand. Can't miss it."

Replacing the ice pack on her face, Daring glared at him. "I still have the two canteens you left in the gallery."

Caballeron shrugged and continued his walk.

Daring dropped the icepack into the mud, flapped into the air, holding her injured foreleg tight to her chest. She hovered for a moment to judge if the head injury had affected her balance, and then flew east for Maretle Beach.

His form, heading west at a canter, disappeared behind her.

The train rocked back and forth, clickety-clacking its way back from Maretle Beach to Baltimare.

Daring flushed the toilet and looked in the mirror. The entire left side of her face was a bruise, from jaw to the new stitches the emergency room doctor had put in her ear. Her right foreleg was splinted and trussed to her chest.

Mom and Dad were going to freak when she got home.

She returned from the lavatory to her seat next to Minor Scale.

"Daring?" Minor asked.

"Yeah?"

"How's your head?"

She rubbed the unbruised side of her face. "The painkillers are helping a lot. But there's this dull... like a dull throb underneath everything. I can't concentrate, I can't sleep... they said once the bone starts knitting, that'll go away."

"Your leg?"

"They said it'll be okay, but it'll dislocate easily for life, so be careful."

Diopt, Daring's cousin, abandoned the card game and joined Minor and Daring. "You've gone to the bathroom four times in an hour," she said.

"Yeah, I'm pissing lava," Daring replied, looking out the window. "I guess I'm seeing another doctor when I get home, get tested."

"Birth control spell?" Minor asked.

"Doctor at the emergency room checked it, said it was one hundred percent, and that I wasn't fertile, anyway."

"Well," Minor said, "at least there's that."

Diopt leaned close to Daring. "Great-grandpa is going to want to press charges."

Daring stared out the window. "Charges won't stick. The sex was my idea and I started the fight."

"Wait, really?" Diopt and Minor said together.

"Yeah."

"What are you going to do, then?" Minor asked.

Daring glared at the countryside. They'd left the Lowcountry around the beach and were crossing the low rolling hills, corn and cotton fields passing by them as the train rocketed across the piedmont. "First, no more partners. I work alone, now. Second... I learn to fight."

Author's Note

Please let me know what you thought!