Celestia Goes West

Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 3
Chapter 15

Chapter 1

Silver Shoals breathed with the sounds of the ocean. The small, tight-knit community of a thousand-or-so ponies enjoyed quiet, easy living outside the reaches of the city of Vanhoover.

At least, they had, until about a year and a season ago, when the Ex-Princesses of Equestria moved into the old manor house on 15th and Cliffside. Since then, the town had suffered a near-constant influx of “tourists,” which continued to harass the manor house until the present day.

Between the paparazzi, the journalists, and the entire entourage of nobles that wished to mimic the old royalty and buy their own properties in the small, quiet town, Silver Shoals had no choice but to grow and upgrade. A few weeks ago, they finished building a Hay Burger, the new Barns and Noble bookstore went up three streets away, and a mall popped up across the street from that.

The town’s locals grumbled as the world seeped into their sleeping village but otherwise said nothing as modernity began to encroach. They still fished, sold seashells, and occasionally hosted sailors as they journeyed across the North Luna Ocean.

Celestia, once High Princess of Equestria, loved it. She enjoyed seeing the ponies she used to rule over succeed and grow in new ways, and she always marveled at the ingenuity of her little ponies.

At the same time, watching old traditions die left a bad taste in her mouth.

Sighing, she picked her head off the windowsill and left the solarium of Two Sisters Manor, at least that’s what the tourists called it.

The long hallways mimicked the grandeur of Canterlot Castle and had tall, arching ceilings that once were built to accommodate the sisters’ height. Of course, now they just felt strangely empty to the pair.

Her hooves echoed as they walked down the halls, where the windows opened up to the extensive, well-manicured gardens. She continued to walk down the long corridor before she finally turned the corner to see her room.

A bed, sized for her old height, sat against one wall next to a full-length mirror that now stood too tall and a chaise longue that now lay too long. Celestia glanced around the room for a long moment and nodded to herself. “It’s official,” she muttered. “I cannot take it any longer.”

She knew this moment was coming. She reached out with her magic and dug out a set of already-packed saddlebags from her closet. She checked the straps and then, setting the bags on her bed, about-faced, and walked out of the room.

The brilliant white alicorn sighed again as she meandered down the hallways, staring at her reflection in the mirror-finished tiles, revealing the mirrored gold above her. The days seemed to be growing longer by the hour, and the town’s limited by growing attractions had done little to lighten her mood.

Though watching everypony gasp as she sat in the audience of a tacky Las Pegasus magic show did make her grin from ear-to-ear for a good twenty minutes.

Celestia tried other little tricks to try and keep boredom at bay. She tried her hoof at fishing, though she didn’t see the appeal. The thought of brewing alcohol and opening a bar as a change of pace struck her once, but the possibility that it might get too much attention anyway put the alicorn off. She even tried to go to the Grand Galloping Gala as a guest instead of a host for once. Of course, that did little else than show Celestia that Twilight, her successor, still had a lot to learn.

Looking back, it should have been evident that Twilight would have issues working with a thief to better the kingdom. The mare had a very tight set of morals, which wasn’t a bad thing, but without the few thousand years of experience Celestia had on her, it could make certain facts harder to see. Then again, she’d heard that Twilight managed to learn her lessons just in time to save Night Silk’s job, which the old diarch chose to take as a good sign.

She passed by their open library, stuffed with books that she had read a good twenty times. She walked past the tea room, where her daily cup of oolong waited for her. She slipped by the kitchens, where she made waffles that morning. Again.

She probably could get back to learning how to actually cook something else for a change, but it didn’t hold any lasting appeal at the moment. No, she had a better idea.

Of course, she needed to present this idea carefully, but if anyone knew Luna and how to push her in the right direction, it was Celestia herself.

She turned the corner and stepped into Luna’s study, quickly saw her little sister, and made her declaration. “I want to go on vacation.”

Luna blinked as she turned to her sister and blinked. The younger alicorn, for some reason, had taken to her changes better than her older sister. While both had shrunk down to the height of an average pony, through means neither of them understood, Luna’s mane continued to shine like the night sky. Celestia’s own mane, however, slowly, almost imperceptibly began to bleed its colors away.

“And what would cause one to need a vacation from retirement, Dear Sister?” Luna asked, looking up from a book that sat on her desk. “I was under the impression that retirement was a point in time where one could do whatever one wished. A vacation seems counterproductive.”

“That’s not what I mean, Lulu,” Celestia sighed.

“Regardless of what thou mean, my question stands, why dost thou want to go on any kind of vacation?”

Celestia sighed before slumping into a nearby overstuffed chair. “Because I’m bored.”

Luna raised an eyebrow.

When the younger sister said nothing, Celestia opened her mouth to continue. “I have nothing to do, Luna. I’m used to running a country, taking care of affairs of state, holding court. I’m not used to having this much time on my hooves with so little to do.”

Luna returned to her book. “We’re several thousand years old. We’ve always had too much time on our hooves. In fact, until recently, I was convinced we were immortal and had nothing but time on our hooves.”

Celestia pouted. “But I have nothing to do, Luna,” she said, sniffing loudly and only a pinch over-dramatically.

Luna didn’t even look up from her reading. “Write a book, then. I’m sure the common ponies of the land would feast for the words of their once-diarch. For that point, why art thou asking me? Thou needs no permission.”

Celestia smiled. “I do, actually,” she said, crossing the room to huddle conspiratorially next to the midnight blue mare. “I do, actually,” she whispered, “because I’m talking about one of our old, old vacations.”

Luna blinked and sat up straight in her chair. “No,” she said.

“Oh, please!” Celestia said, pouting again, giving her sister her best puppy-dog eyes.

“It t’were a game, Celestia, and a horribly irresponsible one at that!”

“It was your idea,” Celestia noted.

“And a horribly irresponsible idea!” Luna repeated. “What thought has entered thy skull to make thee think such a thing?”

“It’s fine, Luna,” the elder said. “As you pointed out not that long ago, we’re retired. We don’t have any responsibilities to be irresponsible with.”

“And throwing thy life away is a better use of thy time?” Luna asked.

“I won’t be throwing my life away, Lulu,” Celestia said. “Half the time, we never ran into anything that dangerous.”

“And the other half?”

“Well...maybe,” she admitted, “but we don’t know if we’re immortal anymore. I could die right in the middle of this conversation anyway.”

“We never knew if we were immortal or not,” Luna said. “We just didn’t age. We still haven’t aged. We just grew smaller. We might live for another four thousand years. Still, that does not make the idea of actively seeking danger any better.”

“We’re still alicorns, Lulu. We used to hold the titles of Archmage Rulers. There’s not much that can be dangerous to us.”

“All of the spells in the world do not make you invincible if you disguise yourself as a pegasus.”

“Then I won’t disguise myself as a pegasus,” Celestia said.

Honestly, that point had been made far earlier than this conversation, back when Celestia still ruled. Occasionally, the elder Princess went out to see how her people lived from their point of view, using an amulet to change her appearance.

On her last trip, a particularly desperate pony stole the amulet and left Celestia as a pegasus and unable to change back.

That alone taught her the importance of having a way out.

Luna did not seem convinced. “This is a crazy idea, Tia, and thou know it to be true.”

“We had so much fun, Luna. We used to do so much good for the kingdom when we did this. Do you remember when we stopped the flood in Tall Tale when it was just a small mining town? Or how about that time we literally put Canterlot on the map before I had to move the Castle there. We used to go on adventures, Lulu! We used to masquerade as heroes and save the world as only we could. It kept us sharp, and ready, and—”

“And we lost most of it,” Luna said. “We lost the chance to be heroes since…” she fell silent, letting the sentence hang for a moment. The wound of Nightmare Moon still itched like an ugly scab, and neither of them wanted to talk about it when they didn’t have to.

“Elements or not,” Celestia said gingerly, “we were heroes. We can still do that now. Besides, this is probably the best way to help Twilight now that she’s on the throne. We can push in small, tiny ways and help deal with problems she’s not really aware of. We can be useful, Lulu. That’s all I want.”

Picking at the albatross that Luna insisted on carrying seemed to take the fight out of her, and the younger sister sighed, and Celestia felt a small stab of guilt.

Why did every other discussion lead back to that?

“Why don’t we talk about this later,” Celestia said.

“No, no, it’s fine,” Luna said. “Have thou at least planned this out?”

“I received an untainted Changeling amulet from King Thorax,” Celestia said, “Twilight finally sent it back, and I’m going to keep it on me at all times. Regardless, I’ll be disguising myself as a unicorn to cast a Transform Body spell on myself without it if I really need to. I’ll be heading south and then taking a boat westward with a few college students from the University of Canterlot heading out for an archeological dig of a Tenochtitlanian ruin. I’ll disembark with them and then play it by ear like we always have,” Celestia recited.

Luna sighed again. “Thou knowest that not having that amulet will make getting groceries hard.”

Celestia nodded. Leaving the manor did prove to get about a dozen reporters on either one of them, most asking about what they thought about Twilight’s rule or if they were thinking about retaking power. “I know, and I’m sorry. If it makes you feel better, I give you full permission to haunt their dreams if they bug you too much.”

Luna smiled a little at that. “Who says I haven’t?”

“Luna!” Celestia said with a frown. “That is not appropriate.”

“Thou just said I could!”

“I did, but that’s not the point!”

“A small nightmare never hurt anypony.”

Celestia rolled her eyes but smiled nonetheless. “You are so bad.”

“I should hope so,” Luna said. “I’d make for a terrible children’s monster otherwise, wouldn’t I?”

The joke barely landed, but Celestia smiled nonetheless.

“So what dost thou need of me, then?” Luna asked. “I certainly need not rule in thy stead.”

“No, no, I just need you to let everypony else know that I’m still here. Maybe writing that book you suggested.”

Luna nodded. “I suppose so. Thou best stay safe when thou art out there.”

“Of course,” Celestia replied before bringing her sister into a hug. “Just remember to use ‘you’ when you’re out there.”

Luna sighed as she hugged back. “It sounds so formal…why did language have to evolve like that?”

“Blame the nobles, Lulu.”

“I do,” she replied before giving her sister one last squeeze. “Thou wilt owe me for this one, thou realize?”

“I do.”

---☼---

When Celestia returned to her bedroom, a massive smile on her face, she immediately got to work. A basic drawing of the mare she wanted to become sat on a nearby desk, and her saddlebags with her pre-prepared supplies waited for her. The bags were filled almost exclusively with rations, though they did carry some rope, a folding hammock, a small tarp, a pot to boil water in, and a machete. She figured that these would be useful enough when heading to a jungle. After all, you never knew when you had to clear away some brush to make a small campsite.

This trip had been months in the making, with several day’s worths of planning, questioning, researching for an opportunity, and occasionally nudging some ponies in the right direction. It took a few favors to reach out to A. K. Yearling to spill the location of the ruin to the college and then a few thousand bits to convince the University of Canterlot to send a team out there to investigate appropriately. This trip had given her more to do than any simple hobby. This was it.

Now all she had to do was determine the name and spells her little alter ego would have. Sure, Celestia knew all five forms and five techniques, she could cast basically any spell that existed across the entire breadth of Equestria, but if she had those, then there wasn’t really a point to disguising herself, would there?

Transform was already out the window. Arguably one of the most dangerous Techniques, Celestia and now Twilight, controlled access to this particular word to trusted members of society, who had all been carefully checked and registered. Showing up with those spells would only raise questions.

Control and Matter had to be in her disguise’s repertoire. Unicorns tended to learn these words innately and cast the basic telekinesis spell through them.

This left her only Create, Destroy, and Perceive for her Techniques, and Body, Mind, Image, and Energy for her forms. Create had some appeal to it. Combining the Technique with Mind, she could recreate intrusive thoughts or mimic someone’s intuition, not to mention sending mental messages to other ponies.

Of course, Celestia never really liked Mind magic for that exact reason. In fact, she made sure that most ponies could recognize when someone was casting it on them through various state-sponsored training classes. So that was probably out, despite how useful it would be to keep ponies from doing something stupid around her.

Energy was a good reason to try and keep Create spells in her metaphorical deck of cards. Working with pure magic, fire, lightning, and more had an appeal, mainly because it meant that she wouldn’t need to use a flint and steel to start a fire at night.

The ex-princess tapped her chin as she mulled it over before she sighed. She’d figure it out later. If she wanted to get started today, she needed to catch her train.

She slipped on the amulet and used its incredibly effective Transform Body spell to alter her physical shape. Her wings disappeared, her horn grew shorter, and her unique alicorn figure slipped away to something more average.

She chose an athletic form, more suitable for running around in the far-flung jungles of the Equestrian frontier, but nothing too extreme. Her alter ego needed to be practical but not explicitly crafted for danger and swashbuckling. A normal mare, maybe one that spent enough time on the track as she did in the library, but still normal.

The spell burned away her old form in a flash of green fire, and Celestia smiled before she looked to the far-too-big mirror. A simple, pale yellow mare with bright, pale magenta eyes and a pale turquoise mane stared back at her. She looked nothing like Celestia did. She appeared far more relaxed for one and possibly carried a little too much pep in her step. This new mare had none of the noble bearing to possibly be ex-royalty.

Perfect.

Now suitably disguised, she made one last check over her materials. Satisfied after one final rummage through her bags, she pulled them down over her back, tightened the strap, and walked back out of her room to give Luna one last hug goodbye.

She trotted down the massive hallways, smiling wider than she had in weeks, and hummed a quiet tune despite herself.

“This mare is perhaps a little too optimistic,” Celestia thought to herself. “Smiling all the time and looking on the bright side of things. She’s going to be so much fun.”

As long as she didn’t step on stage, she’d be golden.

Ahead of her, Luna stepped out of her study and paused as she watched the strange mare nearly skipping down the hall.

“So, what do you think?” Celestia asked in her own voice.

“Art thou going to use your actual voice?”

“I might.”

Luna shook her head. “Have fun, Tia.”

“I will, Luna,” she said before giving her younger sister one more hug. “Try and make some friends while I’m gone.”

Luna groaned.

“I’m serious, now,” Celestia said as she stepped away.

Luna waved her off.

Celestia smirked before she cast a teleportation spell.

She disappeared from the hallways and appeared a few blocks away.

From now on, she was a completely different person. She was no longer Celestia, not a Princess, or even an ex-Princess.

She was…

She was Sunny Smiles.

Sure, it wasn’t the most original name, but it couldn’t be worse than Trixie Lulamoon. What even was a Trixie?

And so, without another word, Sunny Smiles made her way toward the train station. Her vacation had officially begun.

Chapter 2

Marble Venture had his nose stuck in a book.

In his defense, his job was to have his nose stuck in a book, and few books dealt with the Lusitanpec ponies that could give him pause. However, the giant totem of five hundred pony skulls certainly did get his attention.

Unearthed nearly half a century ago, a broken obelisk of skulls had been discovered not far from the Lusitanpec ancient capital of Lusititlian. Its discovery initially proved a theory that the “barbaric” earth pony tribes of the western jungles were a bloodthirsty and warlike race, but this was then disproved a few years later. The natives of Lusitano in the Tricorner Villages, the descendants of the Lusitanpec ponies, discovered evidence that suggested that the ancient civilization, while well protected, and operated by a powerful military, had little-to-no interest in expansion.

In fact, the Lusitanpec ponies were more inclined to be traders, as they had access to several large gem veins of emeralds that proved to be a perfect quality for making spell matrixes. Records of complex, clay-engraved, proto-hieroglyphs in the neighboring village of Ponypeii furthered that claim, as they mention literal tons of gems being traded for food, weapons, and finished enchanting gems.

This evidence, in turn, verified the possibility that a relic such as the famed Sword of Lusitano existed. Until recently, it and anything like it had been widely regarded as fantasy written by that A. K. Yearling mare.

How she kept managing to guess right baffled Marble. Her luck would run out one day, and she’d finally publish something so off the wall no one in their right mind would say the name “Daring Do” in a classroom ever again.

Marble set aside his frustration and returned to the mystery in front of him.

Every single hypothesis had been shot down, despite what the various professors claimed back at the University, who clung to their theories like lifesavers thrown out at sea. So why then? Why have a giant totem of five hundred skulls just outside the temple in the capital? It wouldn’t make for a suitable warning since it sat at the heart of their empire. An enemy force wouldn’t see it until they were already on the doorstep of conquering the seat of their power. As previously stated, while they had a powerful army, the Lusitanpecs did not have a culture built around their warriors, so it wouldn’t be the equivalent of a statue to anypony’s glory or something similar.

So why?

“It was a monument.”

Marble blinked and looked up from his book at the owner of the voice that just interrupted him. A pale yellow unicorn mare stood at the door to his train cabin, with a mane only a few shades of blue away from his own. She stared at him with pale magenta eyes and smiled. “Pardon?” he asked.

“The totem was a monument to the fallen soldiers and allies that helped Lusititlian in their border skirmishes.”

Marble blinked. “And where did you get this information?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I mean, it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Marble blinked again. “It makes sense?” he asked. “I suppose so. Congratulations, you’ve just solved a mystery that lasted for the better part of fifty years. How were we so blind?”

Her smile disappeared, and the mare rolled her eyes. “Sorry to bother you, then,” she muttered before she turned and continued down the rumbling train cars.

Marble twitched his nose with a snort before he sighed. Crazy mare. Thinks she can just waltz in and solve nearly half a century of questions. What next? Perhaps she’d like to tell us that the sunken city of…

No wait, Hippogriffia had been discovered. Well, the lack of a metaphor didn’t mean he had no point.

Still, he probably could have handled that better. Yes, the mare didn’t have any right to try and solve something so clearly out of her field of expertise, but he didn’t need to be a jerk about it. Besides, something about her seemed familiar, and it would be his luck that she was the wife of the head of hippopology or something.

Setting his book aside, he stepped out of the cabin and moved to call out to her when the train car jumped. He nearly fell, throwing out his wings to steady himself, but the mare stumbled into the side of the carriage.

The luggage above her, a heavy burlap sack sitting precariously on the edge of the luggage compartment, began to shift, teeter, and fall. Marble spread his wings in an instant and shot down the hall. He slammed into the unicorn and crashed them both into the car door, saving her from the falling luggage.

“Ow!” The mare yelled beneath him before he was enveloped in a magical aura and thrown off of her. “I get it! You don’t want any advice, but you didn’t need to attack me over it.”

Marble stumbled back as the mare shoved him back, and he turned. “The bag,” he muttered and pointed back at it. She followed his hoof to the bag, which was revealed to be stuffed with letters.

Marble winced. “It was reflex,” he muttered.

“Well, thank your reflexes, I might have gotten a papercut otherwise.”

Marble splayed his ears flat against his head but didn’t say anything. He deserved this one.

The mare shook her head and moved on to the next car, and Marble sighed as he moved back to his cabin. “Sorry,” he muttered far too late.

He’d spent too much time in old ruins. One too many traps went off, and...he pushed the thought away and crawled back into his cabin. He opened up his book back to the page with the totem and began to continue to read.

A chime rang over a small speaker system, and a voice that sounded like a grown stallion talking into a tin can spoke. “Next stop, Canterlot station.”

Marble sighed. Well, with any luck, he’d never see that mare again. After all, he was heading to the frontier. You’d have to be an actual nutjob to head out there. Or you’re stuck babysitting a bunch of college students because your expertise is vaguely and tangentially related to their first archeology trip.

He sighed and turned the page.

Why did that mare look so familiar?

---☼---

Lady Luna watched the gate of the manor house. A swarm of paparazzi and press ponies clung to the iron bars like flies. She didn’t need to go out today, she reminded herself. She could try this tomorrow, early on when the ponies weren't hanging around her home like a thick fog.

On the other hoof, she needed to make sure that the press wasn’t going to suspect something when they didn’t see Celestia for days on end.

She sighed. This used to be so much easier when they had to send out news by a crier.

Bracing herself, Luna took a deep breath, cursed her sister’s timing, and stepped out the front door.

Flashes of light nearly blinded her as ponies began immediately snapping pictures. She cursed this strange need for the perfect lighting for these photographs. What happened to portraits? They were far more pleasant for the subject, not to mention the weren't so dependent on those infernal flashbulbs.

She kept walking forward, re-earning the title of “the Dauntless” once more in her mind and strode to the gate. Bringing out her best scowl, she walked right up to the gate, threw them wide open, and stared down at the mob of reporters in front of her. Even though she now matched their height, she still managed to tower over them through her demeanor alone.

“Are you done?” she asked in a low but dangerous tone.

The ponies around her gate hesitated. Questions died on their lips, and the cameras and their flashes slowed.

Luna mentally sighed again. Those three words had so much more punch when ‘you’ was a formal word she and her sister reserved for those who really got on their nerves. Lucky, she had a dangerous reputation that most ponies still didn’t know how to react to.

The reporters split before her, leaving her a clear path to stride down. The silence wouldn’t last long, but it would give her a moment of peace that she would gladly be thankful for. She walked forward onto the sidewalk and managed to get three yards away before the reporters slowly followed.

Luna marched imperiously down the street and didn’t even look back as she marched down to the nearby strip mall. She needed to sell this idea to the press just so that no one else would question her about it. If not for that, she would have simply teleported to the Barns and Noble just to be done with it.

One of the reporters gathered enough courage to catch up and shoved a recorder into Luna’s face. “Lady Luna, what is your opinion on Princess Twilight’s proposed budget plans?”

“I am on the way to the store,” Lune answered. “And I am not to be stopped or distracted.”

The reporter blinked and nearly stopped on the sidewalk by the total bluntness of Luna’s comment but hurried to catch up when her peers began to follow her example. “What are you shopping for, Lady Luna?” one of the reporters, a pegasus that flew over her head, asked.

“I seek a book for mine sister,” she replied.

“What kind of book?” Another reporter asked. “A book of magical secrets? A book of ancient wisdom?”

“A book from the book store,” she replied. “I am not sure why. I did not ask, nor do I intend to.”

The reporters all began writing that down.

“Lady Luna, Vanhoover Gazette! Do you have a—”

“I am going shopping,” she interrupted. “I am not dealing with affairs of state, I am not working with any politicians or nobles beyond my immediate family, and I am certainly not starting a demonstration. I am simply doing my sister a favor, as she is going to be indisposed for some time.”

“Why? What is she doing?”

“I don’t know,” Luna said. “Perhaps she will tell me when she leaves her room?”

Celestia locked in her room, working on something that she didn’t even share with her sister? That was a juicy thought to them, she knew. No reporter in their right mind would let that information sit. How could they not print that story?

The more experienced reporters proved who they were by sending out their aides to begin reporting the information they had before pulling out notepads to write down all the details. The ones who didn’t know any better took the story as it was and rushed back to their various hovels to begin to share what they just heard.

Luna nodded and continued on. With her makeshift entourage cut in half, and the ones following her now quiet, she could finally enjoy her walk.

Silver Shoals sighed around her like it was spring again. The one thing Luna absolutely loved about this town was how cool it was. The North Luna Ocean brought freezing water from the north down this way, which left this entire shoreline cool in the summer, and absolutely freezing in the winter. Celestia wasn’t the biggest fan of winter, what with the short days and being cold, but Luna loved it.

She felt the wind play through her mane as she walked down the sidewalk to the store. The Barns and Noble bookstore welcomed her, and Luna wandered the aisles for a bit.

The reporters followed behind, taking notes as she checked the titles.

Luna continued to pretend to check the spines before she finally picked a book at random and moved to the checkout line. The reporters, meanwhile, scribbled furiously in their notebooks and began to disperse, getting the information they needed to their respective papers as quickly as they could.

Finally alone.

Luna sighed and considered returning the book to its spot before leaving but decided against it. She came all this way. Luna might as well commit to the part. She did, though, finally, take a good look around the store before noticing something odd.

Inside the store sat another store.

She heard of the ingenuity and entrepreneurship of ponies, but a store in a store seemed excessive. It appeared to be a coffee shop, which, at least, seemed appropriate for a bookstore. The stall with the shop had a large glass counter filled with confectionaries of various sorts, and now that she noticed it, the smell of the coffee began to waft under her nose.

She eyed it for a moment more before she sighed and walked over. She came out this far. She might as well grab a cup for herself, just to make the trip worth it.

The stallion at the counter, a unicorn with a caramel-colored coat, blinked as she approached and quickly straightened himself. “Hello, how can I help you?” He asked in a smooth voice.

“One Lungo dropped into a mocha with a red-eye chaser, please.”

The stallion blinked.

When he didn’t move, Luna raised an eyebrow. “Would that be a problem?”

“Uh, no ma’am, it’s just...surprising.”

“I’ve built an extreme resistance to caffeine,” she explained.

“I see,” he said, getting to work. He began preparing the three servings of espresso and gathered the cream, milk, and chocolate. “Has today been hard, or…?”

“What dealing with the press?” she asked. “A minor headache. Everything else turned out fair enough.”

He nodded and continued to make the caffeinated monstrosity of a drink before he motioned to the book in Luna’s magical grasp. “I wasn’t aware you were into Ogres and Oubliettes.”

Luna blinked before looking down at the book. The words “Ogres and Oubliettes Core Rulebook 4th edition” stared back at her. On the lower half of the cover, she saw a pair of ponies armed with a sword and a very difficult-looking spell fighting a giant, armored ogre.

“I...uh...bought it for my sister,” she replied.

“I wouldn’t have figured she was into roleplaying games,” he said.

“It...surprised me as well,” Luna replied.

“If...uh...if you don’t mind me saying so, if she needs a group, we’ve just finished a campaign and need a tank.”

Luna blinked. Half of those words made sense to her. If this was a game made to mimic wars, then the term campaign made sense, finishing said campaign. As for tank? Well, she’d heard of the wooden, mobile, cannon-carrying vehicles, but if this was a game, then indeed there would methods of making such a purchase in the game?

“I will let her know,” she replied.

The stallion handed her the monstrosity she ordered. “Here you go.”

“Thank th—Thank you,” she said. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Mr….?”

“Caramel. Caramel Swirl.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Swirl,” Luna said, hesitating for a fraction of a second as she tried to use the right word. “May a good day follow you and fare you well.”

He nodded, and Luna sipped at her drink before getting back in line to buy the book of Oubliettes and Ogres, though how the two were related still confused her. After purchasing the rulebook, which cost her too many bits in her opinion, she returned home.

She set the book down on the desk of her study and thought about what to do next. She could return to the book of military engagements that occurred over the past millennia she left if only to allow her a better understanding of the political position of Equestria in the modern-day, but...well...that wasn’t her job anymore.

She signed before eyeing the book.

She cracked it open to the table of contents. A dizzying list met her, and she blinked at how much there was. Luna gazed over the information before seeing the words “What is a roleplaying game?” and turned to the indicated page.

“The Ogres and Oubliettes roleplaying game is about storytelling in an idealized, ancient world much like Equestria in the days of adventure. In an Ogres and Oubliettes game, each player creates an adventurer (also called a character) and teams up with other adventurers (played by friends). Working together, the group might explore a dark dungeon, a ruined city, a haunted castle, a lost temple deep in a jungle, or a lava-filled cavern beneath a mysterious mountain. The adventurers can solve puzzles, talk with other characters, battle fantastic monsters, and discover fabulous magic items and other treasure.”

Luna read on. She learned about the Game Master and his role in the adventure. Luna read about the classes and the different kinds of adventurers that led the world. She even read about strange dice with different numbered sides. Luna discovered a grimoire of spells that existed solely for this world.

She read and read, and read, all the way until the sun rose the following day.

She read the core rulebook cover to cover, and when she finally closed it, she realized with a growing sense of excitement and anxiety that it sounded like something she would absolutely love to try.

Luna blinked as she stared up at the window of her study. The morning sun shone down on her from the eastern sky, catching her eyes and forcing her to blink bloodshot eyes.

“Need to talk with Twilight,” she muttered. “She shouldn’t raise the sun so soon.”

Luna glanced back at the cover of the book and smiled. She needed to try this at some point. Maybe she’d try playing a rogue or a wizard. Something interesting, indeed.

Her eyes began to close, and she jolted awake. She needed to go to bed, but she was also required to play this game as soon as possible. That meant that after she slept, she needed to head back to that store-within-a-store and speak to that Caramel pony again.

First, though, she needed to—

And that was as far as she got before Luna dropped in the middle of the hallway, fast asleep.

Chapter 4

Sunny Smiles walked out of Sugarcube Corner, holding a half-eaten slice of cake. She did her last-minute shopping and even asked around to see if she couldn’t find anyone in town who might know where she could get some climbing gear, but now she couldn’t wait any longer.

Her train was getting ready to leave, and she had no more time to waste. So, taking another nearly-too-big bite out of her cake, she rushed headlong to the train station and found the train heading for Las Pegasus waiting for her.

Sunny clambered in as the conductor made the last call and checked her ticket. This time she had been relegated to the more public passenger car and would be sharing her space with nearly everyone else on the train.

That suited her fine, though she was going to be packed in with a dozen different ponies all dressed up as tourists and ready to gamble. Which vaguely threatened some discomfort, but she could put up with that.

Especially with this cake.

Admittedly, Celestia found it somewhat surprising that Pinkie Pie jumped into everyone’s personal space the same way she did for the Princess. It made her feel that much more, well, normal. However, the Quills and Sofas clerk treated her kindly enough, and Rarity—of course—made her feel like a Princess anyway at Carousel Boutique.

There was so much irony in that.

Now armed with a new belt that could double as a climbing harness for its strength—while also looking fashionable—a few carabiners, a small knife to match the machete, and a canteen, she felt far more prepared. Of course, nopony could harbor any doubts that Las Pegasus wasn’t her final stop, and that may get her caught up in some conversation on the train, but Celestia was okay with that.

After all, of the two sisters, Celestia had always been the more social of the two. Nevertheless, Luna often bemoaned that, even though they built their first castle in the middle of a wild forest, ponies still managed to make their way in and bug her.

However, in their defense, most of those instances were ponies trying to get their attention for an emergency.

Still, Celestia always knew she was the extrovert of the pair.

The question she suddenly found herself asking, though, was Sunny comfortable with talking to so many ponies? Perhaps not. Maybe Sunny was an introvert at heart? Perhaps she got tired of conversation quickly?

Celestia toyed with the idea before deciding against it. She couldn’t get away without talking to someone for days on end like Luna could. The disguised alicorn would have to keep some of Celestia in Sunny, after all. Keeping the two of them totally separate was a skill she just didn’t have.

Yes, Sunny probably was just as bubbly and friendly as Celestia herself. She could talk and talk about this or that until everyone else got sick of talking. She was more than ready for any conversation the—

The passenger car had no one in it.

Sunny blinked.

How...how was nopony here? Nopony? Not a single soul heading for Las Pegasus?

Sure, it was a Monday, but Las Pegasus was the city that never slept, the city of eternal lights, the city of second chances, or even the city of Lost Wages. So how could nopony be heading to Las Pegasus?

“Well, well,” a ticket collector said as he stepped up behind her. “You lucked out, miss. It’s nearly impossible to get an empty car to Las Pegasus. I think I’ve only seen this happen twice in my entire career. Anyways, you have your ticket, Ma’am?”

Sunny sighed and presented her ticket.

The collector punched it and haded it back. “Have a pleasant, quiet trip, ma’am.”

Sunny sighed and took her seat. She picked one in the middle and sat by the window, staring out of it as the Ponyville countryside slowly pulled away.

Looks like she didn’t have much in the way of options. So, without much else to do, Sunny Smiles closed her eyes to sleep.

---☼---

“Miss, Miss.”

Sunny started awake, and the ticket collector stared back at her. “We’ve arrived, ma’am. Welcome to Las Pegasus.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you,” she said, waking up.

“Not a problem ma’am, we typically make a last check through the train anyway, and I figured I’d give you some time to sleep. Traveling’s a terribly tiring business.”

“Thank you, but I do need to go now. I have a boat to catch.”

“Best of luck then, ma’am!” the collector said with a smile and a tip of his hat. “I think a carriage to the dock’s only a couple of bits, and they’ll get you down there with time to spare.”

“Thank you!” Sunny said, running off the car.

Las Pegasus hovered above her, with a paved stairway supported on clouds that reached the proper city’s casinos and hotels. Beneath the marvelous clouds sat the more natural city, the place where ponies actually lived.

Sunny gave it a passing glance before noticing the carriages that sat in a row not five feet from the station.

“Excuse me,” she said, smiling as she looked up at one of the drivers, any way you can take me to the docks?”

“Four bits, Ma’am, and I’ll take you anywhere you want,” he replied with a smile.

“That sounds like a deal to me,” she replied before reaching into her saddlebags with her magic to pull out four gold coins. “Here you go, good sir!”

“Thank you very much, Ma’am!” the driver said before he opened the door to the carriage. “To the docks!”

The carriage took off, and Sunny smiled as she watched the evening sun slowly set over the South Luna Ocean. She was almost there, so close to the frontier. She nearly stood ready to explore the unexplored and be an adventurer again, if only for a little while.

Yes, she could almost taste the adventure.

The docks had very little going on at this point in the day. For the most part, the boaters—a handful of wealthy locals that lived beneath the clouds—had packed in for the night, and it looked like the only actual activity seemed to be entirely localized around a single boat. A gaggle of college students partied on the deck of a paddleboat named The Crystal Flare, celebrating as college students were wont to do.

“Is that your party, ma’am?”

“Sort of,” she said. “They need somepony responsible watching over them.”

The driver smirked. “Well, you said it, ma’am, not me.”

“So I did,” she replied with a smile.
The cart pulled up, and the driver shook his head once more. “I hope you manage to get some sleep at least.”

Sunny did frown at that one. But, on the other hand, her chances were reasonably slim on getting a good night’s sleep tonight. “They’ll probably calm down,” she said.

“I hope you’re right for your sake, miss.”

The driver stopped the carriage and let Sunny step off of the carriage. “Thank you so much.”

The driver nodded. “Best of luck, Ma’am!”

Celestia smiled as the driver peeled off and mulled over the idea of setting up some kind of transport pony appreciation day. A lot of them certainly deserved it, and...actually...actually, that would be Twilight’s call these days.

Well, she could certainly write a letter to suggest it, anyway.

She focused back on the boat and sighed. The gangplank was down and easy enough to cross, but the ship’s deck was filled with the moving bodies of young adults who thought they knew better.

Sunny shook her head before she walked aboard, dodging the various ponies as they drank and danced about the deck. A simple set of cheap speakers blared music so loud, it sounded like the poor, beat-up amplifiers would blow themselves to pieces.

Sunny paid it as little attention as she could get away with and made her way to the ship’s back where the Captain’s quarters were. It took a few tries knocking on the door. She had to pound on it with all her might before the door opened. She nearly stumbled inside, where an old, wizard sea pony stared at her.

She stepped inside real quick and closed the door, muting some of the incessant poundings of the music. “Sorry for intruding,” she said, as the music thumped behind the door, but I don’t know if you’d be able to hear me through that.”

“Ain’t that the truth?” the stallion that she assumed was the Captain muttered. “What are you here for, though?”

“I’m Sunny Smiles. I chartered to go with your trip independently.”

“Hm...Sunny Smiles, ey?” he asked before moving to the deck that occupied the back of the room.

“Yes, sir.”

The old stallion, an earth pony, dressed in a blue turtleneck sweater, cracked open a book whose cover looked as leathery as his face. “Lessee here. S, S, Sugar, Sundrop, Sunset—”

“I’d, uh...probably be under the Royal Conservation Committee,” Sunny interrupted. She charted this trip before she had a name after all.

The salt-crusted pony sighed and flipped over the Rs. “Royal Conser’ation Committee, 1 member, TBD.”

“That sounds like me, sir.”

The stallion shrugged. “You have the receipt?”

Sunny produced the hoof-written bill of travel.

The sea pony looked it over. “Well, that looks ‘fficial ’nough. So wel’ome’ board the Crystal Flare, I’m Captain Crusty, and I own this-here ship. You’ll have cabin 38 on the starb’erd side next to the rest of the ‘aperones and responsible ponies. Hope the kids don’t tire you out too soon.”

“Not at all. Thank you, Captain.”

Crusty nodded. “Hope you grabbed everything you need. We set sail at dawn.”

“I’m prepared, if a little late,” she replied with a smile.

“Good, sum’pony competent’s fernally’ rrived.”

Sunny gave a slight bow before she turned back to the door that led the deck, which occasionally shook with the song’s beat. “You, uh, don’t have a back way out, do you?”

“T’ the Captain’s Quarters?” Crusty asked. “Not on yer life.”

Sunny sighed. “Alright, thank you anyway. Wish me luck.”

“All the luck of the sea go wif ya.”

She opened the door and slipped out through the thundering music and silently hoped that the speakers would finally give out and maybe explode. Sunny crawled her way across the deck, trying to move through the undulating mass of ponies. She pushed her way forward, unfortunately moving closer to the infernal squealing machines because whoever set them up managed to flank the door to the lower decks.

She finally pushed past the door and clawed her way to safety, where her ears wouldn’t be assaulted by every beat and note. She sighed as she leaned against the door, as though she could barricade it against the sound. Finally, without anything else to slow her down, she began moving down to the ship’s starboard side and soon found her cabin, cabin 38.

Sunny slipped inside and found a hammock, a footlocker, and a private bathroom.

“All the comforts of home,” she said with a smirk.

She set her bags down on the floor by the footlocker and used her magic to open the hammock a bit before slipping inside with a small pillow. Sleep would be nice right now. After all, that ticket collector said it best: traveling was a tiring profession.

As she lay there, with the faint thumping of the music from just beyond the door, she found herself thinking about the pegasus from the train trip.

She...she might have been more than a little rude to Mr. Marble Venture. If he really wanted to just keep her from getting hurt, then she kind of dragged the whole thing out more than she needed to. It wasn’t like he was Discord or anything. The draconequus could get under her skin just by opening his mouth. Marble had simply turned down good information then tried to save her from a bag of letters which probably weighed at most a total of eight pounds.

Sunny was probably just holding onto this more than she needed to and had to let it go. But, of course, it’s not like she had a chance to apologize anymore. Marble was long gone at this point. He could be heading to Abyssinia for all she knew.

Oh well, missed opportunities and all that.

Celestia sighed and rolled over, eager to go to sleep after a long day of work. But, unfortunately, she had a few days of lazing around on a boat to get through.

---☼---

A deep chugging sound, something that thudded in the back of Celestia’s mind, woke her, along with the light of the rising sun peeking in through the porthole of her cabin.

She got up, nearly rolling out of her mattress for a second before she caught herself and untangled herself from the murderous bed. Then, shaking Sunny’s turquoise mane, and let it hand loose for a moment or two, allowing it to relax for a moment before she began working it into a braid.

She tried letting it just hang loose on the train, but she just wound up with too much hair in her mouth. After braiding her mane, she threw it behind her head and walked out of her room. Silence echoed across the halls of the paddleboat, and only the distant, ever-thrumming chug-chug-chug of the engine disturbed the quiet. All of the college students, it seemed, were sleeping off the aftereffects of the previous night, and the blessed silence that followed in its wake left Sunny smiling as she climbed up the stairs to the top deck.

Ocean stretched for miles around her, with only a faint, distant haze that might be confused for land at the very edge of the horizon behind them.

“M’rning there, Ms. Smiles,” Captain Crusty called from the helm. “Welcome to the South Luna’ Cean.”

The warm ocean air greeted her as she stood on the deck, and she smiled as she felt the wind pass by her. “A good morning indeed, Captain.”

Crusty just nodded.

“We’re a little far out, aren’t we?” Sunny asked.

“There be a current,” Crusty said. “That runs west-a-way, an’ we’re a usin’ it to save on coal as we head that way. Unf’rtunat-like, though, it turns south. It ain’t gonna do us any good to ride it then, so we’re on’y gonna run until there, and then we’sa gonna turn north and then ‘ead ’long the coast. Then it’ll be smooth sailin’, sure as the tides.”

“Okay,” Sunny said. “I’ll trust your experienced wisdom.”

Crusty gave her a smile. “The ‘aperones and responsible ponies are taking bre’kfast up on the o’servation deck up yonder, if’n ya want to join them,” he said, pointing to the bow of the ship, where a few ponies sat at tables outside of a cabin built on the front of the boat.

“Thank you, Captain,” she said with a smile before she gave him a flourishing bow and then made her up the stair to the raised deck.

Sunny made her way to the tables and smiled as she greeted the ponies there. A few pleasantries were exchanged before she walked up to a table with a few pastries set on it. Captain Crusty, at least, seemed to have exquisite taste in provisions.

She turned to pick one up and paused when she noticed the pony on the other side of the table. A cream-colored stallion sat on the other side of the table, a pastry held in the feathers of his wing. Marble Venture stared up at her, his mouth agape even as it was about to receive the tart he had.

Sunny stared back at him.

Then, in unison, they said, “What are you doing here?”

---☼---

Caramel and Rolling stood in front of the gate, just behind the crowd of paparazzi that forever crowded the outside of the Two Sister’s Manor.

“She wants us to go in?” Rolling asked, looking at the journalists that swarmed the gate. “How?”

“She...she didn’t cover that,” Caramel replied, staring up at the crowd, and shook his head. He didn’t know how they were going to get inside, much less through the gate.

“Do we just push our way through?” Rolling asked.

“Do I look like I know?” Caramel asked. “It’s not my fault the Princess decided to ask me if she could play O&O with us.”

“Ex-Princess,” Rolling noted. “What do we call her then?”

“I think it’s Lady?” Caramel offered tentatively. “She said to call her her Ladyship when I called her your majesty.”

“Lady is correct.”

Both ponies froze and turned to see Luna standing just behind them.

The Lady’s eyes glinted with mischief before she raised a feather to her lips. “Shh. They haven’t noticed yet.”

“Um...hello, your Ladyship,” Rolling said.

“Greetings, I assume thou—sorry—you are Rolling Ivory, the Game Master.”

“Uh, yes, your Ladyship.”

“We can dispense with the titles for the time being,” Luna replied. “Let’s get you both inside.”

Caramel felt his stomach lurch as the alicorn teleported them both inside. He shut his eyes as the world swirled around him, and he took a moment to breathe and regain his balance.

“For future reference, Rolling—may I call thee Rolling?”

“I...yes?”

“The gate is enchanted to let those we have invited in while keeping others out. All thou need do is walk up to it, and you should be able to come in without having to worry about the...gathered crows outside the gate.”

Caramel finally had a moment to open his eyes and couldn’t help but blink. A jeweled goblet sat in front of him, reminiscent of an artifact in a temple, on a pedestal right next to a thick, heavy oak door.

His breath caught in his throat as he stared at it, and an image of selling it for enough money to start his own coffee shop jumped into his head. He shook the thought away and turned to see a golden statuette of a stallion knight long passed. It had to be worth thousands of bits.

Caramel tore his gaze away and watched as Luna and Rolling walked into another room with a large table and golden candlesticks before he realized that he missed the conversation entirely. He caught up as quickly as he could and slipped into the room as they began to talk.

But that thought was in his head now, and he couldn’t shake it loose.

Chapter 5

Luna smiled at Rolling Ivory and Caramel as they sat at the table. “Is this table too small? Unfortunately, I have only read the book, so I do not have a frame of reference for how large your map shall be.”

The earth pony that introduced herself as Rolling Ivory blinked as she looked down the length of the massive dining room table and nearly gaped. “Well, I prefer something a little...smaller. Mostly so that I can reach everything, your Ladyship.”

“Please,” Luna said. “It is not befitting that thee, as Game Master, refer to me by my title. Although thou hast come to my home, I am approaching thee for the opportunity to play.”

“I’m sorry,” Rolling said, “I just feel like I should be, since, well….”

Luna nodded. “Is there something that would make thee more comfortable?”

“Um, well,” she began. “I don’t think so; I guess I just need to work on it,” she muttered.

“Very well, but if thou need anything, please let me know. But thou sayst thee would prefer a smaller table?”

She nodded. “Otherwise, I need to get up and carry the minis all the way across the table to set them up.”

“A smaller table then,” Luna replied before leading them through the manor to the library. The room had several smaller tables that might suit her potential Master of Games. Hopefully, one of those would be a better option.

“Um...Lady Luna,” Caramel said, speaking up for the first time since he arrived. “Are you sure you want us all here? We...uh...well, I mean no offense, but some of the things on your walls look, well, magical maybe, and what if we accidentally break a vase or something? What’s worse, what if we touch something and turn into a cat or something?”

Luna shook her head. “That’s nothing to worry about. The items we have here are not innately magical. Beyond being expensive mementos of our times as rulers or before, they are mundane and easily fixable with magic. So guests are not a worry.”

They stepped into the library. “I hope one of these tables will suit thee, Rolling.”

“Oh yes, these are way more manageable.”

“Wonderful, now please, tell me what I can do to convince thee to let me join thy game.”

“Well,” Rolling said as Luna led her to a table with a few chairs sitting around it. “Well, you’ve read the book, right? How much?”

Luna’s brow furrowed. “What dost thou mean? Are not books meant to be read in their entirety?”

Rolling blinked. “You read the whole thing? Cover to Cover?”

“I skipped the index,” Luna admitted.

“Well, you’re doing better than most of my players,” she said, giving Caramel a side glance.

“I read the important parts,” he muttered in his defense.

She rolled her eyes. “Well, you’ve certainly got my attention at this point, Lady...er...Luna. Most ponies I know only read eight pages at a time.”

“That seems an odd choice.”

She shrugged. “Ask my players. So what character did you have in mind?”

“Well, I suppose the question is what sort of game did thee have planned? I have a Zealot Barbarian idea that would do well in a more combat-focused game, though not as much in a more politically-minded one.”

“Intrigue is fun, but we just finished one of those, so a Zealot Barbarian sounds amazing,” Rolling replied. “Which deity did you want to follow?”

“Well, who else?” Luna answered, motioning to herself.

“A bold choice,” Rolling said with a smirk. “Being your own god.”

Luna shrugged. “It is the writers’ fault for deciding to make Celestia and I goddesses in the book. It’s flattering but untrue.”

“Well, let me then bring you up to speed. I have a mega-dungeon planned. It’s been several years in the making, and it’s been carefully designed to teach a player how to play the dungeon, so it should make an easy first game for a new player. Do you have dice?”

“Not as of yet. I have some knucklebones, but they’re not numbered, and it seems unfair for me to them considering that only I could interpret them.”

“I have a box of extra dice. You can use those until you can get your own set.”

“Many thanks,” Luna said, dipping her head slightly.

“I do have some house rules, but we’ll worry about that when it’s actually time to play.”

“So can I then assume that I shall make it to the ‘actual time to play?’” Luna asked.

“Well, you’ve certainly impressed me. We do have a few more details to work out. Will you be able to play Saturdays? We play basically from noon all the way till midnight.”

“I’m officially retired. I can make it without worry.”

“Then I’ll have to talk to the others about coming here, does your magical gate work for the pizza delivery guy?”

“It most certainly does,” Luna replied. “I was surprised that the newspaper did not run an article about how my sister and I enjoyed a four cheese pizza three months ago. It seems that the ponies in charge of choosing which articles to run have some standards.”

“That reminds me,” Caramel said. “What are we going to do about the crowd out front. I don’t really want to be investigated by a mass of journalists because I’m invited to your manor every Saturday.”

“We have a few options,” Luna said. “There is the tunnel which you can take that opens up to the basement, or you could collect somewhere, and I can try teleporting you all in, though I should note that I’m better and Mind and Image spells than body spells.” She leaned back in her chair for a moment. “I might be able to ask Discord to set something up, though it might require a favor for him, which could always be dangerous.”

The other two ponies glanced at each other.

She tapped her chin. “I suppose we’ll need to discuss this further. For now, however, do ye have any other questions for me?”

Rolling and Caramel glanced at each other.

“Honestly, I want to hear about this Barbarian,” Rolling said.

Luna smiled. “Her name is Dreadmane Moonkissed….”

---☼---

Celestia couldn’t believe it. Marble was here.

He was here on the ship, going to the same wilderness that she was. How on earth had this happened? What chthonian primal had she angered that forced this terrible coincidence to fall on her?

At the very least, they both seemed to have the same idea of treating each other. Simply ignore each other’s existence.

So they passed through breakfast without a word, and they continued on their own separate business. Then, finally, lunch came around, and the college students finally began to emerge from their various cabins, many nursing hangovers that they tried to nurse with their water ration, mostly unsuccessfully.

Celestia decided that her “peers,” the professors and chaperones, would be the sort of ponies that Sunny would prefer to speak with, and so spent most of the afternoon on the deck, talking with the relaxing professors.

Dr. Dry Bones, the head of archeology of the University of Canterlot, greeted her with a smile. “You must be the Royal Conservation mare, yes?” the elder unicorn asked.

“I am, thank you for asking,” she answered, shaking her hoof.

“Pleasure to have you aboard. It’s good to know that the new royal enjoys conservation as much as the old did, eh?” the old mare asked.

“It is nice to know that I have some job security,” Sunny replied.

“Honestly,” the unicorn continued, “I wasn’t sure that the new Princess had the same appreciation for the fonder, older things, but it seems Celestia rubbed off on her.”

Sunny nodded, though her inner Celestia frowned. That was a little unfair to Twilight, though, she supposed in Dr. Bones’s defense, she didn’t really know the new Princess personally. “I mean, Princess Twilight was her student for a while. I’d be surprised if something didn’t rub off on her.”

“I suppose,” the graying unicorn sighed. “Still, the new Princess has to prove herself, and she has very big horseshoes to fill.”

“I thought she proved herself when she stopped Tirek, Cozy Glow, and Chrysalis? Do you not agree?”

“As far as defensively? I agree completely,” Dr. Bones replied. “I doubt security has dropped at all since Princess Twilight took over. In fact, there’s reason to believe it’s gone up since the coronation. No, Princess Twilight has proved herself more than capable of facing outside threats, but it’s internal, political threats that I am more worried about. After all, Cozy Glow, the same filly that tried to destroy Equestria, was a student at her school. The sentiment then is how can anypony trust her when she was not able to see such a problem form right under her nose.”

Sunny nodded. “Ah, but Celestia missed threats as well.”

“She did, to be sure,” Dr. Bones agreed with a nod. “However, Celestia does also have the advantage of time. She might have missed a few things in the past decade, but centuries before that had nothing but peace. Ponies are more likely to remember those centuries of peace as they watch Discord or what have you rise to power. They’ll be more forgiving. Besides, there’s probably a powerful sense of nostalgia on her side as well. I mean, it’s only this last year that we’ve had ponies that were born that never lived under Lady Celestia, possibly since the days of Equestria’s founding. Those millennia of work do sit in her favor, certainly.”

Sunny nodded. She expected as much. Still, it was nice to hear that at least her old subjects felt safe under her successor.

Her eyes glanced up, and she saw Marble standing not far away, glaring at her before he moved on to the following table.

“What on earth did you do to get on Marble’s bad side?” Dr. Bones asked, curiosity filling her voice.

“It’s a long story,” Sunny answered. She hesitated a moment before continuing, “Let’s just say that we rubbed each other the wrong way the entire way here.”

“That’s a first,” Dr. Bones replied. “Most ponies get along with Mr. Venture just fine.”

“I’m sure,” she replied. “What does he do, though? Why is he on this trip?”

“Mr. Venture is something of a guide. He’s helped various universities across Equestria help dive down into all kinds of temples and ruins all down the frontier. As a result, he’s a bit of an expert in disarming traps, not to mention incredibly well versed in Lusitanpec culture and history.”

“Which is why he knew so much about the great skull monument of Lusititlian,” Celestia thought with a snort. “I’m sure he’s a great historian.”

“He’s passable. If you want a real historian, you want his sister, Vanilla Float. That mare could run circles around some of my best archeologists.”

“Is she not here?” Sunny asked.

“No, not right now, though I’m not sure why. I sent both of them invitations,” Dr. Bones said. “Maybe she just wanted to sit this one out? Who knows?”

Sunny nodded. “Well, maybe she should have come. Maybe I could have been friends with half of the wonder team.”

“It’s possible,” Dr. Bones said. “Honestly, I thought she was the pricklier of the two, but you never know, I suppose.” The doctor checked her watch. “Ah, I hope you’ll excuse me, but I have to give my students a lecture so that they realize that this trip isn’t a school-funded vacation trip.”

Dr. Bones gave Sunny a nod as she left, and Sunny returned it with a smile before she sighed. “I guess I don’t have much else to do, then.”

She toyed with the idea of listening to Dr. Bones’s lecture. Still, if she were honest, Celestia probably couldn’t stop herself from snickering at the basic mistakes and assumptions the entire archeology community made. Sometimes they made such incredible leaps in logic, it baffled her.

She once told one of the historians what actually happened on a dig he was working on, and the stallion looked so...disappointed that puzzle had already been solved that he walked away in the middle of uncovering the main chamber of a fallen Pegasopolian ruin. Since then, Celestia decided she’d only throw them a bone or two after decades of work. She tried to give Marble the key on the monument, but he just wasn’t interested, apparently.

No, it looked like Sunny better find something else to do for now. With a sigh, she stood and walked back down the lower decks. She didn’t have much she could do in her room, but the unicorn could enjoy the hammock for a few more days before she started really roughing it across the jungle for who knows how long.

A nap would do her good.

She moved her down the stairs and into the shaded—if warm—rooms of the ships. The chugging engine thudded in the background, surrounding her as she walked into the bowels of the boat, and Sunny turned into the hallway that held her room.

Marble was there. He stood right outside her door, almost like he was waiting for her.

She stopped, and the pair glared at each other down the hallway. Neither of them gave an inch of ground. Neither turned to provide the other right of way. Instead, they both stood, staring at each other and waiting for them to move.

“Mr. Venture,” Sunny greeted cooly.

“Ms. Smiles,” he answered back.

A moment of silence passed as they continued to glare daggers at each other. “Is there something I can help you with?”

Marble stared back at her. “You’re currently blocking my way to my cabin.”

Sunny blinked and glanced at the door. Cabin 39 stared back at her, and she realized with horror that she shared a wall with the only pony she had a terrible relationship with on board. “What a terrible coincidence,” she said dryly. “You’re standing in front of mine.”

He glanced at her door and came to the same conclusion if the frown that grew on his face was any indication. “That is unfortunate.”

They both stared at each other again, almost like nobles in a duel, waiting for the other to make one, just one, singular flaw in the form to capitalize on.

Eventually, after another long moment, Sunny spoke. “I,” she began, “apologize. My treatment of you during the train ride was not respectable nor reasonable. I should not have done that, and I am sorry.”

Marble stared at her a moment longer before he nodded. “I accept your apology.”

Sunny waited.

Marble said nothing.

“And you?” Sunny eventually said.

“I already apologized,” he said. “On the second train ride.”

“I suppose you did.”

They stared at each other for a moment longer before Sunny took a step forward. Marble took a second before he mirrored her, moving toward her. They glared at each other as they passed, staring daggers at each other as they passed. Finally, they pushed their way into their own rooms and shut the door behind them.

Sunny frowned as she walked into her room before she shook the thought away. While Celestia secretly enjoyed the opportunity to choose to hold something against a pony without the political pressure to forgive as the benevolent Princess, Sunny might have been holding onto it a little longer than she needed to. Her little feud was becoming ridiculous, especially because Marble could have been incredibly useful, as he had all the expertise in diving into ruins would have served her well.

Well, it was too late now.

She set the problem aside and turned to her hammock before smiling. She had some rest to store up.

---☼---

The mare stood on top of the old pyramid. Ancient, earth-pony stone surrounded her in a monument of a power that these ancient ponies had somehow stolen from her.

It didn’t matter anymore, though. She was so close now, so close to finally having what should have always been hers. Yet, even now, the ponies working for her ripped through the temple. Each and everyone was searching for secrets these earth ponies stole and hoarded, which they kept from her.

Her single wing fluttered next to her as she stood, trying to catch the wind that blew past her.

Any moment now, and she’d finally be what she was always meant to be. She hadn’t felt this alive since she discovered the location of the Staff of Sacanas, but this time, there was no self-proclaimed “Storm King” to take it from her before she arrived. She’d finally have what she always wanted.

“Lady Dusk,” a voice said behind her, and she turned to see a massive mandrill, a strange creature from a far-away land that stood twice as tall as the average pony. It bowed to her. “Your ‘sons’ have found something.”

“Is it the Couatl Feather?”

“No, but it is the vault.” The beast’s voice resonated in her body, reaching low like a deep baritone but somehow grander. Whenever he spoke, his voice always sounded a bit too loud and a bit too deep in a pony’s ear.

“Good, make sure that the excavation goes well. There shouldn’t be any problems from here on out.”

“There is but one problem,” the mandrill corrected softly. “Crimson.”

Dusk sighed. “What does he want now?” she asked.

“He claims that you have no intention of paying them and that even if you did, your quest would not provide enough to satisfy them.”

Dusk frowned. “Fine then, if Crimson Facade doesn’t want my generosity, then perhaps he’s not deserving of it.”

The mandrill smiled, revealing massive fangs under a colorful face. “Shall I deal with him?”

“Do,” Dusk said simply.

The mandrill smiled wider and began to laugh as he backed away. “Of course, Lady Dusk.”

As he descended down into the darkness of the pyramid below, his laughter echoed out from the pyramid, cutting into the night of the jungle in his deep, resonating, resounding voice.

It almost drowned out the screams.

Chapter 6

Marble sighed.

He’d been stuck in his cabin for the past few days now, only coming out when he absolutely had to for food or as the guest speaker of one of the professors’ lectures. Every surface of the room, meanwhile, suffered from his extended stays inside.

The chest of books he had brought on board lay open, and its contents lay spread across the room. Everywhere he looked, he had some book lying open. Each one referencing a page that spoke of the Tenochtitlan tribe.

Like the Lusitanpec tribe, the Tenochtitlan ponies were earth ponies, though they possibly had a solid tilt to Proto-Celestiansim with their sun worship, unlike the Couatl-worshipping Lusitanpec. This singular religious difference caused such a cultural split that left both parties with a predisposition to justifying every war they had as a holy war, especially when religion had nothing to do with it.

His own studies with the Lusitanpec ponies left Marble with more than enough knowledge on the Tenochtitlan tribe, though viewed in the lens of their great arch-enemy. Still, using his reference material, he began putting together an image of what the Tenochtitlan looked like.

The Lusitanpec described them as sun-loving heretics, with a love of fire and all things that burned. Unfortunately, he had no evidence to discredit this description, and the one source he had from the Tenochtitlan viewpoint was that he had made many references to “the Great Flame of the Sky,” which had some basis in fact. The Tenochtitlan ponies were also described as cowardly raiders, which probably meant they managed to hit an undefended location on more than one occasion and ran before the Lusitanpec could retaliate.

This evidence suggested that a tribe with some form of an army could bring against the Lusitanpec militia and strike hard and fast before retreating into the wilderness. A religious people dedicated to fire and the sun, but one that did not use fire in their attacks. That aspect of the Tenochtitlan ponies fascinated Marble. Most fire cults reveled in the flame, but the lack of any evidence of burning their enemies offered a strange new side to them. Perhaps they saw fire as too holy to use as a weapon?

Marble wandered back to the one Tenochtitlanian source he had and read it over once more. But, unfortunately, he skipped the part about the Tenochtitlan warriors retreating from an unseasonable storm that they claimed the Lusitanpecs caused before he read the passage he was looking for.

“The enemy was not worthy of the Light. So they hid in their homes of stone and darkness before bringing their swords to bear.”

Yes, by the sounds of it, they thought that fire was too good for the Lusitanpecs. They insisted that the Holy Fire would not touch them in their darkness. The fire was sacred and needed to be guarded and cherished, not to be used in something as vulgar as war.

Fascinating.

Marble checked the time.

11 am. He needed to go. Marble had a lecture he needed to be present for. Dr. Bones scheduled him as a guest speaker for a short class on properly exploring a temple. Marble ran to his bathroom real quick and stuck his mane under the showerhead before slicking his hair back to stick to his neck.

That was all the preparation he had time for, and he rushed out of his cabin. He flapped his wings, covering the distance as fast as he dared before he broke up onto the upper deck.

The university students already sat in their seats on the two dozen folding chairs that the captain had stored somewhere. Dr. Bones stood in front of all the chairs and gave him a nod before pointing at an empty seat in the front row.

Next to her.

Why was she sitting there? Why had Doctor Bones set that mare into that seat? Was she going to open her mouth and spout more unsubstantiated claims about how ponies used to live their lives thousands of years ago? Would the amazing Sunny Smiles reveal that the Tenochtitlan tribes had a fully functioning steel production industry? They just refused to use it because they didn’t like the aesthetic?

Marble took the seat and didn’t look at Sunny, who at least returned the favor. They sat together in silence as the lecture began.

“Hello, class,” Dr. bones began. “Today’s subject is rather serious and will deal with the most dangerous part of this expedition. We did talk about this earlier in the semester but considering that I do not want your body to come back to Equestria in the ship’s freezer, we’re going to go over this again until you’re perfectly clear on how to proceed in a temple like the one we’re visiting.”

The students seemed to pay a little attention to the treat, but that wasn’t a surprise. College students had a tendency to believe themselves invincible. Facing them with the reality that they could very quickly die going into the ruins was typically met with a surreal sense of dissociation.

“First,” Dr. Bones said. “You may remember what I have said about the Daring Do books. While the actual findings presented by A. K. Yearling are total fiction, including finding the long-lost descendants of lost civilizations, the traps she has written about are completely and totally factual, actual, and deadly. Most of you consider the paperwork of archeology to be the boring sideshow to a life filled with adrenaline and danger, but the truth is you don’t have all the answers. Daring Do can figure her way out of every trap and pit because her author knows the way out. You, I, and the rest of the ponies actually going down into the depths of these ruins do not. This is not a laughing matter, and it is not to be taken lightly.”

Dr. Bones continued, using a speech she refined over years of teaching to get this singular point across. Marble himself heard it a few times, and each time she only got better at the delivery. First, she went into the gory details of how painful being buried alive in sand was, drowning with the added benefit of the sand rubbing your insides raw for the minutes you still had of life. Next, she spoke about the vicious poisoned barbs of dart traps which, if you somehow survived the poison that forced your muscles to contract until you seized yourself to death, would tear at the skin as you removed them. The Doctor began to talk about a crushing trap but trailed off. Nevertheless, the effect was pronounced and sold itself.

The students fell silent.

“Luckily for you,” the Doctor continued, “we have a few experts here today to tell you what to look for.” She motioned toward Marble and Sunny. “Mr. Marble Venture has been diving into ruins, temples, and tombs for nearly a decade and has continued to stay alive despite the danger. Ms. Sunny Smiles, on the other hoof, is a member of the Royal Conservation Committee and is very skilled in wilderness survival. Both of these experts will be speaking to you today to get you ready for your first expedition.”

Marble gave Sunny a side glance, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“First, we’ll have Ms. Smiles speak. Ms. Smiles?”

The unicorn nodded and stood, taking the podium. “Thank you, Dr. Bones,” she replied.

Marble raised an eyebrow. This wasn’t his first time speaking in front of students. However, this was the first time he had to share his speaking time. The fact that he had to share the time with none other than Sunny Smiles was something else.

“Hello fillies and gentlecolts,” Sunny said. “The jungle is a dangerous place, between the dangerous plant life, the natural hazards like quicksand or pitfalls, diseases carried by insects, or even the dangerous fauna that lives high in the trees. As a conservation committee member, I’ve had to spend years learning magic for identifying certain plants and animals. For this reason, I have a few essential tips for you as you begin making your way into the middle of nowhere.”

“Oh, this should be good,” Marble thought to himself, and he shifted on his seat.

“First and foremost. Do not do what I am going to do. I’m about to begin an expedition deep into the jungle by myself. Do not do that.”

Marble blinked.

“Always travel the jungle in pairs, do not going anywhere alone. Second, bug spray is everything. Getting a tropical disease and dying from it days later is not a good way to go out. If you want to make it back in one piece, the fewer things biting you, the better. Third, do not get into any water that you can’t see the bottom of. The number of predators that can live in even a shallow pool of water is staggering.”

Marble didn’t hear the rest. He still couldn’t believe her first words. Sunny was actually going out into the jungle? She was going to brave a wilderness that the native ponies feared? Was she actually out of her mind?

He watched as she continued her speech, her short list of tips turning to a somehow compelling monologue on how life was incredibly precious and deserved their attention as they moved forward.

Shortly after, she finished a round of applause, and she quickly sat back down as Dr. Bones retook the stage. “You’re going into the jungle alone?” he whispered to her.

“Yes,” she replied quietly. “That’s why I’m here.”

“You’re going into the wilderness? With what?”

“A machete and some magic.”

“That’s it? Are you crazy? It’s dangerous out there!” he whispered in a hiss. “The weather isn’t even controlled out there! You could face flash floods or—”

“I’m aware,” she responded. “Now you’re being called up.”

Marble glanced at her for a moment longer before he stood up to make his own speech. He smiled for the students as he stepped up and began to give the talk he’d always had. Go in large groups, use a long pole to check for pressure plates, check for sacred symbols, and so on, but the entire time, he couldn’t think of anything other than the fact that Sunny Smiles was going out into the jungle.

Why, by Celestia, would she do that?

Marble finished his talk, handed the podium back off to Dr. Bones, and excused himself to his room.

He couldn’t let her do this. He couldn’t let Sunny rush off to her death in the jungle for who knows what reason? Nothing in there wasn’t worth dying alone in the middle of the Celestia-forsaken jungle, probably sinking in quicksand before being eaten by a jaguar or something.

“Why...why should I care? She’s a grown mare, isn’t she? I’m not in charge of her. Sunny can make her own decisions. If she wants to run off and jump into a flash flood, then she can do that.”

That’s crazy! That’s a mare’s life on the line. How could he just let that go? How could he let a mare just march off to one of the most painful and avoidable suicides he’d ever seen.

“She’s a professional,” his mind argued. “She’s probably done this kind of thing before. So if she goes out, then she’s probably prepared for this kind of thing. Besides, you’ve gone into all these temples and lived.”

Temples were made to be used and lived in. Ponies worked there. Yes, actual wild nature had no way around it. It wanted to kill you, and it had a thousand and one tools do that. It could send hydras, jackalopes, yetis, trolls, chupacabras, bugbears, and more. And those were just the things that wanted to actively hunt you down, not to mention the other hundred natural obstacles in her way. There’s a difference between a primal but civilized building compared to the untamed wild that was only barely under control after the entire history of ponykind.

“She’s done this before. She just admitted that she’s been spending years heading out into the wilds like this before. She’s capable.”

Because capable ponies never make mistakes. When they’re alone with nopony to help her?

Marble didn’t answer that. He couldn’t have an answer for that.

He glanced around his room, with the books scattered around the room.

“This place is a mess,” he thought to himself, changing the subject in his mind.

His mind didn’t respond, and he began to pick up the books, collecting himself as he got ready for another day.

---☼---

Rolling Ivory looked around the table and smiled. They finally, finally had enough room that they could move around the table. They can get up, walk, and set down snacks and everything without having to squeeze past each other.

Luna, likewise, was a fantastic host. She used masking tape to mark down arrows to show everyone where to go for the table, restroom, and everything else. The table was cleaned up with a marked place for everypony that was supposed to come, and she even brought a cup filled with pencils, erasers, along with plates and mugs to enjoy snacks from.

The Lady herself was beaming ear to ear as she watched the other ponies slowly file into the library. Luna’s sheet was ready, her borrowed dice lined up in a row, and an actual drinking horn and what Rolling hoped was a prop greatsword.

Caramel sat next to her. Rolling told him that he was in charge of helping Luna learn how to play, but the earth pony wasn’t terribly concerned, considering she read the entire rulebook. The others, however, were starting to worry her.

The soon-to-be party would have five members, including Luna, and the other three members were staring up at the ex-royalty with more than a bit of trepidation.

Probably because of the greatsword.

Rolling mentally shook her head and decided that she’d try a more familiar start to ease everypony in. “Okay, that’s everypony, so we’re going to start.”

The five ponies all straightened as Rolling began. “The town of Hopesedge sits on the frontier of the kingdom of Ungular. Far away from the Queen’s stranglehold of power, the creatures here find themselves able to eke out a living despite the corruption of the law. However, the real draw of Hopesedge is the tower, not two days away. Nopony knows how old the tower is. It was here before the town. Nopony knows who built it, and nopony knows why. The only thing that is known is that the tower houses two things in excess. Treasure, and Danger.”

Rolling glanced around the room. Luna was eating the whole thing up with the glee that only a new player could bring, while the others were slowly warming up to the game. “All of you,” she continued, “have made your way here with the promise of gold relief under the Ungularian law and find yourselves converging on the Last Regret alehouse.”

“Are we starting in another tavern?” one of the ponies asked.

The others groaned.

“A tavern is a perfectly good place for creatures to meet! It was basically the only thing to do!”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “Thou art not...wrong, per se, but I feel like that statement is perhaps a tad simple.”

“Ooh, getting called out by the alicorn!” Another pony said, egging her on.

“Sundance, I swear I’ll kill your character,” Rolling said. “He’s in the tavern right now. What’s he doing?”

“She,” Sundance, the golden-brown earth pony, said, “is licking her paw.”

“Okay, are you going to describe her?”

Sundance nodded. “Luckstep is an Abyssinian, sitting at a table and drinking some ale. She has a holy symbol of Lady Luck attached to a silk belt around her waist, and she’s just casually sitting there.”

“Okay,” Rolling said before she pointed to Ivory Sunlight, the only other mare, at least until Luna arrived. “What are you doing?”

She smiled. “Hercule Goldclaw, a griffon with golden-yellow feathers, slams his way into the tavern and walks in. His brassed armor shines like gold and—”

“Are you playing another paladin?” Caramel asked.

“Hush,” Ivory said. “He takes his seat down at the bar and asks for something to drink.”

“Great, Platinum?”

“After Hercule walked in,” Platinum Dare, the pegasus of the group declared, “a large figure, trying to slip in like he’s trying to hide, finds a seat to sit down in the corner, fidgeting with his fingers the entire way. As he happens to be seven feet tall, it’s fairly easy to determine that he’s a minotaur, dressed in fine robes with a set of glasses perched on his nose.”

“And what’s his name for my notes?” Rolling asked.

“Brightflame, just Brightflame.”

Rolling wrote it down before pointing to Caramel. “Go.”

“Shadesong Swifthoof has been in the tavern the entire time,” Caramel said. “He’s been sitting on the opposite side of the tavern than Luckstep, right?”

Sundance nodded.

“Yeah, he’s been sitting on the opposite side of the tavern from her, messing with some cards. He’s waiting for someone to come over and play with him, smiling the whole time. He’s a pegasus, so he’s flipping cards through his feathers. He’s obviously a more charismatic type, but he also looks like he’d run from the table the second the game doesn’t go his way.”

“Great, and Luna?”

Luna smiled wide. “Entering through the door of the tavern steps a unicorn with a coat as black as the night that birthed her and a mane as white as lost innocence. She carries a massive blade on her back and a frown that seems cut from stone. She walks into the tavern and orders a drink.”

The other ponies at the table blinked. “Um...wow.”

“That, that was a little edgy, if you don’t mind me saying so,” Sundance said.

Luna furrowed her brow. “Edgy? What dost thou mean by that?”

“Caramel, explain to Luna,” Rolling said before turning to the earth pony. “As it turns out, Luna has told me about her character, and she’s actually going to be just fine. You have to remember that she’s been behind on her media for the past thousand years. She’s used to shining knights being the hero all the time. She’s trying to go for something new, but she’s just late to the party.”

“Wait,” Luna said. “Dost thou mean that a hero that appears as a villain is a story that has been done many times in this day in age?”

“Sadly, yes,” Rolling said, “but I am fascinated to know where you go with it.”

“Oh, I see,” Luna said.

Rolling frowned. She was starting to lose the royalty; she needed to move quickly, then. “The bartender offers you a drink and asks for a gold piece.”

“A gold piece?” Luna asked. “For a single drink? Is he mad?”

“‘Taxes are high,’ he responds in a gruff voice,” Rolling said as she gathered her minis. “Before you have an opportunity to argue further, a screeching voice interrupts you. You turn to see a goblin at the door, demanding your coin. Roll initiative.”

Chapter 7

Captain Crusty sighed as he watched his ship. The poor old stallion frowned as he glared out at the night sky. No clouds so far tonight, but he learned to trust his bones over his eyes a long time ago.

These ponies liked to talk about the “frontier” like it was a simple border, but all these ponies seemed to forget that the sea was wild. Nopony controlled the clouds or winds over the ocean waves, and they could appear over the horizon in a moment before unleashing a torrent. Some you could see coming hours away, others you had minutes.

Crusty could feel it, though. He felt the weather change in his bones these days, and tonight, they were screaming at him. Something unnatural was happening, something terrible and dark. He’d been feeling it all day, and after the first three hours, he called up the first mate, and they began to take shifts through the day.

Tonight could be dangerous.

The stars were out in force, and the moon stared down in a malicious sliver. He only knew the skies were clear from the thousands of dots of light, but the darkness could easily hide the truth.

Crusty piloted his ship, staring up at the sky.

The wind began to blow.

Crusty turned to face it, squinting his eyes as he stared into the wind.

A wall of clouds faced him.

His bones hadn’t lied to him yet.

---☼---

Sunny’s eyes snapped open.

Her cabin pitched wildly as she woke in the middle of the night. Thunder snapped outside, so loud it nearly drowned out the frantic ringing of the alarm bell. The entire cabin shifted, and Sunny was almost thrown from her hammock.

She jumped down to the floor of the cabin and nearly slammed face-first into her cabin door as the ship pitched under her hooves.

Sunny turned and face the porthole that opened into her room. A storm raged outside, and she gaped at the size of the waves. She stared, mouth open, before a massive wave slammed into the side of the ship. The porthole smashed, and glass and saltwater slammed into her, throwing her across the room.

She sputtered, water spewing from her mouth as she gasped for breath. The ship would sink at this rate. She needed to help the students get off the boat. With her magic, she grabbed her bag and tore the door to her cabin open.

She slammed it shut, standing in two inches of water in the hallway, and saw Marble get out of his own cabin. “We need to get the students to the lifeboats!” she yelled.

“I’ll head topside, see if I can do anything about the storm!”

Sunny nodded and rushed down the hallways, tearing open the doors. “Storm! Storm! The ship’s going down! Head to the lifeboats!” Ponies, dressed in nightcaps and dressing gowns, rushed to the stairs of the Crystal Flare to head up to the upper decks.

The alarm bell continued to ring as deafening thunder clapped and crashed in their ears, and lightning flashed bright white.

Sunny kept running, opening doors so hard she nearly tore them from their hinges. “Get up! Go! The ship’s starting to sink!”

Students began pouring out of their rooms, scrambling up for the stairs.

Sunny didn’t risk anything. She opened every door, checking every single room as she moved. She couldn’t risk the chance that somepony was still inside one of the rooms when—

A torrent of water slammed into her as she opened the next door. Gallons and gallons of water poured in, filling the poor paddleboat with more water. Sunny was nearly thrown from her hooves as the geyser of water slammed into the hallways, and she turned her telekinesis against it. She forced the door closed, pushing against it with all her might until the water’s streams became nothing more than high-pressure leaks at the very edges of the doors. She closed it shut and hoped that the ponies in that room were safe.

She pushed forward, running through the entire passenger deck. Sunny turned to the Engineering deck with the last door pried open and the previous passengers evacuated. The stairs were already flooded, and the ship was sitting low in the water. She wasn’t sure anypony was even down there anymore.

Without any other choice, she pushed her way up onto the top deck.

Rain pelted her in sheets. If not for the water that she faced below deck, she’d have been soaked in seconds. The students and teachers had latched onto a guardrail on the far side of the ship as the waves continued to crash over them, hanging on for dear life as water soaked their coats. Behind her, Captain Crusty held dearly onto the ship’s helm, obviously cursing loudly, despite being drowned out by the bell and the thunder.

“Captain! Captain!” Sunny called. “Captain, what do we do?”

“Da on’y t’ing ya can do!” he roared, almost laughing hysterically. “Git ta da lifeboats! Git outta ‘ere and inta da storm!”

“What?” Sunny asked.

“It’s yer on’y chance!” Crusty yelled. “Git out w’ile ya can!”

Sunny glanced up at the clouds and saw a small figure trying to fight the weather itself. Every time the pegasus tried to resist a single cloud, the storm thundered and grew stronger. A lightning bolt tore through the distant, flying figure with a deafening crack of thunder, and he began to drop to the ground at incredible speeds. Sunny cursed and reached out with her magic, plucking him out of the air as he fell and the ship pitched once more.

She pulled Marble close just as he began to wake up. “What happened?” he asked.

“No time!” She yelled. “We need to load the lifeboats!”

Marble shook his head and shakily got to his hooves as Sunny led him across the deck. The lifeboats, small ships that could seal shut, had been pulled up, a crew pony, clinging for his life on one of the winches to the side.

Every one of the ponies here had an hour of training on the first day at sea to get inside the lifeboats. Now that hour meant nothing simply because they couldn’t get over there with the storm thundering around them like this.

“Marble!” Sunny yelled over the wind. “Can you tie a knot?”

“Yes!” he replied.

Sunny pulled her rope out of her bag. “Tie this by the first boat!”

He nodded and grabbed the rope in his teeth before he shot across the ship. He worked quickly, tying the rope to the hoofrail by the door. “First lifeboat crew!” Sunny called.

A group of twenty ponies glanced up at her through the rain.

“Go! Go!” Sunny yelled, holding out the rope to them.

One of the ponies suddenly understood and grabbed onto the rope and began pulling herself up.

The first group of ponies began to move up the rope, holding onto it for dear life as the storm continued to rage. Marble caught on quick, and Sunny didn’t need to say a word as he began to help load up the first boat. Once they were all loaded, he shut the door, pulled the rope free, and moved to the next lifeboat before the first one splashed into the water.

“Second boat, go!” Sunny yelled down the line.

Again, the ponies began climbing up the rope, and again, they managed to climb into the lifeboat. The moment they were in, Marble sealed the door and moved to the next boat. The storm seemed to get wilder with each boat saved, and the waves grew higher in anger. Wood splintered with each crash, and soon the paddles were ruined.

“Last boat!” Sunny called as she worked on the rope.

Marble tied his end down, and the last group of passengers made their way to their final shelter.

“Captain! Captain, we have the last lifeboat!” Sunny called as the storm continued to rage.

“No ken do dere, Ms. Smiles!” Crusty called. “Da Oath o’ da sea says a Captain goes down wit ‘is ship.”

“Captain! She’s going to sink!”

“And Crusty stayed wit’ da Crystal Flare until dey both hit bottom!” The captain said in a sing-song voice. “Save yer’selves! Dis be my Oath!”

“Captain!” Sunny called again before lightning flashed so bright that only after-image of white against her vision before she lurched back.

Her rope went slack, and the mare nearly fell into the ocean before it snapped taut again. Sunny’s vision slowly cleared, and she glanced up to see Marble holding onto the hoof rail that had been connected to the lifeboat by the door.

The lightning bolt must have torn it free somehow and—

A monstrous wave crashed into the ship and forced Sunny down onto the deck. Her head slammed into the wood, and she felt the world spin, but she managed to stay conscious. The wave pulled back, away from the ship, and Sunny felt the gunwale sly past her reaching legs.

She was officially overboard.

Still holding onto the rope for dear life, she felt the cord snap tight in her hooves and glanced up to Marble holding on tight to the rail that the rope was still tied to. His wings flapped wildly, and he had his hindlegs braced against the gunwale, looking like a fisherman holding onto the line.

Crusty gave another nihilistic laugh.

And then Sunny saw the wave. It towered over the Crystal Flare and dwarfed the paddle boat.

Sunny’s mouth gaped at the size of it.

And then it crashed down on her, filling her mouth with salt water.

She tumbled in the sea, and she felt the rope in her hooves whip around crazily. Her mind spun, and she wasn’t sure what direction up was. She cast her Control Matter spell and forced a bubble of air to form in the dark waters, and she dropped to the bottom of the bubble.

She had a way up.

She closed the bubble and used another Control Matter spell to thrust herself up to the surface. She swallowed down air and glanced up to see the pitched and sinking form of the Crystal Flare.

The rope tugged in her hooves.

Her eyes went wide. “Marble’s on the other side!”

She pulled at the rope, tugging at a weight that had to be Marble. She reached the end of the fifty-foot rope, and the pegasus gasped for air.

Sunny glanced around. The storm still raged, but she could see the lifeboats off in the distance, floating to safety.

Time for some more magic.

She cast Control Matter again and forced the water around them to freeze in a perfect sphere.

Up to their knees in saltwater, they bounced and rolled on the ocean.

Sunny smiled.

“Wha-what happened?” Marble asked.

“We’re okay,” Sunny said. “We’re okay.”

“What happened?” he repeated.

“Water doesn’t act like other Matter spells,” she explained. “You can freeze it with Control, but it’ll melt on its own. We’ll be okay. Cold, but okay.”

---☼---

Luna glared at her twenty-sided die.

The others at the table snickered.

“Well?” Rolling asked, knowing full well what her die read.

“That would be a natural one,” she admitted.

Rolling smiled. “Well, it seems that Dreadmane, unfortunately, trips and falls straight onto the spike trap. Take…,” she paused as she rolled a die behind her game master screen. “Six damage.”

“Could I perhaps rage as I fall? It would certainly annoy Dreadmane enough that she tripped.”

“No, but good try.”

Caramel shook his head. So far, Luna had taken to the game like a fish to water. It almost surprised him how quickly she caught on. Maybe he should actually read the whole book and see what he learned.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, slipping away from the table before he began following the masking tape arrows that pointed to the restroom. He disappeared down the hallways and soon again found himself passing by hundreds of years of ancient art.

He shoved the intrusive thoughts of grabbing one to sell for money out of his head as he continued to walk down the halls. He would never get away with it if he tried, honestly. Luna and Celestia would know. There was no way they wouldn’t. He’d grab a chalice and be hunted down within moments of getting that into a pawn shop.

Even thinking about this was a stupid idea. Why was he even entertaining this thought? He kept walking, down the halls, and following the tape, moving up to the front of the house, with the massive windows that faced the front garden and the distant, infrequent flash of the paparazzi at the gate.

Another intrusive thought popped into his head. You could sell a crazy story about Lady Luna to them, maybe a scandal. They pay for that kind of thing, don’t they?

He pushed the thought aside and continued to the bathroom.

Where’s Celestia? Yet another thought that popped up in his head. Why did this keep happening to him? Why could his brain just sit still for a moment or two? He—

Where was Celestia? Luna very obviously lived here, but Caramel hadn’t seen any sign of the older sister. Maybe...maybe there was a story here—

No! Stop this! You’re here to play a game! You’re not here to do anything other than to play a game with everypony else. You’re not going to...sell just a little bit of info so that you could use it to help...you build a real life.

Caramel shook his head and continued on his way.

But that thought haunted him far longer than the chalice ever did.

---☼---

Marble shivered.

Sunny was right, they’d be safe, but Celestia’s tail, he was freezing. Slowly, more and more saltwater began to fill their little bubble, but they could see more of the outside with every drop off the ceiling.

Marble shook and shivered for hours as their tiny capsule bobbed across the waves, and he saw the orange glow of the rising sun pass him by an hour ago. He’d lost so much sleep because of this.

“We’re going to die out here,” a thought said in his mind. “This is how it ends, freezing to death in an ice casket, millions of miles from shore. Maybe the hippogriff sea ponies will find my body, sinking into the icy depths where who-knows-what lives. At the very least, though, my body will be wonderfully preserved by how bucking cold it is.”

He got up to move again. Sitting still with his back to one of the freezing ice walls only made him colder and more uncomfortable, but he didn’t have many options.

Sunny, meanwhile, kept her eyes on the walls. “We’re pretty thin,” she noted. She explained it clearly enough, ice melts better surrounded by water, and there was enough on both sides of the bottom of the sphere to make her worry.

“How thin?” Marble asked.

“Thin enough that we might need to spin the ball so this part’s above water.”

“How long can we keep doing that before the walls are too thin?”

Sunny didn’t answer him.

Lovely.

As Marble paced in circles, trying to warm himself however he could, Sunny glanced up. “Does that look green to you?” she asked.

Marble followed her hoof to a point on the horizon, where a green line was faintly visible through the refracted lens of ice. “Maybe?” he said, trying to keep his teeth from chattering.

Sunny glanced at it again before she stood. “Help me move the ball,” she said.

They both moved, digging their hooves into one of the walls and walking on the same side, rolling the floor from underneath them to the side. “That’s good,” Sunny said before reaching into her bag and pulling out an actual machete.

This mare really was going to rush out into the jungle.

She slammed the handle into the ice, chipping away at it before she carved a hole in the thinning ice. “It’s land!” she said with a smile.

Marble got up next to her, and he pressed his eye up to the small window to see a shoreline backed by tall, green trees. Relief flooded his veins, and he sagged back into the capsule. “I never thought I’d be so happy to see dirt!”

“I’ve got maybe just enough energy in me to push us toward the beach,” Sunny said, “but you’ll have to get us out. I’ll be too tired to barely move after all that.”

“I’m okay with that.”

Sunny’s horn lit up a bright, golden yellow, and Marble felt the icy sphere throttle its way toward the beach.

Marble couldn’t wait and already began using his hoof to tear at the hole Sunny carved a few seconds ago, ripping chunks off the sides and edges to make a larger and larger hole. Soon, he could stick his whole head through the opening and felt the air whip past his head.

It felt so warm.

The bubble bounced and skipped over the waves, gaining speed as Sunny pushed it with magic.

Marble just smiled as he watched the beach get closer and felt the wind warm his body.

“We’re almost there!” He said.

They were maybe a mile out, but with the magic pushing them, they’d make it in no time.

And then the capsule began to slow.

Marble ducked his head back inside to look at Sunny, who wavered on her hooves as she continued to push her magic to the very end. She forced it another second before collapsing right there in front of him and landing in the water.

Marble cursed and fished her out of the small pool, and she gasped for air, breathing like she just ran a marathon. “I needed,” she panted, “more sleep.”

Marble sighed and glanced at the window he carved into the side of the bubble. “I’ll get us the rest of the way,” he muttered before he began widening the hole even more. He chipped at the ice, tearing it apart before he cracked open a hole big enough to carry the unicorn through.

“Alright, Ms. Smiles,” he said, grabbing onto her. “Let’s go.”

Taking her in his hooves, he began flapping his wings, though he was cramped in the small space of the capsule. Nonetheless, he started lifting Sunny and himself off the icy floor and began the careful maneuvering to get them out of the sphere.

He spent far too long trying to get out, but luckily the time spent did loosen his wings up slightly, so they weren’t as stiff from the cold anymore. Now in the open air, Marble could finally begin to take them over. He tried to glide as often as he could to save some energy, but the long night and all the work he spent on the boat left him feeling exhausted.

But the end was in sight, at long, long last.

He pushed himself just a little bit harder as he came in for a landing on the shore and dropped Sunny about a foot before crashing into the rough, coarse, but warm and inviting sand.

He didn’t even try to keep his eyes open. He was asleep in seconds.

Chapter 8

Water tickled his hooves.

Cracking open an eye, Marble found himself staring up at a cloudless blue sky, spotted with seagulls that cried happily in his ears. Forcing himself to sit up, he saw the crabs that had been watching him intently scurry away with fright at the sudden movement. Sand, whose gritty irritation he had been unaware of up until now, ground against his coat and skin, making every movement slightly painful and annoying. Another wave hit the shore and strained to reach him before touching his hooves and then falling back into the sea.

Marble glanced around. The beach stretched on for miles and miles to his left, going off into the distance until the shore bent away and hid the rest from view. In front of him lay the ocean, so incredibly vast that the only thing that could block his vision was the horizon. To the right stood...well, it looked like a hut built from thin branches and palm fronds. It had no walls, but the roof appeared sturdy enough. Marble blinked as he looked at it before he turned to face his back, where the jungle rose before him like a wall of verdant anger.

It barely surprised him when Sunny walked out of that towering wall of plant life, carrying some fronds behind her in her magic. “Oh, you’re awake.”

“Yeah,” he croaked. “Thanks for getting me up.”

Sunny shrugged but smiled. “I tried, honestly. You were out. Now that you are up, go wash yourself off and come inside for some breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” he asked.

Sunny glanced back at him. “You know how they say not to grab your belongings when you’re evacuating?”

He nodded.

“Well, I brought mine, and I have some food in there. Of course, I did find some Water lily roots and some Taro roots. All we need to do is boil those, and we’ll have ourselves some good soup.” She held up the plants, revealing a strange, brown root and a long, strange black tube.

“Are those...edible?” Marble asked.

“Of course,” Sunny replied. “I wouldn’t pick them otherwise.”

Marble raised an eyebrow. “And, uh, how did you find those?”

“I have magic specifically to find these kinds of plants,” she explained. “Getting them is a simple as pulling them out of the ground.”

Marble blinked before he sighed and wandered to into the water. Water washed over him, cleaning the sand off of him while he stared at the tent. Sunny was beneath the palm frond roof, tearing apart the leaves of a frond into thin strips before she set them onto a pile of wood before she pulled a flint and steel from her bag.

He watched as she began to light a fire and split the taro and water lily into small chunks that looked like Sunny had chopped them to pieces, even though she didn’t use a knife. She began to boil water in a small cauldron. She slipped the parts of the roots into the pot.

He had no idea where she even got the water. It couldn’t be seawater; that would ruin the soup.

Marble continued to think about what she was doing as he finished washing. Now clean, he walked out of the sea, free of sand, though his wet hooves just collected more with every step he took. At the very least, he didn’t have it grinding against every joint in his body, though.

As he stepped under the shelter, the smell of something sweet wafted under his nose, and he glanced down into the pot.

“Do you like potatoes?” Sunny asked.

Marble blinked. “Yes? Who doesn’t?”

“I met someone who doesn’t,” she replied. “Taro tastes a lot like a potato, with a little sweetness added to it.”

“And water lily?” he asked.

“Like sweet chestnuts,” Sunny said, stirring the pot. “There are other ones that are bitter, but they’re still good to eat.”

“How do you know this?” Marble asked.

“Long years of study,” she replied.

“You just studied different kinds of edible plants?”

Sunny glanced up at him over the pot of soup. “I need to know what’s around me when I jump hooves first into the jungle,” the unicorn replied. “I wouldn’t have gotten very far without that.”

“Sure…” he replied.

They stood silently for a moment or two.

“It’s going to take a while,” she said. “Soup doesn’t cook that fast.”

“Okay,” he began. “I guess I’ll…” he started before blinking. He had no clue what else to do.

“Why don’t you check the beach?” she asked. “Check around the bend and see if anything. Maybe one of the lifeboats washed ashore.”

He nodded. That was at least something he could do. He left the small tent and began moving down the beach, watching the shore as the sea crashed softly into the sand.

They had to find their way back to civilization, so he had to start looking for any signs of a ship. If one of the lifeboats made it, they could get that seaworthy and sail it down eastward along the shore. That would work, that would work well. The only big issue was food and feeding everypony on the ship, even though each lifeboat came with supplies to last a week at sea, but that depended on the passengers having some discipline.

But, now that he thought about it, if Sunny could keep finding them food like the soup she was making, then they could keep the supplies packed just in case. They might even make it all the way without having to eat any of the packaged meals. That might make the whole trip worthwhile.

Marble traveled down the shore and walked down to the bend in the coast. He had to climb a rock, but as soon as he crested the boulder, he frowned.

Miles and miles of empty beach met him. He saw nothing as far as he could see until another bend in the shoreline hid from him one more time. Marble sighed. “Great,” he muttered before he turned back to the makeshift shack that Sunny built.

He marched back to the little hut, shaking his head the entire time before he finally got returned.

“Soup’s ready,” Sunny said with a smirk before she handed him a wooden bowl.

“Did you pack extra bowls?” Marble asked.

“That’s a coconut,” she replied. “I flavored the soup with some, but I don’t want to overdo the coconut. It’s a laxative, you know?”

Marble raised an eyebrow as she poured some of the soup into her makeshift bowl. “How’d you get it so smooth?”

“Magic,” she replied. “I basically sanded the shell down until it was smooth. No real trick there.”

Marble glanced at her a moment longer before he sipped at his soup. Like Sunny predicted, it was sweet, but the flavors of chestnut, potato, and coconut were there as well, hovering in the background of the soup.

He ate it, but it was perhaps too sweet to eat every day, but he wasn’t going to complain right now, it was food, and now that he started eating, he realized how famished he was.

He gulped down his bowl faster than he wanted and held it out for a second serving. Sunny complied, pouring him more and then filling her bowl a second time. Between them both, they emptied the cauldron, leaving almost nothing inside.

“So, what did you find?” she asked before sitting down on the sand.

Marble did the same. “Well, nothing much. There’s nothing on this beach or the one past the bend there. I think we’re out of luck.”

Sunny sighed. “And here I hoped that you’d have a way to get back without me.”

Marble blinked. “What?”

She glanced over at him. “Oh, did you think I was trying to get back?” she asked. “No, no, no. I’m heading into the jungle still.”

“Why?” Marble asked. “Why would you ever think of doing such a thing?”

“I mean, I came out here to do this job,” she replied. “I was going to explore the jungle with or without a bunch of college students following me.”

“The ship sank!”

Which just means I’d have to get back to Equestria on my own,” she replied. “That’s not that difficult.”

Marble felt his mouth drop. “Are you actually insane?” he said. “This is one of the most inhospitable environments in the world! Are you aware of that?”

“That’s why I’m here,” she replied. “I love a challenge.”

The small, self-satisfied smile on her face left Marble speechless for a long moment. How...how could anyone actually think like this? This mare was off her rocker and probably had just escaped from an asylum somewhere. What’s worse, now he was stuck with her. Celestia help him.

“Sadly, since you didn’t find one of the lifeboats, I guess that means you’re stuck with me, and while I know I can take care of myself, I’m not sure bringing someone along is the best move.”

“That’s the sanest thing I’ve heard you say all day,” Marble said.

She glanced up at him, annoyance obvious in her eyes. “Do you want the help getting back or not?” she asked. “I decided that I’m going to go out of my way to take you back to Equestria before I continue with any of my explorings. So if you want my help, then I suggest that you keep your comments to yourself.”

Marble narrowed his eyes. He...he probably couldn’t get back without some help. Even if he flew all the way there, he’d need to stop for food and rest, neither of which he could provide himself, considering that Sunny was the only one with supplies. Besides, he never thought of himself as a tremendous long-distance flyer. Sunny probably was his best bet, at least until he managed to get within a few miles of the frontier.

On the other hoof, he really wanted to snark at her.

Finally deciding against it, he waved for Sunny to continue.

She nodded, smiling again. “So, since I still want to explore, and you need to get back to civilization, I’ve come up with a compromise. We’ll head through the jungle, going north, and while we go, I’ll collect a bunch of supplies, and then we’ll push our way back east until you’re confident you can make it back on your own.”

“And why are we going to try and cross the entire jungle?”

“A couple of reasons, actually,” Sunny replied. “First, we’re on the south side of isthmus, or peninsula, or whatever. That means we’re getting sun almost the entire day with no shade except what we make. We’ll have some humidity to work with since the ocean is right there, but we’ll still be hit by the sun day in and day out the entire time. If we head north, though, the trees will help shade us as we walk, and we won’t exhaust ourselves every day we’re there. Which means we take less time getting you where you’re going.”

Marble pressed his lips together in a thin line. That...she had a point there.

“Second, a lack of water. While I was able to find some in a pool back there,” Sunny said, pointing to the treeline, “we can’t depend on that every time we move down the shore. We don’t have the time to purify the water ourselves, though we could certainly do it over a campfire if we’re patient enough. So, cutting through allows us to collect clean water as we go, which we’ll need if we’re going to spend weeks heading east along the shore.”

Another point.

“Third,” she began, “while I can continue to raid the jungle for some food somewhere, that’s still a trip I need to make into the jungle, and if I am too exhausted after walking in the hot sun all day, then you are going to be the person in charge of finding food. Do you like your chances?”

Another excellent point.

“But it’s the jungle,” Marble said. “Between the quicksand and all the dangers you yourself mentioned just yesterday, why on earth would you think it’s a good idea to go in there?”

“Because I’m a professional,” she replied simply with a smile.

“And that’s supposed to put me at ease?”

Sunny rolled her eyes. “I’ll bring up the point about how you need my help one more time.”

Marble groaned. “Fine. We’ll cut through, but if I die, I’ll haunt you for the rest of your natural life.”

Sunny smiled at him. “Duly noted.”

Marble kept frowning.

Sunny glanced back into the jungle. “Since we’ve spent most of the day sitting here already, we probably should wait until tomorrow before heading in. I’ll see if I can’t get us some supplies. In the meantime, see if you can’t find some large coconuts.”

He raised another eyebrow.

“I have a canteen, do you?” she asked.

“And you’re going to turn the coconuts into canteens?”

“Of course, that’s the easy part,” she said. “It already holds liquid, the most you need to do is drill a hole and stick a spigot in it if you really want to, but I’m sure you can work with just a hole.”

Marble stared at her, trying to gauge if that was an insult or not.

She didn’t really give him enough time, though, as she quickly made her way back into the treeline. Left alone again, Marble sighed and began looking for coconuts to gather.

---☼---

Marble watched as the sun began to set for the night as Sunny drilled a hole into one of the coconuts and then slipped in a shoot of hollowed-out bamboo to form a spout. She sealed it with some tree sap and then stopped up the new spigot with another section of bamboo.

“There you go,” she said, handing him the third coconut canteen. “Those three should hold enough water for you.”

Marble nodded and slipped them into his makeshift bag made of woven palm leaflets. “I just hope they’re as watertight as you say they are.”

She shrugged. “If the bamboo plant I found was larger, I could have made a bunch out of the individual sections. The coconut would do, though.”

“Good to know,” he replied.

Sunny stood before hanging up a hammock onto two of the supports. “You have some fronds to sleep on over there. It should be fine for tonight, but you’ll have to come up with some way to sleep while we’re in there.”

Marble sighed before glancing up at the little shelter Sunny constructed. “Are you sure this will hold?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if another storm comes through?”

“You think another storm like that’s going to happen?” she asked. “That doesn’t seem likely considering the sky right now.”

Marble blinked. Did...did she not know? Did she somehow not understand. “You...you know that storm wasn’t natural, right?”

“What?” Sunny asked, sitting up in her hammock.

“That storm had no warning. The pressure was high all day. There shouldn’t have been any storm at all. The wind was coming toward us, which meant that there had to be enough of a pressure change that pegasi would typically be the cause.”

“You’re saying ponies caused this?”

“They had to have. Wild weather patterns don’t work that way. Somepony had to have done it.”

“So you think that somepony was moving the weather over here and caused the storm?”

“N-no,” he said. “Weather flows from high pressure to low pressure areas. And pegasi can only move pressure around, which means they’d have to take the pressure from over the sea and move it over the jungle. We would have seen them.”

Sunny blinked before slowly nodding. “I see. Something caused the storm, something unnatural, and probably something hostile, or at least apathetic to other ponies.”

She glanced around the hut herself, as though realizing the structural integrity might not be as sufficient as she hopped.

Marble watched her for a moment before she frowned. “Well, it’s not like it’ll hurt us if it collapses on us. No real reason to change that now, though.”

“You think?”

“It’ll be fine,” she said. “It doesn’t matter either way.”

“Alright. Again, if I die, I’m haunting you.”

“Duly noted,” Sunny said with a sigh. “Now, just go to bed.”

---☼---

“Thank ye for coming everypony!” Luna said as she walked the ponies over to the basement with the secret tunnel. “I had so much fun, and I learned so much.”

“Oh, it’s our pleasure, Luna,” Rolling said. “I’m happy you enjoyed it.”

Caramel walked at the back of the group, watching as they made their way down the long hallways. Smiling, despite himself. The game had been fun, and they managed to level up to level two all within the first session.

“I’m just happy that nopony had to squeeze past me every ten seconds,” Platinum said, flying beside them. “Seriously, though, you play a great barbarian.”

“You do,” Ivory Sunlight added. “In fact, you’re an amazing roleplayer. Are you sure this is your first time playing?”

“It is, I simply...have a knack for it, let’s say,” she replied.

“I’ll say you do,” Sundance muttered. “Though, I think maybe bringing an actual greatsword to the game might be a little...much.”

“Dost thou think so?” Luna asked. “I thought I helped me better get into character.”

“It might, but it’s a little terrifying, honestly.”

“I suppose thou might think so,” she replied. “It was smaller on me a year ago, but without that frame of reference.”

They arrived at the basement, which Caramel honestly would have called a ‘wine cellar’ instead of a humble basement, but that wasn’t his business.

“Well, I hope ye have a wonderful night, and I pray that the trip down the tunnel isn’t, well, ‘spooky’ I believe the term to be.”

“Well, it helps that it’s well lit and dry and clean,” Rolling said. “It’s certainly not the creepiest tunnel I’ve ever been through.”

“I am glad to hear it.”

Luna opened the secret door, and the lights turned on automatically, buzzing as they came to life.

“I...um,” Platinum began, “I have a question for you, Luna.”

“What?”

“Why...why do you keep using ‘thee’ and ‘thou,’ it feels weird that you’re trying to be so formal with us.”

“Oh, I’m—”

“She’s trying to be informal,” Caramel interrupted.

Everypony turned to him.

Caramel sighed. “Thou is the informal version of ‘you,’” he explained. “It was typically used between friends and family, while ‘you’ was used in polite situations. As time went on, ponies became more and more worried about insulting each other by acting too informal, so there was a general movement to ‘you’ as a default word. When Luna is using ‘thou,’ she’s trying to speak on our level. That was the whole point of the Royal Canterlot Voice. It was meant to put ponies of a lower station at ease.”

Everypony blinked.

“I took two years of linguistics in college,” Caramel replied.

“Thank heavens!” Luna said, smiling wide. “Somepony understands! Oh, thank thee, Caramel, for whatever suffering thou endured during those years.”

“You know that’s the first time someone worded it that way,” Caramel said, “and that’s fairly accurate.”

Luna smiled, and Caramel couldn’t help but smile back.

Chapter 9

Morning came, and Sunny woke to find that a storm hadn’t destroyed their little hut. She got out of her hammock with only a little difficulty and stretched with a yawn. The pale yellow unicorn cast a Perceive Body spell to highlight any nearby taro or water lily roots. One sat further in the jungle, probably not far from the lake she pulled the water from yesterday.

Sunny glanced back and saw Marble sleeping fitfully on the sand. He’d been twisting and turning all night, to the point where his near-constant shifting woke her up a few times. It looked like he finally managed to get some sleep, though. She debated waking him up so he could start lighting a fire but decided that she might as well let him sleep. He needed to catch up on some sleep right now, anyway.

She slipped into the jungle and listened to the sounds of life, chasing after the food her spell showed her.

Marble’s presence made things difficult. Sure, he might provide a second set of eyes to watch her back, but he would probably prove to be a huge liability. The way he complained made it evident that he didn’t know how to best take care of himself in the jungle, and she’d probably have to teach him how to not die in the wilderness.

Not to mention that she now had the problem of dealing with poisons now. If she was still by herself, she would probably let herself “cheat” and use the rest of her magical powers to deal with the problem, now that she had a pony following her, that made things far more complex. Cheating was out of the question, and while she might be able to use Control Body to isolate the poison and even maneuver it out of the body, that method turned out to be more painful than not.

That was the one thing she would be okay with cheating on, and now she couldn’t do that.

Not to mention all the days she’d waste getting him across the jungle. Yes, she was going to explore that on her own, but now she couldn’t take her time doing that. Now she had to babysit the pegasus for at least two weeks of travel until they made it to the northern shore. Once there, she’d make sure he was at least safe enough to travel back to the official border before she’d finally have a chance to actually enjoy herself.

She wouldn’t have to bother if it weren’t for Celestia’s bleeding heart.

What else would you have me do?

“He’s not your responsibility anymore,” Sunny argued. “You don’t need to worry about him. He’s Twilight’s problem now.”

Well, maybe I don’t want it to be Twilight’s problem. Perhaps I want to make sure he’s alright. It’s not like he’ll become my responsibility again when I get back. He’ll still be Twilight’s problem, then. This is the one chance I get to do the fun part of my old job.

Sunny blinked.

It had been too long since she last had one of her little vacations. It had been so long that Celestia hadn’t been sure why she was leaving until now.

“See, Luna, this is why I needed to go.”

As Sunny mused about how this whole charade was perhaps the only form of therapy she was going to get, she finally came up to the pool she saw the other day. A handful of lily pads hovered on the surface of the water, and Sunny casually reached into the depths with her magic and pulled a root free.

She grabbed another three before she slipped them into her saddlebags, drying them off by pulling the water off with her spell before she turned to the pond itself. With another Control Matter spell, she lifted a sphere of water up out of the pond, focusing on just the water to leave the particulates behind.

She’d still have to boil this to make it safe to drink, but it was otherwise clean. Focusing her attention on the ball of water, she began to make her way back to the shore and the campsite.

Sunny broke the treeline just in time to see Marble sitting up.

“Morning,” she said.

He blinked. “Um, morning.”

“The hut didn’t collapse. I’m sure you’re happy to know.”

“I noticed.”

“If you want to help with breakfast,” Sunny said, pulling out her pot. “Then you can get a fire going. You might be able to get the coals from last night to burn.”

He nodded and moved over the yesterday’s campfire while Sunny dropped the water into her pot and turned her attention to the lily roots she grabbed. With a bit of maneuvering of her magic, she skinned them. Leaving the dirt-encrusted skin behind, Sunny glanced over the four vegetables.

“Are we having soup again?” Marble asked as he looked up from the fire, slowly growing as he fed it wood and kindling.

“Nope, we’re going to roast these,” she replied. “That way, we don’t need to break out the bowls, and we can get moving faster.”

“Okay,” he muttered. “Then what’s the pot for?”

“Well, I made you a bunch of canteens, didn’t I? You’ll probably need water to go in them.”

“Fair enough, I suppose,” he replied, though the sarcasm in his voice was poking through.

“It shouldn’t take long,” Sunny told him. “We just need to bring the water to boil for ten minutes, and by then, the roots should be done, and we can start moving into the actual jungle.”

“I still think that’s a crazy idea.”

“So you’ve said,” she replied. “The first forty feet into the jungle shouldn’t be a problem, but once we get past that, we’ll be on our own. That’s where we’ll need to start paying attention, and I do mean we’ll need to pay very serious attention. If we don’t, then the chances of us dying increases heavily.”

“Oh, so it’s only crazy after those forty feet, got it.”

“The important thing is that we need to start paying attention because the danger will then be ahead of us for the next forty feet, and then we’ll have to worry about what’s ahead and behind.”

“Behind us? That soon?”

“Of course, jaguars are incredibly stealthy ambush predators. All we’d have to do is walk past one, and it would try to attack it, and they’re one of the weaker creatures we can face out here. If we’re lucky, we won’t even see any Zorbos, Thessalhydras, or Bukavacs.”

“You made up those words.”

“I wish I had,” she said before she hovered the roots over the fire to begin roasting them. “We’re going to start moving soon, so get yourself ready.”

---☼---

The jungle roared with life. Every step into the dense undergrowth disturbed the life around them, and the jungle growled in answer. It seemed that everything living in the jungle reviled these ponies invading this sacred space.

They were past the safe area now, and Marble and Sunny both needed to keep their eyes open as they traveled. Sunny took the lead, using her machete to clear a space before them. She could have used her Control Body spell to force the plants to move out of the way, but that would use far too much magic for the trip for the day.

Using her telekinesis would use far less energy, and since Sunny was an expert of Control Matter spells, it only made sense that she’d use that where she could.

Marble, however, typically flew over her path, hoving just above and behind her. For some reason, this annoyed her.

“What am I looking for again? Eyes in the darkness?” he asked.

“Strange movement,” she said. “You won’t see their eyes until it’s too late. Your eyes are better at seeing movement anyway.”

“And how do I see movement in pure darkness?” he asked.

“Well, if you don’t, then we’ll be eaten, and then we’ll have more to worry about.”

That probably wasn’t the best response; her inner Celestia remarked, we can do better than this.

“Do I want to?” Sunny asked.

That was a question only Sunny could answer. Celestia could say whatever she wanted, but if Sunny wasn’t game, then it wouldn’t get through. That was sort of the point with all this, after all.

Still, he could at least make it easier.

“I’m not sure that being able to see movement helps when it’s so dark.”

“You can get a torch out.”

“And then be a glowing neon cafe sign saying ‘open 24/7?’ No, thank you.”

“Yes, because fire doesn’t at all act as a deterrent to wild animals.”

Sunny’s machete dug into a particularly stubborn branch before she shoved her way into a clearing. A spacious, cylindrical area opened up, reaching all the way into the canopy, and after a quick look around, revealed what caused it.

An old, ancient tree had fallen from the ground, leaving a single, open window into the sky. Now, new life was trying to grow up in the empty spot as the plants fought for sunlight, but the pair finally had enough room to breathe.

“Wow... that’s probably the first piece of sunlight I’ve seen since we got in here.”

“Ray of sunlight,” Sunny corrected.

“Regardless.”

“Sure,” she replied.

Marble flew up into the air and began to circle up and around the clearing, checking the area. “So...I guess this is a great place to break for lunch?”

“Lunch?” she asked. “We don’t have time for lunch. We have to keep moving. Just eat your other lily root.”

“What? Both of those were barely a breakfast. How do you expect me to eat that little and keep going?”

“Because we’ll have a big dinner,” she replied.

“That’s not enough! I mean, if we had a huge breakfast, that might work.”

Sunny sighed before she reached into her bag and pulled out an energy bar she packed away. “Here, now stop complaining. You have ten minutes for me to catch my breath, and then we’re heading back into the trees,” she said.

Marble shook his head before grabbing and biting into the bar before he began flying higher into the air. Sunny let him go before she looked around for a place to sit down for a moment or two, just to get a chance to sit down.

She heard Marble say something above her.

“What?” Sunny called.

Marble dropped back down. “I think I see something,” he yelled.

“What?”

“It looks like it’s a Lusitanpec Windtower.”

Sunny blinked.

“They were old outstations that the Lusitanpec used to mark their borders—”

“I know, I know,” Sunny interrupted.

He was close but wrong. The Lusitanpec borders expanded beyond the Windtowers. What purpose the towers actually served, Celestia wasn’t sure. Whenever she spoke with these ponies, they always ensured that no one actually shared that information with her. It didn’t help that she was seen as the Avatar of the Tenochtitlan’s Holy Flame.

“We might be able to rest there.”

Sunny considered that for a second before nodding. “That might not be a bad idea. How far away is it?” she asked.

Marble paused. “A ways away,” he said, trailing off.

Sunny sighed. “Can you carry me up there to show me?”

Marble frowned. “I can try,” he replied.

He dropped low, hooking his legs into Sunny’s armpits, before lifting her with all his might. Wings beating wildly, he took her up into the air, to the very tops of the trees.

“Right over there,” he said with a grunt, motioning to the tower with his head.

Sunny squinted as she followed his motion before she just spotted the tell-tale sign of a giant Lusitanpec stone head that typically capped so many of their buildings.

It was so far away.

“That’s going to take us days to get there,” Sunny groaned under her breath.

“Can I take us down?” Marble asked, obviously straining.

“Yes,” she replied, and the pegasus began dropping to the ground as fast as he could without causing any damage.

They landed hard, just hard enough to make Sunny’s knees sting, but not hard enough to do worse than that. Marble gasped audibly. “I need to work on my wing muscles,” he muttered.

“Alright,” Sunny said, turning to him. “Are you ready for the good news or the bad news?”

“Give me a second to catch my breath, first,” he replied.

Sunny nodded, allowing it.

He inhaled deeply one more time before motioning to Sunny. “The bad news is that the tower is at least four days away. It’s almost not worth it to head there.”

Marble blinked. “What? But that’s only thirty miles away, give or take.”

“It looked closer to forty,” she said. “Which takes the average guard about ten hours to cross, which would be split between two days to give time to set up camp. That’s over already explored and clear terrain. We have to fight for every foot in the jungle, which means we have to double that distance at least. Then, that assumes that we can cross the distance like we’re flying, and we don’t need to take detours to get there.”

Marble sighed and deflated.

“The good news is that it’s in the right direction. It’s on our way anyway. We’ll cross it when we get there no matter what.”

“So we should be making our way there?” Marble asked.

“Yes, but chances are we’re not going to get there for another four days. For now, we just need to move, and move quickly and quietly.”

“Alright, sounds like a plan,” he replied with a smile.

Sunny raised an eyebrow. Was that really all it took to get Marble to cooperate? Well, fine then. She’d work with that. “Now, I’m going to rest for a second. Keep an eye out for anything that might want to eat us.”

Surprisingly, that’s precisely what he did, flying up into the air and checking the branches for any kind of monster that might be trailing them.

Sunny, meanwhile, found a rock to sit on for a moment or two before she finally regained her strength. Ten minutes passed by, and she stood. “Come on, we have a few more hours to go until we have to break for camp.”

“About that,” Marble asked, soaring down to meet her. “When you were talking about moving, you said that we’d only spend about five hours marching. Did I understand that right?”

“You did.”

“Why so little?”

“Well,” Sunny began, “for one, we didn’t start moving until about ten-thirty. That doesn’t give us a lot of time to move during the day. More to the point, we need that time in the after to set up a new camp and, more importantly, make sure we find food and water.”

“That’s a lot of time for just finding food and water,” he said.

“Not really, when you consider we need to first find it, then bring it to camp, then cook it, make sure we build a shelter that can keep the rain off of us. Then, after all that, we should have time to actually rest. Which we need, because somepony’s going to have to stay up for another few hours to take the first watch, and then the other one’s going to have to wake up in the middle of the night for the other half. We’re going to be exhausted if we just keep moving.”

Behind her, Marble was silent for a moment. “And you get all this training with the Conservation Committee?”

Sunny smiled to herself. “I learned a few survival tricks from military ponies.”

Which was true. The fact that Celestia learned it from the ancient Pegasopolian Legionnaires was irrelevant.

“Well, I guess it’s good to know that you at least have an idea of what you’re doing.”

“I’m sure it’s very comforting,” she replied, hacking another branch in two.

They continued on, marching through the thick jungle for another few hours before Sunny called a rest. She handed Marble her machete and told him to gather what he could for a simple bedroll before she began setting up her hammock.

Honestly, she couldn’t believe her luck. All of her supplies made it through. She still had everything she packed, and other than saltwater getting in her bags, nothing spilled out. She tied off her hammock and then tied a rope above it. Draping the tarp over the rope, she set up the bare minimum to keep the rain off her as she slept, but it would do, especially after she tied off the lower end to make a slanting edge for everything to slide off.

Marble returned a little later with a large number of palm fronds stuck under his arm. It wouldn’t be the most comfortable place to sleep, but it would do. “Set up a place for you to sleep,” she said, “I’ll go see if I can’t find our food.”

She cast her Perceive Body spell and waited as a wave of magic washed over the land around her, looking for some sign of edible plants. A handful of fruit appeared, along with a single taro root, and Sunny sighed with a frown. She’d have to go looking for more to eat if they wanted to have a decent meal today.

“I’ll be back,” she said, taking out her pot. “Why don’t you try and get a fire going?”

Marble nodded and got to work collecting branches to bundle together for a small fire.

Sunny stuck around just long enough to make sure he didn’t light himself on fire before she slipped into the undergrowth. She picked her way carefully through the dense foliage and found some young palms that she could cut open to get at their hearts inside, along with another taro root and some more fruit.

With dinner tonight found and secured, she continued outward. Spiraling around the camp in a clockwise movement, she always kept the campsite to her right. This, more than anything, helped her keep her sense of direction even as she spiraled in larger and larger turns. Eventually, she found what she was looking for when she came across a shallow pond.

Pulling the water into the air, she collected enough to refill the canteens and use enough for a stew once more, though it looked like they might need to have a thicker stew than usual.

But that was good enough for Sunny.

Chapter 10

Marble took the first watch.

Though, if he was honest with himself, he’d admit that Sunny told him to. She insisted that she spent more energy during the day and that during camp set up, she spent more time securing food and water and could do with going to sleep sooner. Sunny backed it up with the point that she could use magic to see what was going on around them better in the dark, which meant that it would probably be best if the unicorn took the darkest place in the night. The unicorn then followed up with a third point that if she wound up being awake in the morning, she would have a better chance of making breakfast undisturbed, and they can get moving sooner.

Marble tried to argue against it, but then Sunny brought up her best point.

She had a machete, and she was tired.

So Marble took the first watch.

The fire crackled beside him as he sat, watching the darkness for any sign of something to happen.

He sighed.

Well, here he was, stuck in the jungle with a crazy, weirdly competent nutjob of a mare who was going to take him all the way across the wilderness before letting him go back to Equestria. Why she couldn’t just take him back now, he’d never know.

But they were on the way to a Windtower, and that alone might make this whole trip worth it in some strange sort of karmic way. If he had a real chance to study one of the towers and returned with a new finding, then he might be able to fund a whole new expedition...or...whatever.

He shook his head. He really didn’t need to be thinking about this right now, between the ponies that probably died during the storm, and...well, that...he had too many thoughts distracting him. He shouldn’t be thinking about anything other than his own survival.

Why was she bothering him now, anyway? It’d been nearly a year since then, and now she’s starting to distract him when he had his own life on the line? There wasn’t a worse time for this.

He shoved it all away before it could threaten to overwhelm him in a wave of emotions he could feel begin to swirl around him. He couldn’t afford those right now, anyway. He had to worry about being eaten alive right now, and that took precedence over whatever he felt or whatever possible findings he might find.

Besides, if he was eaten, then no one would hear his findings anyway.

He sighed and stared out into the darkness, suppressing a yawn.

He really hoped nothing would eat him tonight.

---☼---

When Marble woke, he blinked away sleep and hated the palm fronds that made the worst bed he ever slept on. He rolled, turning to the side, and stared into the middle of the camp, where Sunny worked on cooking breakfast.

How dare she.

How dare she be so peppy in the morning? Who gave her the right to be a morning pony?

“Since you were complaining yesterday,” Sunny said, noticing his bleary glare, “I’ve made a heartier breakfast. Boiled taro and roasted heart of palm. I hope you like artichoke.”

“Wazztha gotta do wif it?” he muttered, his voice slowly coming back to him.

“That’s what palm hearts taste like,” she replied.

He gave a simple nod and tried to follow along as she prepared a very hearty, not-at-all-breakfast-appropriate meal. Marble crawled out of his bed before reaching into one of his bags for the coconut canteens he filled the previous night and drank until the dryness in his throat passed. He noted with a frown that it took nearly half the canteen to do that, and it was by no means a small coconut.

He sighed, but now that his mouth wasn’t bone dry, he had a much better chance of eating the meal, and he did so in silence.

Sunny, meanwhile, ate her own dish. She ate quickly but...refined somehow. The oddity of it struck the pegasus more than anything else. That was until he bit down on the palm heart.

The fragile yet overpowering taste of artichoke filled his mouth, and he resisted the urge to spit it back up. The disgust must’ve been evident on his face because Sunny smirked. “I told you that it tastes like artichoke.”

He coughed but kept the food down. “Yes, thanks for the warning,” he muttered before turning away to stare into the darkness. He wasn’t going to let that smug little unicorn get away with staring down on him like that.

He ate his food, scooping the palm heart, totally enshrouded and surrounded by the taro root to try and keep the taste off his tongue, into his mouth with gusto. He honestly didn’t have the time to sit about and—

His eye caught some movement.

He blinked and slowly set his bowl down.

Sunny seemed to notice because she called out to him. “What? What do you see?”

He continued to stare into the darkness and could swear he saw something move. Something out there, in the deep, dense jungle, slowly moved from branch to branch. “I don’t know,” he whispered back to the unicorn.

The movement stopped.

They stood quiet for a long, agonizing moment.

“It...it must be gone now,” he said.

Sunny glared into the wilderness for a moment. “Are you sure?”

He waited a moment more. “Yeah, yeah, I think so.”

“Okay,” Sunny replied. “Then let’s finish eating, and then head out. I don’t want whatever that was to follow us.”

He nodded before he followed along and began to take down the camp.

---☼---

The jungle breathed around him.

Marble couldn’t help but think that this was the furthest from any civilization he had ever been. Typically, when he went to investigate old ruins, a team of ponies set up a supply train that would keep the basecamp ready with whatever tools, comforts, or safety they needed.

Up until now, he’d never even considered going into the jungle without a squadron of Royal guards, typically hired by whoever was funding the expedition, to back them up. Now he was here in the middle of the jungle, thousands of miles from anyone who could possibly give him any safety or the illusion of civilization with him. Marble had no camp to fall back on, no guards to protect him, and no comforts of home.

In the camps, the most he and Vanilla ever had to worry about was their cooling unit going on the fritz, leaving them sweltering in the jungle heat.

Now he followed a well-trained madmare who insisted that they needed to worry about zibos and thistle hydras or something like that, and honestly, Marble wasn’t sure what to think about them. Sure, she had an obvious boatload of training. Sunny knew her way around the jungle plants, but this mare also insisted that the Lusitanpec Skull totem was a monument to their fallen, which made no sense.

Why, by Celestia, would an entire nation take their fallen warriors, decapitate them, and then stack their skulls into a massive column that reached into the sky?

So, while Sunny had some frankly surprising competence in dealing with the jungle, she obviously knew nothing about ancient civilizations.

Despite that, she spoke with such authority on both subjects that Marble had to wonder how much of her training was best guesses and lucky bluffs? Did she really know how to make a canteen out of a coconut, or had that been a random attempt at sticking things together that she managed to pull off somehow?

A more terrifying thought popped into Marble’s head. What if, just like everything else, she’d somehow been right about the totem? That by some stroke of terrible luck, she somehow guessed the correct answer, just as a way for the universe to spite him. What would he have done to deserve that?

“Are you paying attention?” Sunny asked from ahead of him as she hacked at the growth that barred their path.

“Yeah, yeah,” he replied, staring down at her before taking a moment to take a pronounced and exaggerated look around at their surroundings.

There was nothing, just like there hadn’t been for hours.

Sure, the little noise this morning had put him on edge, but now two-and-a-half hours into their march, and his nerves unwound back to normalcy. The long stretch of silence and the constant glancing around left Marble with only a single, resonating thought bouncing around in his brain.

Being on watch was a pointless job.

He wasn’t an idiot. Marble knew that there were monsters in the jungle, but it was becoming ever increasingly clear that whatever wanted to chase them could do so without being seen at all. If something attacked them, they’d all be dead in a few seconds. Sure, he might be able to take something head-on if he had a weapon or a warning, but if one of those things ambushed them, he’d have no chance.

“Are you sure you’re checking the trees?” Sunny asked.

“Yes, I’m checking the trees,” he replied in a deadpan.

The giant, shadowy trees that betrayed no movement, no light, and certainly no would-be ambushers stood over him, where he could see nothing. Certainly not in time to save their lives if it came down to it.

He sighed as he continued flying.

This was a pointless job.

This was a pointless trip.

Sure, Sunny knew what plants would keep them fed instead of dying from who knows what kind of poison, but there was no way she would actually get them both out of this. They weren’t going to make it, and that was—

“Zorb!”

The cry nearly made Marble jump out of his skin, and he spun in a flash just in time to see a hairy, tiny, ursine creature with skin that looked like wood.

He shot into the air by instinct, but his mind already registered that it was too late. The monster would hit him anyway, and then he’d be—

A golden aura of magic surrounded the beast and slammed him to the ground.

Marble blinked before looking down at Sunny, whose horn was ablaze with power.

Before he could relax, though, another two dozen of the creatures leaped down from the trees, all roaring the word “Zorb!” at the top of their lungs. Marble shot back and forth through the air, narrowly dodging the incoming creatures as they all hit the ground.

They surrounded Sunny in an instant, and she answered with magic. Rocks tore out of the ground and swirled around her in a defensive ring. One of the red-haired monsters attacked, and stone slammed into it from the side before three more pummeled it, sending up a cloud of dust with every hit.

Marble hovered over them, watching them as the monsters tried to attack Sunny, who shot stones at dizzying speeds. Every hit against the monsters sent up another cloud of dust, but even with the rocks spinning around her so fast they began to blur, the bear-things threatened to get closer still.

One stepped up behind her, and the blur of stones shaved the hair off of the beast’s face, revealing stone-like skin beneath which chipped under pressure. The monster went spinning on its feet, but even Marble could see the stone she used shattered to dust under the attack.

“Marble!” Sunny roared. “Help!”

“How?” he asked.

“Get them off the ground!” she yelled before launching herself into the air. She landed hard before dropping the stones and pulling a giant club of rock out of the earth. The club hovered in the air, made of rough rocks that seemed barely held together, but Sunny didn’t seem to care before she slammed it into one of the monsters.

Something cracked, and a chunk of stone fell off the club, but the monster she crushed lay still.

Marble glanced around at them all before he shrugged. “Okay,” he said to himself before diving down onto one of the beasts. He tore it off the ground and felt the rock-like skin beneath the red fur. He raised it up into the air and then felt...he felt...the skin change. The thick, stony hide of the beast transformed into soft, tender flesh in his hooves.

“Pull!” Sunny yelled below her, and Marble looked down just in time to see Sunny firing a stone at terrifying speeds up at him.

He yelped and dropped the monster before the rock tore through the beast with ease.

Marble blinked as the monster fell, dead. His mind both raced and gaped simultaneously. Somehow the beast’s armored hide fell away and became soft. It had to be...it had to be some kind of magic that it had.

Sunny smashed her club against another one of the beasts, and again the stones in it broke. She threw the last few pieces into the twenty remaining monsters before pulling a wall from the ground. With her magic, she shoved the wall forward, pushing the monsters back and uprooting trees in its wake.

“Marble!” she yelled again. “Stop wasting time and pick up another one. They’re easier to stop in the air!”

He blinked again before shaking his head.

“Come on, Marble!” he mentally yelled. “You’re better than this!”

He dove into the monsters, picking up another one after it leaped out of the way of the wall. Again he felt the creature’s skin transform under his grip before he began to pick up speed. The monster tried to grab at him, but Marble moved quickly before throwing the beast into a large branch.

He heard something crack as he flew by before the monster began to fall, spinning to the ground.

Marble fellow up into the branches before he spun his body around. His legs came up, hit wood, and then he kicked himself back down in a dive. He pulled up just over one of their heads and brought his hoof around to slam it into them, only for his leg to scream in pain. It felt like he just kicked a rock.

“Get them off the ground!” Sunny yelled.

Marble grit his teeth and turned before he dove again, picking up another one of the creatures. His leg howled in pain, and Marble hissed before he began to turn. If it hurt him this much, it might damage the one in her arms more.

He dived low again and slammed the monster into another one, and he saw the one he carried slam and shatter into the one on the ground.

Yes, he had these things figured out now.

Sunny continued fighting below him, keeping them at bay with more stones and rocks she pulled from the ground. They weathered her attacks like bastions, but Marble had a plan now. He launched downward, landing just behind one of the monsters before he threw in an uppercut into the thing’s back.

His hoof struck thick, stony hide, and the monster did little more than stumble forward. That was the only opening he needed, though, as Marble leaned forward and grabbed the beast before rolling onto his back. He pulled the thing with him, off the ground and into the air.

Sunny answered with a rock, tearing the monster off of Marble’s hooves and into the air. The rest of the monsters cried out and began to retreat suddenly.

They screeched and roared before filing into the jungle.

Then, before the both of them knew it, they heard nothing but the roar of the wilderness.

“Good to know you can actually defend yourself,” Sunny mumbled as she dropped the stone around her. She sat down for a second and began feeling down the length of her hind leg. “I almost thought I had to fight them all on my own.”

“I’m sorry,” he said before he felt his face flush. “They surprised me, is all.”

“That’s why you’re on watch,” she said. “Okay, I don’t think anything’s broken. Are you hurt?”

“My leg’s throbbing,” he said. “But I think it’s okay. I can stay off of it for a while.”

Sunny nodded.

“What were those?” Marble asked.

“Those are Zorbos,” she replied. “Pack hunters, the real danger in them is how they take on the aspects of whatever surface they’re on. When they all come at you from the ground, they can easily overwhelm and surround you.”

Marble nodded. “So why’d they all run off?”

“You hit the alpha,” Sunny explained. “With it dead, the pack needed to decide who leads it before they do anything else. I will say that you picked a good target if nothing else.”

Marble blinked and nodded before something struck him. “Is that why they’re called ‘Zorbos?’ Because they absorb whatever’s around them?”

Sunny glanced up at him, a smile on her lips. “No, they’re called Zorbos because they scream ‘zorb.’ Good guess, though.”

Marble frowned.

Sunny smirked. “Come on, let’s get going. We’ve lost enough time today already, and as much as I hate to admit it, this bruise on my leg might slow us down. We’ll need to try and make up the time tonight, so let’s go. And keep watch, alright?”

Marble nodded. “Okay, okay,” he muttered before taking off into the air again.

The unicorn began moving forward, and Marble fell in behind her with a sigh.

In retrospect, he might have been a little hard on watch duty. Sure, he still wouldn’t necessarily be able able to fully defend himself. Still, if Sunny could back him up, she might be able to buy him an extra second or two, then he could actually use all his fighting skills instead of gaping like an idiot the entire fight.

“Did a great job there, Marble,” he said to himself, “You stood there for a good three seconds before you actually did anything, and once you moved, you only really managed to hurt your own leg! You’d never know that Vanilla used to count on you to defend her against whatever was living in those temples.”

Marble sighed and followed behind, leaving a clearing with the pitted ground and bloodstains as the only sign of the fight.

Chapter 11

“Last time on Dive into the Sapphire Depths!” Ivory proclaimed as she sat at the head of the table. “The party met up for the first time and signed up as members of the Adventurer’s Guild. As a part of the paperwork, and a bit of pushing from Dreadmane—”

“I have no regrets,” Luna replied.

“You named yourselves the Shadewalkers and earned your first mission for the town, to scout out the entrance of the eponymous Sapphire Depths.”

“I still think our name is a little too edgy,” Platinum muttered.

“I doubled down,” Luna said in her defense. “If being ‘edgy’ as it is called is a style, then I shall embrace it.”

“Being edgy is—”

“Hey, hey,” Rolling interrupted. “We had this conversation. We’ve talked about it, and we’re moving on. The five of you find yourselves standing outside the sapphire-encrusted cave entrance in the shadow of the mysterious tower, holding your various weapons and tools.”

“I still think we should hire some minions to start setting up a base camp,” Sundance said.

“And I say, Miss Abyssinian, why would we do that?” Ivory asked as her griffon paladin. “We’re only here to scout out the entrance.”

Sundance glanced at her. “First,” he said, speaking in a soft, Manehatten-accented, slightly sleazy-sounding voice, “the name is Luckstep, remember it. Second, you can’t tell me that the town isn’t going to try and make sure we stay here forever after what happened in—”

“We said we wouldn’t discuss that.”

Sundance lifted his hooves in surrender. “Regardless, they see this as a chance to get rid of us just as much as anything else. Mark my words, they’ll keep sending us back here just to keep us out of their hair.”

“I’m sure.”

Luna smiled before she pulled Caramel aside. “What does thou think they speak of?” She asked in Dreadmane’s voice.

Caramel glanced at the other two ponies across the table. “The choirboys?” he asked.

“One of them is female.”

“If you’re a choirboy, you’re a choirboy,” Caramel said as Shadesong. “And who knows what they’re talking about. Could be going on about how the stars don’t align or whatever they believe in Abyssinia.”

“Perhaps,” Luna replied, still in character. “Truth is, however, that I wish to know if they are going to take this dive into the caverns seriously. As thou say, they seem to be in their own world when it comes to our current situation. I simply hope they are as ready as we are.”

Caramel nodded. “I can agree with you on that. In my experience, anycreature too obsessed with gods and their faiths can be a little unreliable.”

Luna raised an eyebrow before narrating. “Dreadmane says nothing as thee say so, but eventually, she nods and steps away.”

Caramel smirked. “Shadesong shakes his head as you go and mutters something.”

Rolling turned to Platinum. “What’s Brightflame doing during this time?”

“Reading, probably,” Platinum said. “It looks really weird too because he’s reading a lot of pony books, so they are tiny in his massive minotaur hands.”

Luna smiled as the party eased back into the game. Tonight was going to be fun.

She closed her eyes, released a breath, and smiled as she imagined what Dreadmane had to be seeing right now.

---☼---

Dreadmane stood at the mouth of the sapphire cavern and blinked. The sunlight reflected off the blue gemstones into her eyes, making it difficult to see, and made it nearly impossible to pierce the cave’s darkness.

It always got in her eyes.

The mare with a coat as black as raven’s omen turned to see the other members of her little party surrounding her. Shadesong, the navy-blue pegasus that nearly stuck to any surface he came across, stayed low to the ground as he approached Hercule the griffon and Luckstep, the Abyssinian. Luckstep herself slowly paced across the small clearing in front of the cave, already planning out the campsite that she insisted would be the best thing to build. Hercule watched and listened as the feline continued on about the various pros and cons of a camp, but even Dreadmane could tell that he was attempting to be polite.

Dreadmane didn’t have the patience to be polite. She had more important things to do, like slay whatever evil lay in that cavern, get paid, and return to the tavern for more booze, wenches, and swains. The mare with a mane as white as death’s smiling face turned to the minotaur reading beneath the shade of the trees and approached. The giant creature didn’t even notice her until Dreadmane was nearly upon him. “Minotaur,” she called, addressing him with all the grace of a great club, “dost thou know the ways of the ancients, the ways of the unicorn mages?”

The minotaur blinked. “I-I do,” he said, his voice soft. “I, uh, was using spells during… ‘the incident.’”

“I remember. Have thee any knowledge on the secrets of the cavern?”

“Um...maybe?” he said, pushing a pair of massive glasses up his snout. “I can’t say what’s for sure in there, but if my mentor’s theories are correct, there might be a high-concentration of magic-reactive crystals that—”

“Then let us not waste any more time,” she replied before she marched to the cavern entrance.

Brightflame shot up. “Wait, are you going now?” he asked.

The mare with a horn that brought death to thousands—

---☼---

“You’re level two, Luna. Calm down,” Rolling said.

---☼---

The mare with a horn that brought death to hundreds—

---☼---

“Level two,” Rolling said.

---☼---

—brought death to a few dozen in border skirmishes with opposing tribes that gave her enough proficiency with her various weapons, but otherwise was not noteworthy in any way pushed toward the cavern entrance with purpose. She didn’t bother looking back as she heard Brightflame scramble after her.

“Aren’t we going to wait for the others?” Brightflame asked nervously as he glanced down at her.

“They’ll follow along,” she replied. “I doubt that they’ll let us get whatever treasure lies in there without at least trying to follow along.”

Brightflame hesitated.

“Dost thou not wish to study these gems? I imagine that they could create powerful magical items.”

Brightflame chewed his lip. “You’re...not wrong.”

“I know I’m not. The Abyssinian and the griffon are wasting their time talking about setting up a camp, even though we have no money to do so. They’re content to sit and talk about that for a few minutes, but we have more important things to do now.”

“Okay,” the minotaur said before glancing around. “But just the two of us?”

“We might need the pegasus heathen,” the mare who suffered a thousand deaths remarked.

“He’s a heathen?”

“That’s how it seems, but that matters not. If thou could bring the pegasus here, we can probably get started enough for the other two to actually begin moving.”

“Okay,” Brightflame said before glancing back at the pony that looked like he was trying to sink into the ground. “How do I bring him over.”

Dreadmane blinked as she looked up at him. “Thou art a minotaur. Pick him up and carry him. He’s not going to be able to do much about it.”

Brightflame opened his mouth before closing it and glancing back at Shadesong before he nodded. “I...I suppose I can do that.”

The mare whose cutie mark was colored by the blood of those she loved watched as the minotaur slipped away. Despite her suggestion, Brightflame did not simply pick up the thief but merely spoke with him, whispering words under his breath that only Shadesong could hear.

Not long after, the two made their way back, and Dreadmane smirked before she called out to the other two members of the party. “We are going in!”

Both Luckstep and Hercule glanced up just in time to see them disappear into the cavern.

Dreadmane smiled. “They looked so surprised.”

The cave narrowed as they moved in, but the crystals seemed to shimmer with a dim, blue light despite that. Before long, the three of them found themselves nearly single file in the near darkness.

Dreadmane drew her greatsword, and the blade nearly shone white in whatever reflected light it could catch.

“I do not like this,” Shadesong whispered. “I’m going to try and scout ahead, see if there’s any sign of something going on.”

Dreadmane nodded and motioned him forward before she heard the clinking of armor from behind them.

“I say, what are you doing?” Hercule asked.

“Are you crazy?” Luckstep asked. “We hadn’t set up a base of operations yet! By the Paw, you ponies know better than this, don’t you?”

“You weren’t moving,” Dreadmane replied. “We do not have the time to sit by and let the moon rise without some offering to give the lady of the evening.”

---☼---

“I still think it’s super weird that you decided to be your own god,” Ivory said.

“Thou say so,” Luna said with a smirk, “however, I, as an authority on what Luna would know and feel, can say for certain if certain efforts of divine intervention would be approved.”

“You get one,” Rolling said. “I don’t care if you’re literally the goddess in the book and in the world. You’re only getting one of those. If you were cleric, maybe, but you’re not even a zealot yet.”

“As we agreed,” Luna said, smiling the whole while.

“Regardless, you are speaking Hercule’s language,” Ivory said.

---☼---

“Perhaps that may be the case, but I say that rushing into the entrance doesn’t seem to be a better course of action.”

“Besides, setting up a base camp is essential for return trips. You need supply lines to establish long-term adventuring and—

“There’s something up ahead.” Shadesong’s voice whispered from ahead of them.

They all spun to the source of the voice before finally finding Shadesong hiding by the various rocks and crystals.

“What did you find?” Dreadmane asked, being the first to recover.

“There are several tunnels that are bored into the walls. Something’s in the walls, and it might know we’re here.”

Dreadmane grinned. “Then we might as well prepare ourselves.”

Hercule drew his own blade, followed by Luckstep preparing her hand ax. Brightflame fumbled as he hastily grabbed his spellbook and wand while Shadesong readied the knives he hid in his wings.

“How do we want to spring the trap?” Dreadmane asked. “Do we want to try and outsmart them, or…?”

“If they have the numbers, then I say that splitting up will only have us surrounded on multiple fronts. We should stay together.”

Nopony else responded.

“Then together we go.”

They moved forward, creeping best they could, though Hercule’s mail armor clinked and chinked with every step the griffon took. Shadesong pointed out the holes first, half as tall as a pony and about as wide. They’d be difficult to fit through, despite that none of the party lowered their weapons. They knew better.

A net of chains dropped from above them, and monsters squealed as they began rushing them from the tunnels. Brightflame panicked and cast a spell at the first thing that popped out of the tunnel, and four magical bolts of energy slammed into a small, reptilian bipedal creature that nearly blew apart under the attack.

More of the monsters flooded the room, squeaking and squealing as they raised spears. They roared in victory as they pierced hide, and Brightflame took a blow to his gut that left him doubled over.

Shadesong attacked the monsters, but the net kept him pinned, and his attacks uselessly flailed in the air.

Dreadmane decided that she’d have to do something drastic. “In Luna’s name!” she roared as her vision went red, and she charged forward. She tore the net off the others, still tangled in the chains as she rushed down the hall, turning into a battering ram against the monsters.

They turned and ran, rushing out of the way of the mare that had become the storm.

Luckstep raised a paw to Brightflame, and healing magic began knitting the flesh back together under her touch while Hercule stood tall in front of the monsters. “Now, I say, that is not proper behavior.”

The griffon brought his sword down in a single, powerful swing and bisected the creature.

The remaining creatures screeched in fear, and one began to break before the others in the party recovered.

Brightflame unleashed a cone of fire, burning the monsters into burnt husks. A handful of the screeching reptiles tried to attack again, stabbing with spears. Or course, now freed from the net, the party managed to defend themselves better, while the monsters in the back all attacked the still-bound form of Dreadmane, but while their spars stabbed into the mane, she seemed to shrug them off.

Shadesong moved next. He slashed at the monster closest to him with one of his knives, digging the blade into its neck, just above the collar bone. Tearing the dagger away, he rushed down toward Dreadmane and stabbed another one of the beasts before he tried to rip it off of the chained-up mare.

The mare who knew death like a brother stood beneath the net and began swinging her own greatsword in terrible, reckless arcs, and the razor-sharp blade split the reptilian ambushers with ease.

Luckstep turned and cast another spell, and another one of them dropped to the ground grasping his head as whatever the cleric cast took hold.

Hercule ended the fight with another single attack, separating the head from the last monster, and the room quickly grew quiet.

“How’s everyone doing?” Luckstep asked.

“I’m... I’m going to be okay,” Brightflame said.

“Dreadmane?” the feline priest asked.

Still gritting her teeth, she took a deep sigh and let her rage fall away. “I will be fine. They did little to stop me.”

“Sorry I wasn’t able to grab the net off of you,” Shadesong said. “I’ve been working on getting faster, but it’ll take a while.”

---☼---

“What dost thou mean by that?” Luna asked.

“When we hit third level, I’m going to take the thief subclass,” Caramel responded. “I’ll be able to use an object as a bonus action, and Rolling ruled that things like putting a fire out or removing a net off yourself or somepony else would count as using an object. It makes the thief a really powerful support role, and I wanted to try that out.”

“I see,” Luna said. “So Shadesong should be able to remove something like the net with ease and let Dreadmare better focus on her attacks.”

He nodded.

Luna smiled wide. “This is good to know.”

“Okay, okay,” Rolling said. “You can strategize when you want, but right now, you need to get to level three, and considering I did enough damage to you to kill one of the other players, you might need to worry.”

“I thought thee said I only took ten damage?” Luna asked.

“I halved your damage for you since you were raging.”

Luna’s eyes went wide. “Oh.”

Ivory snickered, and Luna glanced at her before turning back to the table. “Well, then, um...Dreadmane then proceeds to cough up some blood because she is far more hurt than I thought.”

Sundance shook his head. “I cast cure wounds on you for...eight damage.”

“Thank you,” she said before marking her hit points on her sheet.

Rolling glanced up at the alicorn. “For the record, for the first few levels, I keep track of when you have resistances and give you half damage for new players. Would you prefer it if I let you keep track of that? It means you’re responsible if you forget.”

“I shall manage, thank you,” she replied.

“Okay,” Rolling said before making her own note. “So, you continue forward, traveling down the long hallway.”

“I scout ahead again,” Caramel said. “I head down the hallway before letting the others know to hang on, waiting for me to come back.”

Rolling nodded. “Stealth check, please.”

“Natural eighteen for a twenty-seven.”

Rolling looked up at him. “Are you sure you’re level two?” she asked.

“I’m a rogue,” he replied as his only defense.

Rolling sighed. “You continued forward into a new room. Again, the stone is rough cut and pitted, with natural sapphire-like crystals poking into the room at awkward angles. Tunnels dive into the uneven stone, a sign of even more of the strange reptilian monsters that—”

“They’re kobolds,” Caramel said.

“Well, of course, they’re kobolds,” Rolling said, “but—”

“Are you going to tell me that my character has never even heard of a kobold before?” Caramel asked.

“We have a new player here,” Rolling said. “This is the chance to present all these things with a new sense of mystery and wonder.”

“I…,” Luna began, “I knew they were kobolds.”

“You did?” Rolling ask. “Did you read the bestiary too?”

“Oh, no,” Luna replied. “However, thou must remember that I was around when the stories of goblins were used as ghost stories, and morality plays. I am surprised that they grew scales in these later years. Normally they had been described as having hair that smelled of onions.”

She smiled as she looked over at Rolling, pleased that something finally wandered into her area of expertise.

“Um,” Caramel said. “Luna…”

“Yes?”

“Kobolds and goblins are different things.”

Luna blinked before slowly turning to face the unicorn. “Pardon?”

“While etymologically, they started as meaning the same thing, the words slowly began to mean two different creatures. ‘Goblin’ became the word we used to describe the green, hairy creature that you’re more familiar with, while ‘kobold’ became the word to describe the similar but distinctly draconic creature of griffonian folk-lore.”

Luna blinked, and sighed. “Wonderful, I can’t even be right about history anymore. It’s not as though I have much else to be an expert on.”

“It’s alright,” Caramel said. “The differentiation is mostly because of the game.”

Luna sighed. “Ah, well. It’s not the first time I’ve realized things have changed. Are ye aware of the time I tried to abolish Nightmare Night?”

Ivory blinked as she glanced across the table. “But that’s your holiday.”

“It’s complicated,” Luna said.

“Complicated enough that we can wait until after the game?” Rolling asked.

“That...that is fair. Onward, master of games, thou wert describing the new room.”

Chapter 12

Sunny sighed.

The past three days had been rough, but they made it. They pushed their way through the thick foliage and weathered another, a much smaller zorbo attack. Only two of the koala-like carnivores managed to cross their paths, and they scared them off without much difficulty.

Though it did worry her that they crossed a pack of only two creatures, she didn’t complain about the far-more manageable fight with only two zorbos. Now, with the fourth day of their journey nearly ending, they were finally approaching the windtower.

The giant Lusitanpec structure towered over them and the canopy of the trees around it. Marble and Sunny were close enough to make it to the base if they pushed for another hour or so, but Sunny already figured they might need to move through an afternoon to get there. With that in mind, she spent even more of her time foraging the night before and found enough food to feed them tonight as well.

Assuming they could use the tower to camp in, they could make up the resting time while only needing to reinforce a spot or two in the building. The work from the day before would pay off tonight, and they could rest in something more sturdy than a lean-to of wood and leaves.

“Well, Marble, here we are,” she finally said as they walked onto the landing of cut stone that the jungle tried to reclaim with vines and roots.

The pegasus stared up at it with barely restrained glee. “I can’t believe we found one!” he said. “I wish I knew where we were so I could properly mark this place down in our map of Lusitanpec borders.”

Sunny resisted the urge to correct him. Form her guess, they were already deep into the Lusitanpec territory. Still, Marble already made it clear that he didn’t want her help in history lessons, so she kept her knowledge to herself.

She led him into the tower’s antechamber, which yawned above them into a domed ceiling marked with winged, snake-like creatures that Celestia recognized as simple depictions of couatls.

She glanced over at Marble, who appeared giddy for all intents and purposes. The pegasus flew up to the dome and nearly cooed as he traced over the carvings with his hooves. “Look at this!” he whispered in awe. “Their condition is exquisite! They look practically untouched! We must have found a completely unspoiled tower! Just imagine what we can find here!”

Sunny smiled despite herself and shook her head at his surprisingly contagious enthusiasm. “I imagine we might find a lot,” she said before turning his attention back to the area around her. The antechamber didn’t offer her a good place to rest, but its excellent condition meant something should have been living here at least. It would have made a lovely den for a panther, jaguar, or thessalhydras. Something should be living there, but Sunny saw no sign of spoor or other marks of territory. Nothing was living here, but there should have been.

The disguised alicorn glanced around the large chamber and found two doors, one on each side of the room. “Keep an eye out for anything suspicious,” she said. “I’m going to look around for a good place to set up camp.”

“You’re going exploring?” he asked.

“I’m looking for a place to camp,” she replied. “I’m trying to make sure the place is safe so we can camp properly.”

“I’m going with you!” Marble said.

“What?” she asked.

“I’m going with you! If you’re going to explore an untouched Windtower, I want to go with you.”

Sunny sighed. “Fine, come on.”

They took the right-handed door first and began climbing the stairs. Sunny took deep breaths as they went up, trying to keep her muscles relaxed if something attacked. She could grab the stone around her to use as a weapon, but that might weaken the wall’s integrity around her. The plant life wasn’t as thick up here, either, so using vine whips or something similar wouldn’t be a good idea either, the higher magic cost notwithstanding.

She might have to use her drinking water as a weapon. Unfortunately, that meant she might wind up spending hours trying to clean her water, and she still needed to actually rest tonight. Then again, she did have her machete, which would not be quite as effective, but it might just hit the middle spot of not being a pain no matter what she did.

Beggars couldn’t be choosers, she supposed.

She halfway opened the lid to her canteen and continued their climb.

“There’s a room up ahead,” Marble said.

“I see it,” she replied.

Sunny continued up the stairs before she finally made her way up to the double doors. She raised a hoof to open the door, almost without thinking and—

“Wait!”

Marble’s sudden cry rang in her ear as she slowly turned to him. “Yes?” she asked calmly, even though she knew that Celestia’s furious glare was peeking through.

“The door’s trapped,” he replied.

Sunny glanced at him. “What?”

“The door’s trapped, the left one,” he replied simply.

“The door’s trapped?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“How do you know that?”

“That symbol right there,” he said, pointing to his wing at a pony skull with eyes surrounding it. Less than half the size of Sunny’s hoof, the little carving sat underneath a primitive doorknob, nearly impossible to see. “That is Milchetcli, Lusitanpec goddess of death.”

“That one is the goddess of death?” Sunny asked. “What about that one?”

“That one’s just a skull. You can tell because the skull’s wearing a necklace of eyeballs.”

Sunny glanced at him when he said that. Sure, Celestia was vaguely familiar with dozens of pantheons she outlasted, but to represent a goddess with a skull, when that was already a massive cultural throughline in basically every piece of art they ever produced.

That’s hyperbole, inner Celestia noted.

“More than half of their art,” she corrected herself.

Fair enough.

The point was, it seemed strange that they represent such an important figure as a deity with a symbol that wound up being so common that they needed to specify it with something else.

“Okay,” Sunny said. “Why does that make it a mark of a trap?”

“Milchetcli typically marks domains of the dead,” he said, motioning Sunny to step back.

She relented.

Marble glanced down at the door and the grinning skull of the death goddess. “They’re her domain, after all, but according to current findings, we believe that she metaphorically stood at the gates of the underworld. In fact, we’ve typically found images of her in front of graveyards and such. The working theory then is that she’s always posted at doorways that lead to death.”

“So you’re assuming that this door leads to death?” she asked.

He nodded before he stepped to the side before pushing the door open. It swung a whole foot open before he stopped. “There’s some resistance there,” he said. “Can you push the door the rest of the way with magic?”

She raised an eyebrow but nonetheless took the door in her magic. The door swung an inch further, and something clicked. A dart flew through the air, snapping against the stone of the other door.

Marble was on it in a second and picked up the tiny needle. He held up his hoof to it and frowned. “Poison. Freshly applied.”

He glanced at the door. “Can you close the door and open it again?” he asked.

Sunny, still raising an eyebrow, did what he asked. She closed the left-hand door before opening it again, and again the door opened a foot wide before it clicked and fired another dart.

Marble picked that up and examined it as well. “Also wet. Fascinating. It not only has a reloading mechanism, but I can only assume that they have a mechanism to actively poison the darts.”

While he continued on, Sunny’s inner Celestia spoke up. “You would have totally had to cheat if he hadn’t stopped you just then.”

What?

“You would have walked right into the dart, and you would have been poisoned. Then you would have had to cheat to stop the poison in time, and then you’d have to explain that Marble.”

That was unfair. Sunny could probably counteract poison with a control body spell. It certainly fell under the purview of that branch of magic.

“It just takes more time,” her inner Celestia smugly noted. “The poisons on traps, though, tend to act very fast. You know that.”

Sunny mentally glanced at her inner Celestia. “Whose side are you even on?”

“Go ahead and close the door,” Marble said.

Sunny did so, and the pegasus glanced at the right door. “This one isn’t marked with anything. It might be safe, but we should try to be more careful. We don’t know what else could be trapped.”

Sunny opened the right-handed door, and nothing clicked or shot out to kill them. She glanced over to Marble, who made another check at the door before Sunny decided to retake the lead.

The room appeared empty, much like the antechamber, though stone benches marked this room as a place to rest. An old firepit spoke of meals cooked here by whoever operated this tower.

“I think we can rest here,” Sunny said.

“Great, can we start setting up?”

“Not yet,” Sunny said. “We need to make sure that there’s nothing else living in the tower. I don’t want to go to sleep if there’s something still behind us.”

“That’s fair enough,” Marble said.

Avoiding the trapped door, they continued up the stairs before they found themselves reaching another door, with a set of stairs heading back down just opposite them. “That probably leads back down to the antechamber,” she said.

“So what’s in there?” Marble asked, pointing to the stone doors.

“Don’t know yet. Why don’t you check it for traps?”

Marble nodded and began checking the entire door for any esoteric signs that might reveal that it’s trapped. Meanwhile, Sunny glanced down the other set of stairs. If the tower’s architecture wound up being symmetrical, then there had to be another door down there on the other side of the building, midway down these stairs.

Then again, if the tower was built symmetrically, then they should have already crossed the stairs once before. Did the stairs strangely double-back in the stone? Did the stairs on the other side of the tower bend around weirdly?

“The door doesn’t look trapped,” Marble finally said.

“Good,” she replied before she turned to face the doors. “I’ll open them,” she said, before adding as an afterthought, “with my magic, just in case.”

Marble nodded, smiling from ear to ear.

“What are you smiling about?” Sunny asked, glancing at him.

“Oh, it’s just that the tower is in great condition. If we manage to get a team of archeologists here from the university, we might be able to actually learn—”

Sunny pushed the doors open, and they quickly realized that their initial assumption that the tower had been untouched was wrong. Someone had been here, and they had sacked the room.

---☼---

Marble felt his mouth drop open.

Who did this? Why would anyone do this?

Lusitanpec books, complex characters carefully painted on pressed wood bark had been scattered and stepped on. Ancient stone chests had been shattered open, and their contents were stolen. A strange podium, attached to a machine whose purpose might have been speculated, lay in pieces.

Everything had been torn to shreds.

“Wh-who…? Why?”

Sunny wandered in from behind him. The unicorn stepped inside and glanced at the room before picking up one of the books.

Thin wooden pages slipped out of the broken spine as she glanced at the cover. “Somepony’s been here.”

Marble turned to her as though she said the most obvious thing in the world.

She didn’t turn to face him, and his glare went unnoticed. “This book is burned, so it couldn’t have been an animal or anything.”

Marble blinked. An animal hadn’t even crossed his mind. He dropped the look on his face when he realized that it could have been a possibility before Sunny’s following words caught his full attention.

“What’s more, they didn’t care about money.”

“What?” Marble asked. “How do you know that?”

“Between private collectors, universities, and researchers, anyone trying to make money could just sell these artifacts to any number of ponies. These were just trampled underhoof.”

Marble blinked.

“So the question is, what did they actually want?” Sunny muttered before his eyes turned to the chest.

Marble followed her gaze to the shattered container.

The unicorn approached the open chest and glanced down into it, where nothing remained. “I don’t know what I expected to find.”

“That’s why we won’t find it in the chest,” Sunny’s voice called, and Marble turned to see her picking through the stone and wooden machinery that lay scattered around the podium. “What I want to know is what was so important about this machinery that whoever came here had to destroy it. Or, possibly, what they took from it?”

Marble glanced up at it.

Sunny looked over at him for a moment. “Anything in your books that might explain this?”

“No,” he replied. “At least I have no way of knowing without seeing it in one piece, and even then, we don’t have a lot on Lusitanpec machinery.”

A comment about how she would surely know bubbled up to his lips before he shoved it back down. He didn’t need to keep bringing up her little “theory” about the totem here. In fact, he should probably let this slide. She just proved that she could figure out more about this room than he could with her...educated guesses.

Just like the totem was an educational guess, huh?

Maybe...maybe her hypotheses here were also wildly inaccurate here. Perhaps they did just want money, and they had just been careless.

“Maybe that was a spell gem?” Marble asked. “That might be why they were here, to steal the gem?”

Sunny frowned. “That could have been it. There would be fewer buyers for a pre-matrixed gem,” despite that, she shook her head. “This doesn’t seem right, though. It doesn’t…make sense…” she whispered the last words before she circled the podium.

“Of course, because I can’t ever be right, can I?” Marble thought with a bitter frown.

Marble turned back to the chest and began searching in earnest. If he found something, some kind of sign that the chest held something valuable enough to sell, then that might work, but he wasn’t sure—

“Well, well,” Sunny said behind him. “This might be something we need to hold onto.”

Marble turned to her. “That’s thievery.”

“Sure,” Sunny replied, as she held up something in her magic, “but we’re trying to survive.”

“What is it?” Marble asked.

“A dagger,” she replied. “Which you’ll probably need if you’re going to make it across the jungle.”

“What?”

“We’re in the middle of the jungle, and we’ve already been attacked several times. I can use magic, and while I can hand you my machete, I’ll normally be using it, and if an emergency happens, we might not have the time.”

“So you’ll hand me a knife?”

“A magic one,” she told him.

“How do you know?”

“The giant gemstone is a bit of a giveaway,” Sunny replied.

He glanced at the dagger, which looked like it had been built with a long handle to accommodate hooves instead of wings or horns. The cut onyx gemstone glimmered with light that seemed to originate in its depths. The blade itself seemed to be… “Is...is that a tooth?”

“That’s what it looks like,” Sunny said. “Vampiric Flying Fox fang, if I were to guess.”

“Pardon?”

“You know vampire fruit bats?” Sunny asked.

“Yes,” Marble answered, concerned.

“Imagine one of those, but they drink blood, and, well…” she motioned to the dagger blade made from a tooth, “they’re big enough to make daggers out of their fangs.”

“Vampiric flying fox?” Marble asked, trying the words on his tongue.

“Calling them bats made them sound too small,” she replied.

“Foxes aren’t that big either!”

“It was a close approximation,” she replied. “The other option was calling them actual vampires and causing a country-wide panic. Not that it helped. They’re nearly extinct today anyway.”

Marble blinked.

“So I’ve read at least,” Sunny said quickly. “The Conservation Committee has some comprehensive records.”

“Okay…” Marble said before turning back to the dagger. “So, do you know what it does?”

“Not a clue,” Sunny admitted. “I don’t know the magic identification spells.”

“But you’re sure it’s magic?” he asked.

“I can’t confirm it with a spell, but I’m fairly certain. Gemstones don’t normally glow like that when they’re unenchanted.”

“No idea what it does, though?”

“Nope. You’ll have to figure that out.”

Marble stared down at it.

“When you get back to civilization, you can turn it into the Canterlot University. The chances of you breaking it are minimal, and you might as well use it to stay alive while you’re trying.”

Marble sighed and took the dagger. “Here’s to hoping.”

“You’ll be fine. Come on, we need to make sure the rest of the tower is secure.”

Sunny continued on, leading Marble down the other set of stairs, which moved down the tower in an unbroken line without doubling back. They did find another room, on the opposite side of the structure, and it, too, proved empty except for some long-rotted away spears, though Marble did note that they had metal spearheads.

That wasn’t too surprising. Iron goods were traded late in the life of the various kingdoms. The fact that they were left behind seemed stranger than anything else.

Sunny picked through them for anything she could use but left empty-handed despite her effort.

Finally, they returned to the resting room, and Sunny began setting up her hammock in the room before she checked the light outside. “I’m going to get some firewood before it gets too dark to see. Go ahead and eat, drink, and get ready to stand watch. I’ll be back soon.”

Marble let her go and shook his head.

There went the mare that was always right, and he had to be stuck with her.

Chapter 13

“What dost thou mean orcs and goblins are different things?” Luna asked.

Today was the third session. The others had a day open, and Luna made it perfectly clear she had nothing else going on as she was retired. So, everypony gathered together at lunch, their sheets and dice ready to go, as they talked over sandwiches.

And then Luna asked why the goblins of the second level weren’t of the same tribe as the goblins further in.

Notes were rushed through, and an argument quickly broke out as everypony tried to make it perfectly clear that this wasn’t actually the case, and Caramel returned from the restroom just in time to hear the Lady exclaim that final line.

“Caramel!” she called as she watched him come back into the room. “Dost thou know the meaning behind this trickery?”

The unicorn barista sighed. “It’s the same reason kobolds and goblins are different, but focusing more on the game design element.”

“But they are the same thing!”

“Not according to the game, which is the more important thing, considering that’s what we’re playing.”

Luna sighed. “What has the world come to?”

Caramel smirked. “There, there, you ancient relic, you’ll survive,” he said.

Luna glared at him. “I can still send thee to the moon. I hope thou art aware. Celestia needed the Elements of Harmony, but I can just do that.”

Caramel smiled and hoped she was joking.

When he didn’t see the horizon transform into the cold void of space, his confidence returned a touch, and he continued to smile as Luna glared, a smile growing on her face despite herself.

“If we’re done with threats of imprisonment,” Rolling noted. “We can get started.”

“I suppose,” Luna said. “Threatening imprisonment is so fun, though.”

“That makes me glad you’ve retired,” Rolling said. “Regardless, let’s begin for today.”

---☼---

Shadesong Swifthoof, the pegasus rogue, stared up at the door ahead of them. The door was magical, could not be picked open. To open the door, they’d have to find the key, which could be anywhere in these ancient catacombs. Alternatively, they might be able to use the “Knock” spell, which would allow the door to be opened for the next ten minutes but also make a resounding knock that could be heard for three hundred feet.

“What do you think?” Shadesong asked. “We look for the key and move in silently, or we move in now, but possibly have everything around us know we’re here?”

“Could you open the door once the spell fades?” Luckstep asked. “As far as I know, you’d still have to actually open the door.”

Shadesong shrugged. “I might be able to, but it’d be a bit of a risk. A roll of the die, if you will.”

Hercule and Dreadmane stood guard in the thirty-by-thirty foot room, made of smooth stone. The rough stone of the cave entrance had fallen away to minotaur-cut stone, or, it had the moment they fell through a hole that the kobolds had been digging before falling down into the level below.

The new layer’s discovery sparked some interest back in town, and the Abyssian managed to get the campsite she wanted.

“I don’t like this,” Luckstep said. “Have you found anything, Brightflame?”

The minotaur glanced up from the door. “Well, the lock is definitely made of adamantine. The arcane runes, however, seem to reinforce the tumblers through magical means. If the key has similar arcane runes, I might be able to locate it with another spell, provided it’s within 1000 feet of us, and not being blocked by any sheets of lead.”

“Lead?” Shadesong asked.

“It blocks divination magic. I’m not sure why. Though I do know a unicorn that wrote an entire dissertation on the anti-magical properties of lead, I’m sure I can explain if I find a copy.”

“Oh, trust me, I don’t care that much.”

Brightflame frowned slightly.

“More importantly,” Luckstep said, stepping in before Shadesong could say anything else, “we don’t have the time for that kind of lecture. Maybe once we get back to the forward basecamp.”

Shadesong shrugged and began looking about the room again. Painted frescos lined the walls around them, depicting scenes of minotaur life, including the founding of the labyrinth. None of the work was easily movable, though it would be valuable if he could manage to pry it off the walls carefully enough.

He rubbed his chin as he glanced at it before shaking his head. It probably wasn’t worth it anyway.

“Shadesong,” a female voice called, and he turned to see Dreadmane standing at the door, the others already filing out. “We’re moving.”

The rogue nodded before he shot across the room and took his place at the front of the line, where he began searching for traps. He moved forward carefully until they found a stone door, checking the floor tiles surrounding the door’s threshold ahead of him. He pressed against it carefully, and once he was sure that it wasn’t a pressure plate, he moved on to the next.

Going was slow but safe. So far, the party hadn’t found any traps on the floor unless they were in front of a door or crossed certain statues that flanked the hallways. They hadn’t quite figure out the pattern behind the statues just yet, but it made things clear that the minotaurs chose where to put their traps carefully.

Once the floor in front of the door was clear, Shadesong worked on the lock.

Behind him, Brightflame muttered to the others. “Provided there’s another hallway on the other side of this room, we can probably cut across to another room and find, at least, another set of these runes.”

The lock clicked open, and Shadesong took a breath to study himself before he slowly opened the door just wide enough to poke his head in.

“Celestia’s breath,” he muttered before opening the door wide.

The others went silent as they looked into the next room and gaped at what they saw. Fourteen orcs lay dead in the room. Their bodies were torn apart, limbs scattered, and bright red blood seeping into the cracks of the tiles.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Luckstep said.

Orcs were tough. The five of them could take on orcs so long as they had the numbers but in a three-to-one fight like this? No, walking into a room like this would have only one real option where they all came out alive, and it involved running as fast as possible.

Something tore them all to shreds, and recently.

“What happened here?” Dreadmane asked, stepping into the room.

“Well, I say that something must have torn them apart,” Hercule said.

“Maybe they were ambushed by some other orcs?” Brightflame suggested.

Shadesong shook his head. “All of these are Blacktusk orcs. Even if there was an ambush, the orcs would have killed at least one of their attackers. Whatever did this overwhelmed the orcs so much they never even stood a chance.”

The others were silent for a long second.

“So, what do we do with this information?” Luckstep asked.

“Well, I say,” Hercule began, “I see it as a sign that we need to move more carefully if the enemy has such a powerhouse available to them. It only makes sense that we must do everything in our power to avoid it while also making sure that it cannot possibly follow us back to the camp, or the town, Ajax forbid.”

Dreadmane nodded. “We need to be stronger if we hope to destroy this foe.”

“Not to mention we have no idea what this thing even is,” Brightflame pointed out. “Knowing one’s enemy is half the fight, we’ll be at a heavy disadvantage if we go into the fight blind.”

Shadesong let them argue behind him, but his attention turned back to the battlefield. Even if surprised, the orcs should have done something. Their weapons should have been bloodied against whatever monster attacked, but as he glanced at the crudely fashioned axes and falchions, he saw each and everyone was clean.

The monster that attacked them hadn’t bled.

“I think it’s a construct of some kind,” he said.

The others looked at him. “A construct?” Dreadmane asked.

Shadesong nodded. “None of the orcs’ weapons have blood on them, so either they did so poorly that they didn’t even manage to hit the attacker, or the attacker just doesn’t bleed.”

Dreadmane blinked. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What is a construct?”

---☼---

Rolling looked over at her from over her screen. “Is that Dreadmane asking or Luna asking?”

“Both, I suppose,” the alicorn replied.

“It’s like Frankenhoof’s monster,” Platinum replied.

“That...that offers no context. At all.”

“Oh, right, sorry,” he replied sheepishly. “It used to be required reading in school, so it made for a good point of reference. Uh, it’s a creature that was not born but made. They typically have bodies made from stone, clay, iron, or even flesh, but the force behind them is not life, but magic.”

Luna looked aghast. “What?”

Caramel watched as the others tried to explain a little more before he stepped in with some context. “Frankenhoof was written during a point in time where the unicorn mages in Canterlot were trying very hard to industrialize everything with magic, nearly to the point of ridiculousness. Frankenhoof was a story written about how researching too deep into magic for minimal gain may not be worth it. The book starts with the titular mage tries to make a servant that will complete jobs for him, jobs which weren’t even tedious, like lifting a fork to his mouth to eat and so on. The pony he makes, built out of the bodies of the dead, winds up being stronger than him and far smarter than him, to the point where Frankenhoof runs away from his own creation out of fear. It’s actually an excellent story, a classic by most standards.”

“And this was written to dissuade others from diving too deep into magic?” Luna asked.

Caramel nodded.

“Is that why so many ponies don’t even try to learn all five techniques or forms?”

“Well, maybe? The fact that Transform and Destroy are held under lock and key doesn’t help either,” Caramel said.

“Not to interrupt a history lesson,” Rolling said, “but we are in the middle of a game right now.”

“Of course, my apologies,” Luna said before she slipped back into character.

---☼---

“They sound like vile things,” Dreadmane muttered.

Shadesong shrugged. “They’re strong, but we know what they are, which is a step above anything else.”

Luckstep sighed. “I really don’t like this development.”

“Well, I say there’s not much we can do about it, is there?” Hercule asked.

Shadesong glanced back down on the ground as the rest of the party took a moment to keep talking with each other before he noticed something next to one of the orcish blades.

He leaned down and picked up a single, deep-blue crystal.

---☼---

“So wait,” Sundance asked, “are they crystal golems? Is that what we’re fighting?”

Rolling said nothing as she looked over her screen.

“They could be,” Caramel said. In all his years of playing, he’d learned that Rolling loved to make her own custom monsters to tie a campaign together, and constructs made out of the vaguely magical sapphire crystal that appeared all over the place seemed exactly like something she’d do. Of course, that also seemed a little...tame. A giant stone construct wasn’t terrifying in any way. It was just a giant troll with crystal skin. “I don’t know, though. I feel like it’s probably something worse.”

Rolling glanced over at him but kept her nose below her screen.

Caramel knew that she was smiling anyway.

“Well, if the monsters are made of crystal, then we might still have a chance against them,” Luna said in her ‘Dreadmane’ voice.

“What do you mean?”

“Crystals shear apart when hit from the the right direction. Of course, if they’re magically reinforced, then all we must do is break the magic holding them together.”

“That might be easier said than done,” Platinum said as the shy minotaur. “Magic works strangely around constructs.”

“We might find a weak point, though,” Sundance said as Luckstep. “Right now, we need to find the key.”

“Onward, I say!” Ivory exclaimed.

“So you said that it was across this room?” Platinum asked.

Rolling nodded.

“And there’s no door on the opposite side of the room?”

“There is not,” she confirmed.

“Then we’re probably going to have to go around. North or south, guys?”

“I’ve got a good feeling about going north,” Caramel said, looking at the hoof-drawn map he’d been tracing out. “I feel like going south will just lead us back to the sandpit.”

“North it is!”

They pushed forward into the darkness of the Sapphire Depths, digging deeper into its secrets. All the while watched by Rolling, who didn’t say a word about what was waiting for them.

---☼---

They didn’t get the key.

Caramel stood at his counter at his in-store coffee shop, staring at a lull in the line. With no one to serve jumping at him from the handful of ponies wandering the bookstore, the unicorn took a moment to think about the night before.

The northern passage wound up doubling back on them, moving in the direction opposite of the arcane runes Brightflame located. Once they hit the dead end, they began heading back around into the southern passage. They found the path they needed to follow before they found the source of the arcane runes.

Another locked door.

That was where the session ended for the night, with the party setting up a campsite in that room to get some sleep after spending the whole day wandering around the twisted halls of the labyrinth.

Of course, now he had to wonder where the key was. Where were they hiding it? Why were they hiding it? And while he was at it, why would a Minotaur-carved labyrinth be filled with shrines to Ornithian gods?

There was a secret to the dungeon that made this whole thing make sense, but he couldn’t see it yet. What’s worse, he knew that Rolling loved the fact that he didn’t know.

“I shouldn’t be thinking about this at work,” he thought to himself. “I need to focus on—”

Where was Celestia? He’d been over at Luna’s house three times now, and never once did the elder sister appear. She never came to say hello to Luna’s guests, and he was beginning to wonder if Celestia was even at the house.

That’s the sort of info that would pay a lot of money.

He frowned, thinking that wasn’t really appropriate either. He sighed and got ready to get back to work when magic exploded in front of his counter.

Luna stood there, just off of his counter, and smiled. “Greetings, Caramel!”

“Um...Lady Luna,” he began nearly stumbling over himself again before he managed to collect himself. “What are you doing here?”

“I have come to behold this work of literature thou spoke of the night before. This Frankenhoof. Dost thou know where it is?”

He nodded. “It should be by the classics, over there.”

“Can thou take me there?” she asked.

“Well, I’m not really an employee of the store, I really shouldn’t leave the counter—”

“It won’t be a problem,” Luna insisted.

“My boss is a bit of—”

“And if thy boss so much as thinks about raising a hoof against thee, I will make sure he is haunted by nightmares for the rest of his natural life. It shall be fine.”

Caramel blinked before he came around to the other side of the counter. “Um, right this way.”

He walked deeper into the store, with Luna following close behind as he made his way to the “classics” aisles. “It’s going to be one of these in the very decorative cover.”

“Wonderful, I do love conversation starters.”

“Uh, yeah, right here,” he said before picking up a copy of the book. “Frankenhoof, by Merry Shell.”

“Perfect, I thank thee, Caramel. Now, dost thou have any other recommendations?”

“Um, well... there’s some classical fantasy work. The Shalenera books come to mind,” he muttered, before turning to the bookshelves, “do they still have the Sword of Shalenera?”

Luna waited. Caramel kept searching for any sign of the book before he frowned.

“Um, okay, they have all the later books, but they do have the Knoll Chronicles. That’s more sci-fi, but they’re great books. At least the first three. After that, it gets a little too weird. Um,” he looked up at the bookshelf once more, licking his lips as he tried to come up with something. “Oh, there’s the Fogborn series. They’re newer but great. Anything that stallion writes is gold. Then there’s the Song of Water and Embers series, and—”

“Caramel,” Luna said softly. “Just something to start with, please.”

He blinked.

“Uh, right. Try this,” the unicorn finally said before picking up one of the Wyvernriders of Fern books. “This is more classical fantasy, kind of what we’re playing right now.”

Luna smiled. “I thank thee again, Caramel. I appreciate it greatly.”

He nodded. “Oh, it’s not a problem, now I should probably get back to my counter before my boss finds out.”

“What does thy boss look like, by-the-by?” the once-princess asked.

“Mr. Thistle? Well, he’s a little taller than me, thinner and—”

“Pale purple coat and green eyes?” Luna asked.

Caramel followed her gaze to see Mr. Thistle stomping toward him, teeth grinding together as he walked. “That’s him,” he muttered.

Luna nodded. “Return to thy post,” she said before a smile appeared on her face. She intercepted the furious pony with a gentle flap of her wings and began to speak with him excitedly.

Caramel didn’t take any chances. He rushed back to the coffee shop, where a single customer was waiting for him.

He took the mare’s order and began pouring a drink and had it ready to go by the time Mr. Thistle returned. He glared at Caramel for a long moment before he muttered. “Don’t leave your post.”

“Yes, sir,” Caramel replied.

Caramel caught Luna walking up to the front of the store, and she smiled and winked at him before she slipped into the checkout line.

And despite himself, Caramel smiled.

Chapter 14

“Look,” Sunny said. “If you want to stay, fine, but you were the one arguing about how you need to get home so bad.”

“And you were the one that wanted to dive nose-first into the jungle,” Marble argued. “I thought you would have loved to stay!”

“If you’d been listening carefully, you would realize that I want to explore. One ruin that’s been picked clean by another band of idiots isn’t why I’m here.”

“The tower isn’t ‘picked clean’ as you so nicely put it,” Marble shot back. “Two rooms have been hit, but there’s still a wealth of information in here.”

“So you want to catalog it all now?” Sunny asked. “You can’t wait until you get back to the university so you can share the location and get a good team here? You’re in a survival situation. What you find here isn’t important if you don’t survive to deliver it.”

“Finding this tower again is going to be nearly impossible, and you know it. We have no real landmarks to navigate by, we have a poor sense of distance, and at best, we have a general direction. This discovery is nearly a once-in-a-lifetime coincidence, and I need to document as much information as I can while I have it.”

“Our food supplies here aren’t infinite. We can’t afford to stay here when our food stores dwindle quickly. That’s the problem with foraging. We might be able to get away with it for today, maybe even tomorrow, but I have to travel further and further out to get any kind of food.”

“It doesn’t look like you’ve had any trouble yet,” he growled.

“Because I have a spell that makes it easy to find food. I can’t make it appear! I still need to go looking for it, and if it doesn’t exist, then I can’t find it! Our best bet is to keep moving so that we keep refreshing our store of food.”

“You have rations in your bag.”

“Those are for emergencies! They’re not meant to be used all in one go because you decided to take a vacation.”

“If the food is there for us to eat when there’s nothing around, then using it once we run out is exactly what it’s for!”

“It’s for not starving when we’re on the move, not wasting time sitting on our flanks!”

“We can afford the time!”

“Thinking like that is how you spend your entire paycheck on useless stuff.”

“Knowledge isn’t useless,” Marble snarled.

“It is if we die,” Sunny argued.

“Who knows what we could find!”

“Not food, that’s for certain,” she said as she moved toward the door.

“If that’s all you’re going to worry about, then it’s no wonder you have half-baked theories on—”

Whatever words he said were cut off by the resounding crack of stone against stone as Sunny slammed the door.

That idiot was going to get them both killed. Sitting here in the middle of nowhere for who knows how long so he could make some sketches instead of actually moving.

“You’re just upset you have to babysit him longer,” her inner Celestia said.

No, duh.

This trip was for her. It wasn’t for anypony else. It was her chance to be selfish so that she could enjoy some danger and not worry about whatever responsibilities she did or did not have. “Even if I happen to enjoy them, Missy.”

Her inner Celestia sipped at some tea.

Now she wanted some Oolong.

“Admit it, though,” the mental alicorn said,“it was nice to get into an argument that you weren’t going to win by default.”

Not the point.

Sunny wandered down the stairs, stomping angrily as she made her way down to the antechamber entry of the Windtower. She needed to try and find some breakfast for the pair before the idiot decided to break into her emergency rations right away.

What had gotten into him? They searched the tower the night before. They slept and readied themselves for the new day. Sunny woke up and decided she’d start by taking down her hammock when Marble made his argument.

Everything immediately spiraled out of hoof.

She still hadn’t managed to get her hammock down.

Her Perceive Body spell thumped through her and into the surrounding space, highlighting to her eyes alone the roots, fruits, and nuts she could bring back to the camp. She sighed as she spotted a mango hanging in the air.

She reached up, using her magic, and plucked the ripened fruit from the branch and brought it down. She checked it for any signs of insects before slipping it into her bag and moving on to the next flare of magic that marked something to eat.

Sunny managed to collect a couple of bananas and a wild yam, as well as one more taro root to eat before she turned to look for more water. She cast her Perceive Matter spell, tuned for water and began searching for a pool that wasn’t too stagnant.

“You know what the real problem is?” Inner Celestia asked.

“I don’t remember asking your opinion on it,” Sunny muttered to herself.

“The problem is that you enjoyed your job too much.”

Sunny rolled her eyes.

“You loved being the mother of the nation, and you absolutely adored giving every part of you away, and now that you have to actually hoard those pieces for yourself, you have no idea what to do.”

“Ah, yes, thank you. You have completely revealed the truth to me, and I can put this whole trip behind me. You’re better than therapy, did you know that?”

“Look, it’s not my fault that we’ve lived so long that I can almost recognize the patterns in our brain without bias.”

“Or really? No bias at all?”

“I said almost,” Inner Celestia grumbled. “The point is, we’ve seen this often enough in other ponies that it’s elementary to recognize. Sky above, we’ve seen Twilight do this exact same thing.”

“I’m very aware of what starving baker syndrome is, thank you.”

“The point,” Inner Celestia said pointedly, “is that you love to take care of ponies. So much so that you have problems doing anything else. We’re still trying to take care of ponies, even now! We’re doing whatever we can to help this pony get back to Equestria before you actually get to go off and adventure. You loved being the Princess so much that you just can’t allow yourself to do anything else.”

“I am doing something else! I’m running off into the jungle to go on one of the most ill-advised camping trips on the planet.”

“And you need to be a Princess first and make sure that Marble’s safe before you actually enjoy yourself.”

“You know, I don’t remember asking for your opinion on this at all.”

Her Inner Celestia smiled knowingly.

Sky above, it was annoying dealing with the ex-Princess when you weren’t her.

Sunny collected the water in a bubble over her head and began to make her way back to the tower. She moved carefully through the underbrush to the tower’s antechamber and climbed back up the steps of the stairs to their camp. Once there, she dropped the water into her pot to boil. Luckily, Marble wasn’t present, no doubt exploring some corner of the tower to get some information out of the carvings in the stone.

Meanwhile, she cooked.

“I’ve been demoted from Princess to explorer, to the maid,” she grumbled to herself.

Inner Celestia pointed out that the first demotion was her own idea.

Sunny didn’t respond.

She kept working quietly and purified the water in her pot before pouring it into the various canteens they had. Once she did that, she pulled out the utility knife she brought with her and began to cut up the mango, yam, and taro.

Once she had them in large slices, she began to roast them over the fire, blackening the fruit and vegetables until they would crunch when she bit into them. With everything roasted and cooked, she slipped all of the food onto a pair of banana leaves she plucked.

Once they were both served, she sighed and began to eat, piece by piece.

“You do have to admit he knows what he’s doing, though,” Inner Celestia remarked.

“What now?” Sunny muttered.

“He really knows his way around the tower.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Right now, you have someone who is uniquely trained to work with traps and ruins. If anypony could figure out what the Windtowers used to do, it’d be that pony.”

“How wonderful,” Sunny replied in a deadpan.

“You can’t tell me you’re not curious. We’ve been wondering about what on earth was going on in there for millennia. They wouldn’t tell us, they wouldn’t tell Luna, and now we might have a chance to figure out what’s going on. Just imagine what we could find out.”

“Fascinating, I’m sure,” Sunny replied flatly. Even though she knew full well that she did want to know what happened in these old towers. Right now, she wanted to be mad, and not even Inner Celestia was going to take that away from her.

---☼---

“...then it’s no wonder you have half-baked theories on ancient civilizations you know nothing about!”

Marble watched Sunny storm out of the room before she slammed the door shut with a clack of stone-on-stone.

That mare...oh, that mare…

Marble growled to himself before he leaped out of the window of the wind tower and took to the air.

Who did she think she was? Telling him that his job, his life calling, was worthless? Both he and Vanilla dedicated their lives to this, and then comes Sunny talking about how they couldn’t risk it.

How dare she?

He came up to the top of the tower and landed into what he started calling “the observation room.” He had no idea what purpose the room with the broken machine and the bookshelves actually served, but naming rooms offered him some point of reference to work with.

He landed and took a long look around the room, sighing to himself at the destruction that somepony wrought thousands of years of history.

Marble shook his head before picking up one of the books and carefully turned one of the bark pages with the gentle touch of his feathers. Most of the pages were burnt beyond recognition, but a few of them still had their works carefully painted onto the wood. He slipped the half-destroyed book into the bag Sunny weaved for him. The pegasus once again wished that he had a journal or something to draw some of his findings, but anything he might have was back on the ship, no doubt on the bottom of the ocean.

He picked up another book, which bore an image of the tower, surrounded by a series of oval glyphs that the entirety of the Lusitanpec written language.

It might be another critical piece to help decipher the language, but that was work beyond his abilities. He slipped the book into his bag as well before his thoughts turned to Sunny.

Her concerns were...valid. As much as the pegasus hated to say it. Worrying about food was a perfectly reasonable thing to worry about, considering they were in a survival situation. What’s more, she was currently the survival expert here, and it’s, well, unfair not to listen to her.

Still, the wealth of knowledge here couldn’t just be thrown away. Someone needed to record this for the sake of all academia. If Vanilla found out that he left here without writing something about it, she’d roast him over a spit.

Of course, if he didn’t make it back home, she wouldn’t be happy either.

Marble sighed.

Okay, Sunny had a good point. They needed to keep moving, despite what they found here.

Fine, he’d talk with her and try and work something out, so they weren’t going to starve.

He picked up another book and began searching through it for something that he could salvage. He skimmed through another and then the fifth book before he set one aside just as his stomach growled. Sighing, he turned back to face the door and stairs that led back down to their campsite.

A sweet scent wafted up from the stairs, and he could tell that Sunny came back with breakfast. Marble felt his mouth water at the smell emanating from their campfire, and his stomach knotted on itself.

He needed to eat.

He began walking back down the stairs and soon came up to the door they camped behind. He pressed it open to see Sunny staring out the window as she bit into blackened slices of fruit. On one of the benches, not far from her, sat a large leaf with even more pieces of fire-roasted food, waiting for him.

Sunny didn’t turn to face as he entered, though her ears flickered his way and signaled that she heard him come in.

He walked over to the bench where his food waited and took a bite out of some roasted mango, and the juice dribbled down his chin. He wiped his mouth with a hoof before he swallowed and turned to her.

“If we only stay one day, can we make that work?”

She glanced at him before she sighed and nodded. “I can probably get one more day’s worth of food, yes.”

“I can sort through the books upstairs, and I might be able to find what I’m looking for, but if I can’t find anything else over today, then I’ll consider the information not worth it.”

“It’s not that the info isn’t worth it,” Sunny replied after a long second. “It’s just that food, shelter, and our lives are more important. Though I suppose a break wouldn’t be a bad idea anyway, it’d give me the chance to get some new equipment for us.”

“Some new equipment?” Marble asked. “What? You mean to tell me that you’re going off to the hardware store just around the corner or something?”

Sunny smirked. “These ponies didn’t have hardware stores, and they did just fine. I can get us some stuff to work with. It won’t be the nicest bags and baskets in the world, but they’ll get us through the jungle a little better.”

“And you just happen to know how to make a bunch of baskets and bags?” Marble asked.

“You’d be surprised how much I know,” Sunny said with a smile, “and how little that means I actually understand.”

Marble blinked before he ate a slice of the yam. A part of him wanted to make another snappy remark about the totem, but his brain decided against it. Honestly, it was as good a guess as any other, and Sunny had an impressive source of knowledge of plants, foods, and survival, she might be wrong, but there was no need to dangle it over her head forever.

Besides, they were playing nice right now.

“Okay, so I’ll look through the books, and you make us some extra equipment. Does that sound right?”

Sunny nodded. “I might need to borrow that knife I got you.”

“The artifact? Of indeterminant age and questionable magic?”

“Oh, it’s definitely magic,” Sunny said, “I’d bet my life on it.”

“Still, it’s an artifact!” Marble said. “It’s older than Equestria itself! What if you break it?”

“It’s magic. It’ll be fine. The chances of a magical item breaking as slim to none. That’s half of the reason ancient items were enchanted to begin with. It makes them so much harder to break. That knife is as strong now as it had ever been. That’s the point.”

Marble sighed. “Fine. But if I find out you broke this knife, I’m going to be very angry with you.”

Sunny rolled her eyes. “Sure, got it.”

Marble narrowed his eyes but didn’t respond before he handed over the fang dagger.

Sunny took it and finished her food before she stood up and tossed her banana leaf out the window. “Alright, enjoy your little search. I’m off to go start making some supplies. Hopefully, we’ll have you ready to explore the jungle by the time we leave.”

“I’m so glad this amuses you.”

“I’m just happy we came to a compromise,” Sunny said, smirking.

“Why do I have a hard time believing you, then?”

She shrugged and continued to smirk before she slipped out of the room through the non-trapped door. Sunny disappeared into the wilderness a moment later to find who knows what she needed to make her’ supplies.’

Marble watched her go with a frown before he began moving back up to the book at the top of the tower. He had more important things to do right now than worry about whatever ridiculous plan Sunny was coming up with.

---☼---

Ebony Dusk stood in front of the Temple of the Coatl.

The singular feathers had wreaked so much havoc, but she had to save the last one she had to make her dream come true.

She turned to her mandrill servant. “Zalxayl,” she called.

“Yes, Lady Dusk?”

“I need to get into this temple.”

“Yes, Lady Dusk. Unfortunately, I must beg your patience. It seems the key to the temple door isn’t quite complete.”

Again. Another delay before she could claim her proper place in the world. Why is it that something always stood in her way? Why couldn’t anything ever—

She inhaled deeply before exhaling.

“I...I can wait. I’ve waited years for this moment. What are a few more days?”

“Weeks, I’m afraid, Lady Dusk,” the mandrill explained.

Dusk inhaled a sharp breath before she released that one as well. “I can wait,” she muttered darkly.

“Your patience inspires us all.”

“Don’t patronize me, Zalxayl,” the one-winged pegasus snarled.

“Of course, Lady Dusk.”

She stared up at the doors. The last obstacle between her and her destiny. If it weren’t for the fact that destroying them would cause the whole temple to collapse, she’d be in there already.

She snorted.

She could wait a few more weeks.

A few more agonizing weeks.

Chapter 16

Sunny stared into the maw.

Thessalhydras were some of the strangest beasts that walked the face of Equestria. Barely related to the common bog hydra, thessalhydras were unique in that instead of mouths living in their numerous heads, they had basketball-sized, toothy graspers that fed a central mouth that sat at their chests. The main mouth itself was horrifying, resembling lamprey mouths.

Large, round, and filled with teeth that pointed to the gizzard, the mouths of thessalhydras resembled one of those unfathomable things that lived in the dark void beyond the stars. However, naturalists insisted that the large hole was more of a defensive structure than actively serving a purpose.

Many theorized that the smaller, grasping heads could have eaten all on their own at one point, but a singular head with more and more defensive capabilities began to develop. This central head started to get larger, with a thicker and thicker neck and required more and more energy until it simply became the creature’s only real head that mattered. The other focused on feeding it until the inevitable happened.

Celestia knew that this wasn’t actually the case and that these monstrosities had been born from test tubes of mad mages, but she wasn’t going to crush all of those naturalists’ dreams.

“Sweet Celestia...you were right. That is a hydra from my nightmares,” Marble muttered to her.

“If you think that’s bad, just wait until you see those teeth in action,” Sunny said.

“I really don’t think I want to.”

They sat on a tree branch, some ninety feet away from the monstrous creature. Marble managed to just barely lift the unicorn to relative safety, with some telekinetic help on her part, so they could see the problem for themselves as it passed them by. Judging by how green Marble was looking, Sunny was willing to bet that he almost wished he hadn’t.

The thessalhydra’s undulating, grasping arms snaked through the air as the monster lumbered down the road toward them. Sunny watched it as it moved closer and lightly tapped at Marble to get his attention.

He turned to her, and she motioned him to get a branch higher into the tree before she threw a rope around the trunk. Pulling against the rope, she began to walk her way up the tree. Getting a few feet higher before Marble reached down to pull her back up to the next branch.

One of the smaller heads sniffed at the branch they had sat on a second ago before it snapped at the tree and tore the limb off. Wood cracked and splintered before it tossed the branch aside before the small head sniffed at the pile of pulp for any sign of food before the body moved on.

“Well, that’s terrifying,” Marble muttered.

“Quieter,” Sunny whispered. “They can only see directly in front of them, but their hearing is great.”

The thessalhydra stopped for a moment beneath them. It waited a moment before the grasping heads all reached up into the air and moved carefully about, searching for the noise.

Sunny held up a hoof, and Marble nodded before taking a silent breath and shifting nervously on the branch. Neither of them said a word as the giant, reptilian beast moved past their tree. Sunny kept her hoof up to her and mouth even after it disappeared from sight.

“Okay, let’s get out of the tree and get out of here,” Sunny said.

“Is it safe?” Marble asked.

“As safe as it’s going to get,” she replied before she secured her rope and began climbing her way down.

Marble spread his wings and hovered next to her rope as Sunny’s hooves hit the soggy ground. The road had turned downhill into a swamp, and while Sunny could feel the stones beneath the silty soil under her hooves, it offered no benefit now beyond a vague sense of direction.

Marble untied the knot of her rope before he landed in the water next to her, and Sunny could only assume he did so he could give his wings a rest. Sunny shook her head at him. “No, we don’t have time to rest. We need to keep going,” she said before she began sloshing her way down the road.

“Why? Do you think it’ll come back?” the pegasus asked.

“I know it will,” she replied. “Thessalhydras are incredibly territorial, and they don’t move a lot. He’s probably hungry, and the moment he gets some food, he’ll be back here, feasting on whatever he found, and I don’t want that to be us.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Marble said before he began flapping his wings again.

The swamp, which had been a village, was dotted with old stone homes and had the occasional Lusitanpec stone head that made the tribe famous. Now, these, along with whatever fallen trees littered its expanse, provided the only cover for the pair of ponies as they pushed their way across the swamp.

Sunny moved as carefully as she dared, trying not to make as much noise in the water even as the silt beneath the surface wanted to suck her down into the depths. Marble continued to fly, though she could tell his wings were already burning from the strain of carrying her up the tree and then continuing to press on.

He hadn’t said anything, though, so Sunny was willing to bet that he was still pushing forward, despite the pain in his wings.

“Now, if there was anything I think we could use right now, it’d be a pair of wings,” Inner Celestia commented. “Being able to give your legs a rest while still pushing forward is a godsend.”

Sunny was happy enough being a unicorn, thank you.

While wings would be lovely, she already learned the danger of not having a horn when you lost your changeling amulet.

She still had hers, for now, hidden in a secret pocket of her saddlebags, but if that were lost at any time, then she needed her horn and a Transform Body spell to get back into her true form.

Besides, going into the jungle without some kind of magic would be a very long and painful suicide. Despite her bravado, Sunny did not have any weapons beyond a machete, and she only had enough supplies to last her a week. It had nearly been a week since the boat sank, and they still had who-knows-how-many miles to travel. Not to mention the fact that she’d have to share with Marble to make sure he didn’t starve.

Sure, wings would be faster, but it would not be enough to save them.

Sunny rounded a house, half-sunken into the muck, before she chanced a look back, focusing on the water that swirled behind her. The mud and silt danced in waves while the water still roiled from where she walked through before she saw a single ripple move toward them.

“We need to move faster,” she said.

“How much faster?” Marble asked.

“Much faster.”

Sunny began to move faster through the water, though it came up to her belly and slowed her down.

“Faster than that?” Marble asked.

More waves and ripples flowed from behind her, and Sunny could see the growing look of horror on Marble’s face.

“Much,” she said through grit teeth before her horn rang with magic. She used magic to freeze the water in front of her into a sheet of ice a few inches thick, just in time for the thessalhydra to roar behind them.

Sneaking wasn’t worth it anymore.

Sunny pulled herself onto the ice sheet, and grabbing onto it with her forehooves, turned to look behind her.

The thessalhydra, with its teeth now jutting forward like ivory spears, ran through the water, snapping a tree that stood between them as a bull would charge through cheap particleboard. “Grab on,” she ordered before her horn lit up once more.

The water directly behind them started to swell up. It transformed with Sunny’s careful shaping before it stood as a ten-foot wall over the surface of the water. The water level around them dropped as it moved into the now towering column behind the sheet of ice.

The Thessalhydra roared again, moving closer with teeth quivering in the air as it charged. Marble glanced at it before he looked back down at the ice sheet before he dropped down next to Sunny and held on tight.

The unicorn hoped he was holding on tight.

Sunny released the water, and it crashed down behind them. The sheet of ice shot forward like an arrow from a bow as the water collapsed, and the ponies’ makeshift raft rode the wave even as the thessalhydra followed after them.

The sheet of ice skipped across the water, and they began covering ground at incredible speed, but the massive reptile behind them loped through the water at terrifying speed.

“We’re not going to outrun it,” Sunny said with a frown.

“So, what do we do?” Marble asked.

Sunny shook her head. “We’ll need to convince it that we’re not worth eating.”

“How do we do that?”

Sunny didn’t answer right away. Instead, her horn lit with magic as she tore some of the water surrounding her up into the air. The water froze into razor-sharp projectiles that shot back at the thessalhydra in a blast of ice.

The spear-like ice stabbed into the hydra’s body, and rivers of orange blood began to ooze out between the scales.

Sunny glared back at the monster before turning to back to Marble. “Stab it enough to convince it to leave us alone.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” he muttered.

The hydra’s grasping heads reached out to grab at them, reaching out to snap at them as it got closer and closer.

Sunny answered with magic, Controlling the water around her to form spinning blades and defensive walls of ice. The hydra slammed into the first wall without so much as flinching as it brought its forward-facing teeth spears to break the barrier apart before the grasping heads all pounced at Sunny where she stood.

She leaped back, throwing the spinning blades in a whirlwind of ice before she noticed Marble coming around.

He had his small dagger out and ready, and he flew around the hydra, distracting a pair of the grasping heads away from her.

She could deal with that.

Sunny continued to pour her magic into her surroundings, pulling stones and water up to form weapons and shields. The grasping heads tried to slam into her, which Sunny just barely managed to block with the two dozen chunks of rock and ice.

Her blades continued to spin and slash at the monster, but she couldn’t dare risk a cut to the beast’s necks, or she might have more grasping heads to attack her.

And that’s when she saw Marble streak through the sky and stab his knife into the hydra’s exposed side.

---☼---

“I did not sign up for this!” Marble thought as he took to the sky. He already felt his wings burning as after all the flying he’d done that day, but he couldn’t rest now, not with that monstrosity attacking them.

He flew around the beast, trying to distract the grasping heads of the hydra, while Sunny stood in the mud and held her ground.

Marble could not watch her defend herself long, but what he saw fascinated him. She almost danced between the attacks of the grasping heads, answering with her own strikes of ice and stone. Chunks of debris orbited the unicorn while blades and spears threatened the hydra’s dozen heads.

Sunny moved like a ballerina in the middle of a hurricane.

He’d never seen anything like it.

He tore his sight away from the art before him and focused on the thessalhydra that continued to try and eat him. He dodged the two heads that focused on him before he twisted around in an attempt to tie the heads up, either metaphorically or literally. Neither of the two heads formed a comical knot, nor did any of the other mouths pull their focus away from Sunny, and Marble cursed under his breath when he couldn’t at least distract the hydra more.

He glanced back at the heads chasing him and his aching wings before he figured he didn’t have much choice.

He pulled the knife Sunny found in the tower and pulled up into the air. The pair of heads following him ran out of neck but stretched out as far as they could, snapping hungrily as they waited for Marble to get back in range, but the pegasus kept flying up. He reached the trees’ canopy and held the knife out and in front of him for a single moment. Then he turned and started his dive.

He pulled his wings in tight and held his dagger out in front of him as he pointed his nose straight into the back of the hydra. The grasping heads snapped at him as Marble dropped like a rock, with his hooves outstretched.

This probably wasn’t going to end well.

Marble already figured that landing into the hydra’s back would probably break his fall but wouldn’t put money on him walking away unscathed.

He dove past the heads that had been chasing him, and a third head glanced up at him, opening its jaw hungrily.

Marble ground his teeth and slammed into the hydra’s back.

The rugged hide didn’t even give, and Marble felt his legs nearly give out as he bounced off the hydra. Slamming into the monster’s back fled like hitting concrete, and even as he sailed through the air, he was sure he’d just broken his neck in the crash.

The hydra roared in agony as the pegasus flipped end over end in the air before he quickly realized two things. The first was that, despite what he thought, he still had complete control of his muscles, the second, that all of the pain in his body stopped.

He leveled out, his wings spreading wide, and he looked back at the hydra and saw the wound he left. A long gash of angry orange pulsed along the hydra’s back, and...and the cut was rotting?

The monster’s scales around the wound greyed as though they sat in the sun until bleached, while the cut itself began to turn white. The muscle curled on itself, and the orange blood coagulated even as it pooled into the now septic injury.

How, by Celestia, did that happen?

The thessalhydra squirmed under the blow, six of the heads flailing about the cut in his back, while the others continued to hiss at Sunny’s hurricane of debris.

Then the hydra began to step back, its massive mouth hissing as it retreated back into the water.

Marble realized his hoof was tingling, and he looked down at the dagger in his grasp and saw the orange blood that coated it slowly be absorbed into the dagger’s edge.

And he realized he felt even better.

As the hydra backed away, putting even more distance between it and the storm that Sunny became before it began to turn and leave.

Marble watched it leave before he moved closer to Sunny, whose magic slowed and dropped the stones and ice into the water around her. She glanced up at him. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine….”

“What did you do to the thessalhydra?”

“I stabbed it with the dagger, and I...I think it caused the wound to rot?”

Sunny nodded. “I see.” The unicorn glanced down the swamp, where the thessalhydra continued to back away, still facing them. “We should probably keep going. If the hydra thinks it can have a chance again, it might try to attack one more time.”

“You think it’ll try again?”

“If it thinks that’s the worse we can do, it’ll try.”

“Then let’s get going,” Marble said.

Sunny formed another ice sheet and raised the water behind them again before they surfed away out of the swamp.

---☼---

Sunny finished cooking dinner that night and handed Marble his strip of sugarcane before he spoke up.

“How did you do all that?”

“Hm?” Sunny asked as she bit into her own portion of food.

“That whole...magic storm you did. How did you do that?”

Sunny blinked as she looked at him before she swallowed her food and continued. “It’s all the same basic spell, it’s all Control Matter, and splitting a spell between multiple targets is a little work, but easy enough with practice, and I—”

“I know a little about magic,” he replied. “I know what you did is technically possible, but what I want to know is how you did it. I know magic takes energy, and that...that was a lot of magic.”

Sunny bit into her sugarcane chewed at it for a moment while Inner Celestia began sweating.

“Relax,” she told herself as she swallowed, “We’ve already come up with this. We did the work beforehand.”

“I specialized in Create Matter and Perceive Matter spells. My spell list is limited, but I’m very good at it.”

Marble nodded. “I see.”

Sunny took another bite before she nodded toward Marble’s dagger. “Do you think you figured out what that does yet?”

“Well,” Marble began. “It’s definitely magic like you said it was.”

Sunny nodded and smiled but decided not to say, “I told you so.”

“So, I think it causes cuts to infect faster?”

Sunny nodded, but Inner Celestia was pretty sure she figured it out. Hydra bodies tended to be dense, and diving into one like Marble performed should leave him in a hospital in the worst-case scenario. Yet, Marble seemed just fine. Combine that with the vampiric nature of the tooth, and Celestia was sure that the dagger transferred life energy, which would prove helpful.

But Sunny wouldn’t know that.

“Well, that might be good to keep the larger monsters away from us.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Chapter 17

Caramel groaned as the door to his small home closed behind him. The past week had been Tartarus. In the past five days since Luna had asked for his help, his boss had him unload and pack cups and plasticware for four of them. Usually, that wouldn’t be an issue, except for it being at least a four-pony job dropped squarely and solely on his shoulders.

On the fifth day, he walked in for a closing shift to find the last bit of work already done, completed in half an hour by everypony else in the coffee shop.

There was some annoyance at how efficiently everyone could complete the job he slaved over, but it was overshadowed by the incredible sense of relief that came with the job done.

Then his boss had him restack the napkins in the dispenser.

He insisted that a call came down from corporate stating that all napkins needed to be checked to ensure they were staked emblem-side up. So, even though Caramel knew that the order had to be a lie, he spent the rest of the day with mind-numbing work that served no purpose.

The stallion was holding a grudge. That much was obvious.

Caramel wandered down the house’s only hallway, which only sat a grand total of four feet long before he pushed his way into the bedroom. He dropped down onto his twin-sized bed and sighed as he felt his mattress try to engulf him.

Hopefully, this was it. Hopefully, Mr. Thistle got it out of his system, and he’d be able to finally relax a little bit more.

He pushed the thought from his mind. Right now, he didn’t need to worry about it. Right now, all he needed to worry about was O&O night happening tomorrow, and right now, he just needed to get some sleep.

Besides, if he couldn’t get some rest, then he’d have a hard time being Shadesong.

---☼---

“And how pray tell, does a swamp exist inside a dungeon?” Luna asked as they gathered around the table.

“It could theoretically happen,” Sundance said. “It would start with some water buildup in a cavern that brought some sediment and seedlings from the surface. Provided the crystals give up some kind of ultraviolet light, or magical equivalent, it wouldn’t be out of the question for some kind of ecosystem to form, although probably a minimal one.”

“I grant thee,” Luna continued, “that a river can form around dirt. I grant thee that grass could grow in that dirt. I would even agree that enough grass and enough dirt could make something that resembles a swamp, but we have actual trees, actual bulrushes, and Sky above, actual alligators living in an actual swamp.”

“You do have to take magic into account, Luna,” Ivory said.

“Magic can’t do this!” Luna cried. “There is no spell in the book that can do this except for the wish spell, which should be cheating as far as I am concerned! And if we art talking of actual magic, this sort of setup would take eight different ponies to power for the rest of their lives!”

“Ah, but you’re forgetting Game Master Magic,” Platinum said. “The most powerful of cheating magic!”

“Hey,” Rolling said, “it’s not cheating. It’s ancient and powerful magics long forgotten by mortal-kind.”

Platinum nodded. “Like I said, cheating.”

“You are on thin ice, sir,” Rolling warned.

Luna smirked before she glanced over at Caramel. “Art thee well, Caramel? Thou art a bit quieter than usual.”

He nodded before he cracked open another can of a drink that smelled like it had far too much sugar in it. “I’ll be fine. Once the Taurine kicks in, I’ll be ready to go.”

“And what is this thing that is named after bovines?”

“It helps mental performance,” Caramel muttered. “Either that, or it ruins my liver. I don’t remember.”

“And for what reason dost thou need something that hurts thy own body?”

“Work was a little tough this week,” he replied before lifting the can. “This will help me stay awake.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “Do I need to speak with somepony?”

“No, no,” he replied. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

Luna continued to keep her eyebrow up. “Art thou sure?”

He nodded. “It’s fine.”

Luna glanced at him for a moment more before she frowned. “So be it, but if thou needs to speak with thy boss, please, let me know.”

Caramel smirked. “Sure, sounds like a plan.”

---☼---

The mare, whose companion was Death, walked forward into the mud.

It slowed Dreadmane down severely, nearly to the point she wished she were a pegasus. Hercule and Shadesong hovered over the muck around them while herself, Brightflame, and Luckstep all trudged forward.

A thick clump of bulrushes stood in front of them and, according to Shadesong’s scouting, an actual hill of dry ground. Pushing through the plants, Dreadmane felt real solid dirt beneath her hooves for the first time, and she pulled herself up before she found the first dry patch of land to sit down on.

She groaned as the other three joined her on the hill before the two flyers landed beside them.

“I do say that this is perhaps the best place to set up camp,” Hercule said.

“At least until we get to the structure in the middle of there,” Shadesong added.

The “structure” towered over them as it sat in the center of the swamp. Its massive, minotaur-cut stone walls stood like a monolith of black stone. The thin mist that blanketed these rooms left the massive form glaring down at them like a phantom, whose features were hidden but whose suggestion hung there like a panther, waiting to pounce.

Dreadmane sighed. “Have any of you tried to get closer to it? Tried to figure out what it is?”

“It might be a temple of some kind?” Shadesong asked. “I don’t know. This whole place is weird.”

“Why would anyone want a temple in the middle of a swamp, in a mountain?”

“Why is there a swamp in a mountain to begin with?” Dreadmane asked.

“No idea,” Luckstep said, “I’m not even sure how this happened.”

“So what now?” Brightflame asked.

“We might as well set up a camp here,” Shadesong said.

“Here?” Luckstep asked.

“There’s not much that can sneak up on us,” Shadesong said. “At least, not without seeing it come from nearly across the entire swamp. Besides, we have the only solid ground here in this...room, I guess. If anything is going to fight us, this is where we’ll want to fight it. Fighting out there with the mud would be a bloodbath.”

Hercule nodded. “Well, I say, he might be right about that.”

Brightflame nodded. “I did just learn the tiny hut spell. I could cast it for added protection.”

Dreadmane nodded. “Then this might be the best move. However, I will say this: Shadesong, can thee fly to yonder structure and get a good look at it before we bed down. There might not be anything for us there, or worse yet, a door we cannot open without further exploration elsewhere.”

That last statement got nods from around the party. Every other step they took since getting inside the dungeon was met with finding some sort of door that they could not pass through. Whether it was a magical wall that kept them out, a door locked by a magic key, or a twisting tunnel that led up to a level unknown to them but was far too dangerous for just two of them to explore.

In fact, they only just recently found a magical item that let them breathe underwater, which allowed them to access a set of flooded hallways that opened up into this swamp room, and a handful of other corridors that they had yet to explore.

“That sounds fair,” Shadesong said. “I’ll be back soon. Start getting things set up, and I’ll be back to let you know what I find.”

Shadesong disappeared into the mists, flying away into the swamp while the others began working with the set of camping supplies while Brightflame prepared his materials for his ritual.

It took ten minutes before a shimmering wall of magic appeared, encasing them in a perfect hemisphere that did not seem to hinder any of the party from passing through, though Dreadmane did know that the wall would keep them safe somehow.

As they finished laying out their bedrolls for the night, Shadesong returned. “Well, you’re not going to believe it.”

“What?” Luckstep asked.

“It’s Orithians. Every single statue in there is some kind of Ornithian god or goddess.”

Dreadmane frowned. Why were the minotaurs building statues and temples for the avian race of Equestria? According to every story she ever heard about them, the two races hated each other with a passion that fueled several wars. There should be no way that they would ever work together.

Yet, that temple was unquestionably minotaur-cut stone. Dreadmane and the others had run into enough the architecture, spread through the whole dungeon now, that everyone in the party could all recognize minotaur work by sight. However, they still ran into constant Ornithian symbology, statues, and figures. Ornithian script decorated the walls and told Ornithian sagas.

This entire dungeon shouldn’t exist.

The mare whose mane hung like a ghost shook her head. “More of this infernal puzzle.”

Shadesong dropped into the bubble. “I know, but the good news is, it looks like we can try getting in there. I didn’t see anything that would keep us out that I could see. We can try to explore that in the morning.”

“That sounds like a plan.”

---☼---

“Alright,” Rolling said, “so you’ve begun your long rest. Who’s taking the first watch?”

“It’s my turn to have a full night,” Caramel said before he drank more of his energy drink.

“I’ll gladly take the first,” Luna said before smiling. “Though I will try praying to Luna for guidance.”

“Sure,” Rolling said, rolling her eyes.

“I’ll watch next,” Platinum said.

“I’ll take the darkest shift,” Sundance said.

“And I’ll take the last one,” Ivory said.

“Alright, let’s have some perception checks!” Rolling said before Luna heard her roll her own dice.

Luna rolled her dice and thanked the Sky above that she had “expertise” in perception. “That would be a 13,” she replied.

Rolling nodded. “Then your watch goes by quietly,” she said. “Though there is something odd about the swamp, and now that you’re sitting still without walking through the mud and muck, you’re beginning to realize it.”

Rolling paused and looked Luna in the eye with a smirk. “There’s no sound. Other than the breathing and snoring of your comrades, there are no birds, no fish, no vermin, not even the buzzing of bugs catches your ear. It is silent.”

The mare smiled again. “Until you hear the sound of the water slapping against the shore. You look around but don’t see anything, and time passes by.”

The others held their breath for a long second before Rolling turned to Platinum. “Brightflame, let’s have your roll.”

“Oh good,” he said before rolling his dice. “That’s a 5.”

“Why are your rolls always so bad?” Ivory asked him.

“Why do you think I play wizards?” Platinum asked. “It’s so I can make everyone else roll against me!”

“Your watch goes quietly,” Rolling said, “I assume you crack open your book for a bit of study cause you see and hear nothing.”

“Great.”

“Luckstep,” Rolling called.

Sundance rolled. “Ooh, natural twenty.”

“Ooh,” Rolling cooed before she said. “You also have a quiet watch, but as you look out into the swamp, you think you see something.”

“What?” Sundance asked after a second.

“Well, you can try looking for it, but if you do, it might realize you’re looking for it.”

Caramel sucked in air through his clenched teeth.

“Can I make a stealth check?” Sundance offered.

“You may certainly try.”

Sundance nodded before rolling. He visibly winced. “12?”

“Noted,” Rolling said, with a face that would make a poker player sweat. “You look around a little harder, searching for the thing you think you saw before you see them.”

She went quiet, and after a long second, Sundance spoke again. “See what?”

“A pair of yellow eyes, glinting in the darkness.”

---☼---

The mare who held a blade before she held another pony walked into the temple.

The night went by quietly, with only Luckstep reporting a set of eyes watching them in the distance, but no attack came. The five of them managed to sleep until morning without being disturbed in any way.

Still, the eyes unnerved the party, and they pushed through the swamp carefully, watching for any sign of something attacking them. Yet nothing had. They managed to get all the way to the base of the temple, whose buttresses soared above them at incredible heights while decorated with wings.

The door opened without any resistance, and they walked into the darkness of the ancient, towering temple. The antechamber seemed untouched, as though it had been sealed for centuries, with only a layer of undisturbed dust covering the furniture.

Or at least, that’s how it seemed.

As Dreadmane looked closer, she noticed that the dust wasn’t as undisturbed as she first thought. Yes, the dust on the ancient stone pews and kneelers hadn’t been touched, but a swarth of clean stone slithered down the middle of the room, and while it let her know something had come this way, she wasn’t sure what.

“Something large has been through here,” she warned the others in a whisper.

“How large?” Shadesong whispered back.

“Several feet wide,” she whispered back. “I’m not sure how long.”

The mare, as wild as the north wind, followed the path until she finally came to the pair of wooden doors that lay open, revealing a massive pile of coins.

The five of them stared into the room that glimmered with golden, silver, and copper light as a literal dune of coins sat before them.

“Oh, horseapples,” Shadesong said as he stared at the treasure before him. “That’s a... dragon’s hoard.”

“How perceptive,” a deep voice rumbled behind them before they turned to see a black dragon towering ten feet above them. Its teeth glistened with an acidic liquid, and its yellow eyes shone with cruelty.

The party had just enough time to blink before the dragon unleashed its breath.

They tried to scatter, but Dreadmane and Hercule were caught in the attack and felt the acid burn their faces and backs.

The others leaped into action, with Brightflame casting a spell that broke against the dragon’s scales like a stiff wind. The dragon answered with a powerful bite attack that threatened to tear Luckstep in half.

Dreadmane finally recovered and acted. Her vision went red, and she raised her greatsword as she felt the fury of Luna herself burn in her as her blade began to glow white.

She struck with the fury of an avenging angel, and the dragon roared in pain as light and steel tore into it.

The dragon spread its wings and took off. The force of the wind coming off of the leathery limbs sent Brightflame to the ground. The large wings slapped at Dreadmane as the dragon took to the air to fly across the sanctuary. It landed and began reeling back to spew acid once again.

“Spread out!” Hercule yelled before he took to the air himself and charged the dragon with his own burning blade of holy light.

Dreadmane felt the acid burn into her skin, but she welcomed that pain and let it fuel her rage even further. She grabbed her blade and charged again, eager to end the fight.

Spells began to fill the air as both Brightflame and Luckstep started to using their powers to distract the beast, while Shadesong appeared from seemingly nowhere to strike deep into the gap in his scales between the creature’s chest and its arm.

Still, Dreadmane and Hercule dominated the frontline even as powerful claws raked them and jaws that dripped with acidic spit bit deep. The party kept attacking, but each blow from the monster ripped into them. Claws tore deep gashes, and teeth shredded skin as the head of the beast rolled like a crocodile.

Hercule went down after taking another blow that dented armor and sent the griffon spinning. Luckstep rushed to him, a healing spell ready in her paws before the dragon’s tail whipped around and slapped him down.

Shadesong stabbed deep into the dragon again, dragging his knife back and forth into the wound to try and open the cut more before the dragon’s claws slammed into him with the force of a charging bull. He slammed against the opposite wall and lay still.

Dreadmane still stood before it, her coat usually an ebony black now stained and colored with her own blood, and took the attacks of the dragon with grinding teeth and endless fury. She brought her greatsword down and drove it into the beast’s neck, forcing the dragon to roar as it finally confessed its pain.

Then the massive wings spread again, and it took off, putting distance between itself and the raging barbarian.

Brightflame cast another spell, and a bolt of lightning streaked through the sky to strike the dragon, and the bolt struck true, forcing the dragon to drop as its wings locked up.

It glared at them all for another long second, with fury in the monster’s glaring, yellow eyes, before it turned and dove into the swamp.

It slipped away, entirely hidden by the water, and left the party in the sanctuary, alone.

Breathing heavy, Dreadmane felt her rage falter, and she staggered for a moment as she felt the weight of injuries. “Brightflame,” she said, as she made her way to Shadesong, “can thou get us out of here?”

“No,” the minotaur said with a shaking breath. “I’m nearly spent magically.”

“Luckstep?” Dreadmane called.

“I can get us healed up, not much more than that,” she replied.

Dreadmane reached into her bag and pulled out a potion that she force-fed to the pegasus. He coughed as he came back to consciousness and glanced about wildly.

“Can thou get thy bubble spell back up?” Dreadmane asked.

“It’ll take time, but I can,” the minotaur replied as he tried to help the griffon back to his feet.

“Then plant it right on top of the hoard,” Dreadmane said with a smile. “We may have fought to a draw, but we’ll make it cost that dragon.”

“He’ll come after us for it,” Luckstep warned.

“I’m counting on it.”

The party gathered on the mound of coins, and Brightflame began to cast his spell. He weaved magic slowly, and after eleven minutes, the tiny hut spell reformed, and they were officially safe.

“So, what’s the plan?” Luckstep asked.

“Nothing can pierce this bubble, can they?” Dreadmane asked.

“No, nothing,” Brightflame confirmed.

“Then we rest. In the morning, Brightflame, thou shalt teleport us back to the camp.”

“We’ve only been up for a few hours,” Shadesong said. “We won’t be able to rest.”

“No, but,” Brightflame began, “I might be able to recover enough energy to complete the spell. As long as the wizard we’ve hired has written the circle this morning, we can teleport.”

“Then we rest while we can,” Dreadmane said, “and take as many coins as we can carry.”

Chapter 18

The temple towered above them, standing like a mountain that blocked their path. The jungle around the pair of ponies couldn’t swallow the pyramidal stone structure, and the ancient carvings of feathered serpents smiled at them with wide teeth.

If Sunny had to guess, it would probably be a history-making find if they could actually navigate their way back here.

“Well, that’s certainly a temple,” Sunny said.

“No, really?” Marble asked.

Sunny shook her head. “It’s very impressive.”

“I will agree with you on that.”

Sunny began climbing the main staircase of the pyramid before she finally stepped out of the underbrush. Marble followed after her, climbing up the stairs as they began to head for the temple structure at the very top.

The steep staircase nearly caused her to trip once or twice, but Sunny managed the climb well enough. She did, however, notice with some annoyance that Marble only climbed a handful of stairs before he used his wings to carry him, a no-doubt easier time than climbing what equated to a giant stone ladder.

The moment she crested the top and found herself staring at the temple doors, she sighed and released a shaking breath. “Those are some serious stairs.”

“Do you need to rest?” Marble asked, amusement obvious in his voice.

“Hey! I do not want to hear it from the stallion that flew his way up here.”

Marble smiled but said nothing. A wise move on his part.

Sunny caught her breath quickly before she glanced at the small temple structure. The room was no bigger than three cart lengths wide and maybe one deep. The back wall, decorated with a mural of the Coatl with storm clouds forming in its wings, seemed far too close for anypony to actually use the building as intended and left just enough room for the altar that sat before it.

Sunny ignored both the altar and the mural before she looked to the sides of the room. A set of stairs on each side of the room led down into the pyramid proper. “Well, if we’re going to find anything, it would have to be down there,” Sunny thought to herself. She crossed the room over to the left-hand side before she felt a hoof grab her shoulder.

“Where are you going?”

“Down?” Sunny asked.

“Never go down on the left,” Marble said.

“Why?” Sunny asked.

“The Lusitanpec always believed that the path to death started with a left-hand turn. We should go down the right stairs.”

“What, you think the left one’s trapped or something?”

“I’m not...positive,” he said. “I haven’t looked at it yet, but if they were going to go down either of the stairs, we should probably go down the right ones.”

Inner Celestia regarded the pegasus with a smirk that didn’t reach Sunny’s face. “He does know his history. I haven’t heard about the left-handed superstition in centuries. He might be onto something, you know?”

“Can we at least check it?” Sunny asked. “To satisfy my curiosity? It’s not like we’re on a strict timetable or anything.”

Marble glanced at her. “Weren’t you the one talking about—”

“Yes, yes. That was to actually move, though. We can spend a day or two at a temple, just like we spent a day over at the tower. Now stop arguing with me, and let’s check the stairs.”

Sunny led the pegasus over and glanced down at the staircase, Marble sighing the entire way through. As they stood over the stairs, Sunny motioned her hoof to the stairs, and Marble rolled his eyes before he dropped to the ground and began running his hooves down steps.

Sunny watched as he began to check each of the stairs and nodded as she “oversaw” his work.

“He really does seem like he knows what he’s doing,” Inner Celestia commented. “You could almost say that he seems to be an expert at figuring out traps.”

Sunny ignored the comment. She knew that Inner Celestia was just trying to make a point. Ever since the tower, a part of Sunny wondered at how he managed to find that trap in the door. Sure, Marble explained how he saw it, but she had to wonder how much of that was a fluke or lucky guess and how much was actual skill in recognizing cultural cues that would mark a trap.

Marble paused.

“What is it?”

“This is a fake stair,” he said before he flew back up. “Do you have a stick?”

“I’d have to get one from outside,” she replied.

Marble sighed before he drew the knife from his side and hovered back over the fake stair. The pegasus slowly began lowering himself down onto the stair, the point of his knife pressing down on it as he began to press harder and harder—

A snap sounded as the stair fell away and swung downward. Marble shot up, pulling up and out in case whatever sat below the stair shot up at him.

And nothing else happened.

“What is it?” Sunny asked.

“The stair fell away,” Marble explained before he slowly hovered back over the staircase. “It looks like it opened up to a hole.” The pegasus dropped one of his hooves onto a stair on their side of the hole before he officially landed and began checking the trap in earnest. “Ooh, that is nasty. Come here, see what they did.”

Sunny slowly made her down, testing the stairs as she moved down and joined Marble.

“Here, look at this,” he said, pointing into the hole.

Sunny already saw it. Large, four-inch spikes stuck to the walls of the hole, all pointing downward. The goal was obvious.

“As soon as somepony steps on it, their hoof drops into the hole. The moment they try to pull it out, the spike digs into the hoof, locking them in under threat of pain.”

“I-I got that, thanks.”

“It wouldn’t kill you,” Marble said. “It would just hurt a lot. Unless they poisoned the spikes, then it might kill you.”

Sunny sighed. “Alright, my curiosity is sated. Let’s go ahead and try the other stair.”

Marble nodded before he took off back up the stairs.

“I do want you to check the other stairs, though,” Sunny said as she followed after him. “I’d much rather not find a trap like that.”

“That, I can appreciate,” he replied as he began checking the stairs. “I’ll need you to watch the hallway then. I can only pay attention to so many things. If they have a trap hiding in the walls, I don’t want to find it after it’s already stabbed me.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

Sunny glued her eyes to the walls, looking for any sign of a hole or trap that might be hiding in the stones before she took a moment to check the ceiling as well. She didn’t see anything that looked terribly suspicious, but the artwork on the walls did look nice. The Great Coatl, with scales of blue and green, danced in a painted sky. He slithered through down the whole hall, weaving back and forth across the fresco covering the walls and ceiling, from each of the dozen sets of wings that she could see left a trail of storm clouds behind them, the only gray marks on an otherwise blue sky.

She watched as the serpent danced around the hall before she noticed something. On a point further up, a few dozen feet ahead of them, the mural suddenly stopped. Bare, grey stone sat on the side of the wall in a sudden, jarring break.

“Marble,” Sunny called,

The pegasus froze. “What?”

“Ahead of us, on the left-hand side, the mural stops suddenly.”

Marble picked up his head slowly and glanced at the wall that she indicated before he nodded. “Okay, I’m pretty sure the floor is safe, but watch your step,” he said before he began walking toward the broken part of the mural.

Sunny noticed he didn’t fly over but decided not to mention it yet. Instead, she focused on where Marble stepped and did her best to fit her hooves into the spaces he stepped in. Before long, they both stood in front of the break in the mural.

“The Coatl isn’t broken,” Marble noted.

Sunny nodded, concurring.

His gaze dropped to the sides of the break. “The mural isn’t broken. It looks like it was cut here. This empty space is meant to be here. The fresco’s too big for somepony to try and grab a piece unless it was plated with gold, but even then, the cuts on this side are too perfect.”

Sunny kept watching.

“At the same time,” Marble continued, muttering, “not continuing the mural doesn’t make sense.” His gaze trailed down to the base of the wall and frowned. “There are tool marks down here, and…” he trailed off, and Sunny saw why.

The flagstone had been wiped clean, but dried blood clung to the spaces between the rock. Someone had died here. They’d fallen for the trap.

“This happened recently.”

“What?” Sunny asked.

“Or at least, within the past hundred years as opposed to when the Lusitanpec actually lived here. It had to have. There’s no way this happened back when the temple was in one piece. No way.” His voice began to climb into higher and higher registers as he began speaking faster, hyperventilation just seconds away.

“Slow down,” Sunny said. “Why are you saying that?”

“The tool marks,” Marble said, his voice shaking. “Copper chisels don’t make those kinds of marks. These are at least iron, if not steel. The ponies native to this area didn’t have this kind of metallurgy until the past hundred and forty years ago.”

“So somepony from Equestria is in the wall? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“I-I hope not,” Marble said, voice wavering. “I think...I think this was an alcove, and when he triggered the trap, it dropped down onto the alcove.”

Sunny raised an eyebrow before she reached out with her magic. Her Control Matter spell enveloped the stone, and she quickly grasped the size of it. The stone, as large as a carriage, sat perfectly cut in a shaft that reached upward. From just the size of it, she could tell that Marble’s guess might be more right than she gave it credit.

“Well, I think you’re right,” she said as she dropped the stone. “That’s definitely a trap.”

Marble shook himself. “It’s a rough way to go out.”

“Yeah, but there wasn’t anything we could do for them,” Sunny said. “This pony was probably dead before either of us were born.”

“Low bar for you,” Inner Celestia remarked. “That had to be, what, two weeks now? Two and a half?”

Marble nodded, looking green around the gills. “I-I guess you’re right.”

“Think you’ll be okay?” Sunny asked. She’d never seen Marble act quite like this before, and she was starting to worry.

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered. “I just... I’ve seen a lot of injuries by traps, and...and I keep imagining ponies I know getting in there and—”

“Deep breath,” Sunny said.

Marble inhaled without even pausing.

“Exhale.”

He let it all out.

“Slower,” Sunny admonished. “Again.”

Marble obeyed.

“Nopony you know fell for these traps,” Sunny said. “Everypony is okay.”

There was silence for a long moment. For the whole time, Marble didn’t even look her in the eye. For a moment, Sunny wondered if he somehow went catatonic before a response finally crawled out of his throat. “You’re right. Nopony I know fell for these traps.”

Inner Celestia sighed. “You struck a nerve.”

Sunny ignored the comment. It’s not like she knew that Marble was sensitive about this. Besides, she needed the stallion to focus. He still had a knack for finding traps, and the unicorn required that skill down here. If he started freezing up, then Marble would be next to useless for her.

“What a bleeding heart you are,” Inner Celestia remarked, sarcasm dripping off the words. “Truly a more caring pony there has never been.”

Sunny brushed that thought aside. Yes, it was a heartless attitude to take, but more importantly, it was a pragmatic one. They were in the wilderness, in ancient, trap-filled ruins. The last thing she needed was a non-responsive stallion that needed a therapist.

“Which we are not,” Sunny thought, “even though you love to try and disassemble everypony’s problems as though you were.”

Inner Celestia didn’t answer, but she did frown disapprovingly.

They continued to move down the hallway before they came down another set of stairs. As they began to descend, Marble started to checking the steps once more. He seemed to have recovered somewhat, but he still shook as he worked.

“Hey, we’re fine. These traps haven’t been triggered in decades, if not centuries. The chances of half of them even working anymore is—”

A fresh body lay at their hooves as they turned the corner, a hole stuck through his chest.

Sunny sighed. “There goes the universe again.”

---☼---

The further down they went, the more bodies they found. Fresh, no more than two or three weeks old. Every single one of them managed to have triggered a trap, and they even somehow cleared a path for Sunny and Marble to follow.

Pegasi, earth ponies, and unicorns all lay scattered across the floor, sometimes in pieces, through the lower levels of the ruins. As both Sunny and Marble passed them by, the unicorn couldn’t help but take a long look at the bodies. Each one of them, excuse her for saying so, looked like they might be more at home in a seedy bar. What’s more, they all wore vests, black vests with a cloud-shaped patch on the back. In fact, the only ponies that didn’t have a vest on were the ones that seemed charred because they burned to death.

Despite his previous reaction, Marble pushed through the carpet of bodies without so much as a stuttered word. In fact, he seemed to recover completely, giving a few ponies a curious but otherwise emotionless glare.

“What were they doing here?” he asked aloud.

“I don’t know,” Sunny replied, “and I don’t think we’ll find out when we get to the end.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Gut feeling,” she responded.

They kept pushing forward, finding more and more dead, before they found a set of open stone doors. The deceased had been piled off to the side, but whatever trap that sealed the doors lay deactivated.

The room beyond the doors, however, held their complete attention. The mural of the Coatl, the snake-like figure that stretched from the start of this hallway to where they stood now, finally ended in the room beyond. The head of the Coatl finally appeared and opened wide in the center of the room, transforming from painted fresco into a sculpture that looked like it was poking from the wall.

The sculpted head of the Coatl sat decorated with a mosaic of blue and green stones that obviously represented scales. What truly stood out, though, was the podium set in the open mouth of the serpent’s head. The platform sat empty, without a single sign of what once sat there.

Sunny sighed. “Told you,” she muttered. “These ponies grabbed whatever they were trying to get to. Though, very obvious my, the cost was very high.”

That part did concern both Sunny and Inner Celestia on a profound level. Who could someone command this many ponies to the point where they’d throw their lives away just so that someone could grab whatever lay beyond the doors.

She walked into the room, with Marble following on her heels. The mural continued inside, though Sunny focused on the pedestal in the sculpture’s jaws. The flat stone offered no sign of what it once held. She had no idea if a weapon or cloth or trophy sat on its surface. Sunny had no way of knowing.

“What on Equus?” Marble muttered.

Sunny glanced over at him. “What? Did you find something?”

“Something that makes no sense,” he said. He stood off to the side, staring at the mural near the left-side corner by the door.

“What?” she asked.

“Look at this,” he said, pointing to the wall.

Sunny followed his hoof to a scene of ponies gathered beneath a storm cloud. One of the earth ponies held a staff shaped like the Coatl above them, and the storm cloud above transformed from an angry storm to a slight rain before it thundered again, flashing with lightning. “What’s not making sense?” Sunny asked. Though Inner Celestia had a suspicion growing in her mind.

“How much do you know about weather magic?”

“I’m a unicorn,” she replied.

“And I don’t want to make assumptions,” he replied. “What this is implying is that the Lusitanpec ponies had access to weather magic somehow. Storm clouds don’t work this way. They don’t rain and then suddenly storm. The only way this makes sense is if an entire culture of earth ponies could control the weather.”

It was unheard of. There had never been a non-pegasi tribe that managed to get close to controlling the skies. Nothing got close, so for a tribe of earth ponies to do the same as the pegasus, without the same access to magic, the unicorns had seemed...crazy.

But possible.

“It might be true,” Sunny said. “They might have had a magical item or something? I know the Storm King had something like that back when he invaded.”

“Maybe,” Marble slowly agreed. “There’s this staff this one pony is holding. That might be it.”

“Maybe,” she agreed. “We can’t say for sure. Maybe they thought the Coatl changed the weather for them, and that’s a priest who’s trying to speak to the Coatl?”

“That’s possible. The Lusitanpec ponies had a still relatively unknown religion. It’s possible that they tried to bargain with the Coatl to change the weather, or perhaps even thought they bargained with him, and that’s all there is to it.”

Sunny nodded and turned back to the pedestal. “More importantly, what was here, and why was it so important that all of these ponies died for it?”

Chapter 19

The temple offered them little else. The two ponies rested in the small structure at the top of the pyramid before moving on the following day. Although they left it behind, Marble carried the experience the entire time.

The black-vested ponies that infested the lower levels left him wondering what was going on. Sunny seemed convinced that those ponies were after whatever used to be in the vault room, but Marble couldn’t think of anything so important that dozens of ponies just threw their lives away.

He wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Below him, the unicorn cut her way through the jungle, swinging the machete in powerful chopping motions as she waded through the water. The road they were following led them into either the same swamp they found the hydra in or another swamp altogether, though neither was sure which one. Regardless, Sunny had Marble on the lookout for any sign of the hydra just in case it tried to hunt this far north.

Despite the less-than-ideal direction the road took, Sunny insisted that they continued to travel along with it. The vegetation, while still thick, was far less dense going down that way than their other options, and Sunny didn’t want to lose that advantage.

She chopped down another vine and splashed her way into what could be called a clearing before she noticed some water lilies growing nearby. “We’re getting close to the end of the day,” Sunny said. “I can’t be incredibly sure without seeing the sun, but I’m fairly certain. Can you check the sky for me?”

“Sure,” he replied before flying up into the sky to check the sun’s position. He broke the canopy with relative ease before he glanced around at the sky and noticed the sun beginning to set over the trees. It’d probably take an hour or so before it officially set, but that was just his best guess without the horizon to check against. He dropped back down to hover over the water before reporting. “I think we have an hour or so before it gets dark. It’s hard to tell for the trees.”

Sunny blinked as she looked up at him. “Really? Then we either started late, or I lost track of time on the march.”

Marble shrugged. “I’m not going complain. The faster we get out of the jungle, the better.”

Sunny nodded. “I guess. I guess it’s also lucky we ran into these lilies because we need to set up camp now and start getting ready for the night.”

“And how are you going to start a fire when you’re up to your knees in water?”

“That’s where you come in,” she replied with a smile. “We’re going to camp in the trees tonight.”

Marble blinked. “What?”

“While you were checking the sky,” she said as her horn lit up, “I found this.”

A large flat stone rose from the water, pulled up by her magic with seemingly no effort.

“You’re...kidding, right?” Marble said.

“I am not,” she replied before she raised the rock above her head and planted it right in the middle of a fork of thick, sturdy-looking tree branches. “There we go, a perfect place to have a campfire.”

Marble glanced down at her. “You’re kidding,” he said again, hoping that stating it as a fact might somehow change the mare’s mind.

“Just carry me up there,” she replied.

Marble did, but he wondered the entire time if it was a good idea or not. Still, he managed to pull Sunny to the top of the tree. When he set her down on one of the branches next to her stone, she smiled and got to work, ignoring Marble’s panting. “Now!” she said as she stood by her giant rock. “Setting a fire on top of any old rock, especially igneous rock, is a terrible idea,” she said as though lecturing a student. “Any water caught in the middle of the rock will expand and eventually explode. Dry sedimentary rocks work best, but we don’t have many options either way,” she said.

Marble shifted nervously on his branch as he watched Sunny go to work.

“Luckily, we do have magic,” she said with a smile, not even noticing Marble’s concerned face.

He watched as the unicorn’s horn lit up and began to wave carefully around the stone in slow, fluid motions that reminded Marble of a window washer’s squeegee. Water began to form on the top edge of the rock before Sunny pulled it away with her magic and opened her waterskin. “The good news is that this water is as clean as it can get.”

“And...and it’s safe now?” Marble asked, wondering why he had simply accepted this as any kind of reasonable.

“Basically!” she said. “We’ll have to keep it a small fire so that the rock doesn’t heat up and light the wood on fire, but it’s a pretty big rock, so we should be able to dissipate the heat fairly evenly.”

Marble shook his head. “Okay, okay, we’re doing this apparently.”

“More importantly,” Sunny said, “it means that we have a chance to actually relax for once. We have food, water, and firewood all within easy reach, so we don’t need to go very fall to get everything we need.”

“I guess,” Marble said with a defeated sigh before he began glancing around at the other branches for one that looked comfortable enough to sleep on. Though, again, it seemed like Sunny was already ahead of him. While he still searched around for a place to lay down, she just finished tying her hammock to both branches of the fork, giving her a place to sit on the other side of her rock.

Marble hovered by a branch that looked like it would support his weight before he began unpacking his bedroll from the bags he wore and hoped that he wouldn’t fall off in his sleep.

He flew back toward the rock Sunny set in the tree and found her sitting in her hammock as she collected small sticks and branches from around the tree and gathering in them into a pile in the middle of the rock.

A part of him hated how at ease she looked from where she sat. She could be laying back in the hammock entirely and still be lighting up the fire without even trying.

“This is kind of nice,” Sunny said with a smirk as she rocked her hammock back and forth over a fifty drop. “It gives us all a chance to unwind a bit, and you know, actually talk to each other.”

“Because that went so well when we first met,” Marble muttered.

“First impressions are important, but they can also be wrong sometimes,” Sunny said, “and besides, it’s not like we have much else to do but socialize.”

“Joy.”

“Oh, stop,” she said. “We’re stuck together, and we’re going to have to rely on each other to get out of here. We’ve both realized that at this point. It’s no surprise to either of us that we need to watch each other to make sure we both live through this. Now you very obviously had an issue with the trap back there—”

Marble felt himself freeze up.

“—But I’m not going to pry into your whole life to get an answer. It’s rude, mostly because we don’t know each other, but I do have the right to know if you’re going to be okay or not, because if not, then I need to pick up the slack.” Sunny stared at him with bright, magenta eyes that bore into his soul for a long moment.

Marble wavered.

She sighed. “Look, Marble. I’m calling it socializing, but if you want to be blunt about it, I’m trying to figure out if I can still trust you or if I need to watch you the entire time. I’m trying to be polite about it, but that’s what it boils down to. Either way, I’m going to try to make sure that you get out of here alive, but if I need to—”

“I’m fine,” Marble snarled, nearly shocking himself by the bite in his voice. “I don’t need you to watch me, and I don’t need anypony babysitting me either.”

Suny’s eyes widened slightly, and while she looked unconvinced, she did seem...pleased?

“Okay,” she said. “So you don’t need anypony watching you. Fine. I can believe that. You don’t need anypony babysitting you. You’re a grown stallion after all.”

“Are you mocking me?” Marble asked.

“No, I’m trying to figure out who you are,” she replied. “You’re obviously a very capable pony, you know a great amount of theory, and your knowledge of traps is awe-inspiring. So why are you so worried about somepony being overprotective of you?”

Marble glared at her.

Sunny kept smiling before she leaned back in her hammock. “I tell you what. Let’s do this. I’ll tell you what I think of you, and you do the same for me. That way, we’ll clear the air completely.”

“And why should I care what you think of me?” Marble asked with a growl.

“You don’t need to. You don’t need to listen to me at all—”

“Then maybe I should go first,” Marble growled. “I think you’re a know it all who has been lucky that they managed to get this far. You obviously know your way around the jungle, though I can only imagine it’s because nopony wants to be around you, so your best choice is to throw yourself into the jungle so you can at least have some company that can deal with you. You’re a pony that knows just enough useless information that you can pass as a functioning adult while hiding behind wildly inaccurate guesses that make no sense. Still, the universe itself seems to pity you, so it throws you a bone every now and then because there is no other explanation for how you’ve been right so often.”

Marble felt his chest heave as he finished roaring his accusation, and then he felt his blood run cold. “Did...did I really just say that?”

That was too far. Really, it was too far. Sunny wasn’t that bad. He was just...she got under his skin somehow and…

“Look,” he began. “I don’t—”

“I see a pony that’s very hurt,” Sunny said softly.

The words felt like a whirlwind that didn’t even disturb the leaves on a tree. It passed Marble by in a tsunami of calm, and the wake left him without anything to say.

“I see a pony that had someone watching over him, but something happened, and now you’re alone.”

Marble stared at Sunny, but his eyes didn’t see her.

“You pulled yourself up to here, and now you’re here, trying to prove that you can do this on your own. You’re hurt but healing, and you’re trying to stand on your own hooves after a long time.”

Marble stared into the darkness and could only think of one pony.

One pony dominated his mind.

His sister.

Vanilla Float.

Marble could see her screaming as the trap came down on her, and he shoved the memory away. He couldn’t see it again. He couldn’t watch that happen again.

He shivered and went silent.

Sunny watched him and flipped over the lily roots on the rock.

Marble stared at the fire as she cooked them, but he didn’t say anything else.

And there was no more socializing for the rest of the night.

---☼---

Night came faster than Marble thought it had any right to. Sunny crawled into her hammock a while ago, having eaten her lily roots and gone to sleep not long after the sun went down. That left Marble sitting on the branch, alone, next to the still warm stone with the dying fire sitting on top of it.

The warm, red glow of the embers offered the only light in the trees, and by their light, he could just barely see the roots Sunny cooked for him, still uneaten, even though his stomach growled for something.

“How?” Marble thought again.

She...somehow she read him like a book. Sunny managed to open him up with the ease of a veteran surgeon and found him instantly.

“How?”

Sunny opened doors that Marble thought were locked and hidden so deep that the floorboards needed to be pulled aside to get to them. Yet she found them and opened the doors wide.

Marble just couldn’t figure out how.

Again the universe just let her guess correctly. That was the only explanation that Marble had, but...but she had been too right for that to be mere luck.

This train of thought annoyed him so much. He didn’t want to think about it, but at the same time, if he let it go, then he’d only be able to think about Vanilla.

He slowly reached out to one of the roots and bit into the now cold lily.

Marble chewed slowly before he glanced back at the canopy around them. He didn’t find anything that might attack them in the other branches, and he finally decided that he couldn’t keep watching their surroundings anymore.

He spread his wings and flew over to the hammock. He poked at the fabric and heard Sunny groan inside before her head popped out of the material. “What? What’s going on?” she asked.

“I can’t stay up anymore,” he replied. “I need you to take your shift.”

Sunny blinked with bleary eyes. “We’re fifty feet up in a tree,” she said. “At worst, we need to worry about something like a panther, but we’re too tall for that. Have you been keeping watch this whole time?”

“Well, I guess so,” he said.

“Go to sleep,” Sunny muttered. “We’ll be fine.”

Marble blinked before he moved back to the bedroll he rolled out earlier. He sighed, still reeling from the conversation he had earlier. How was he supposed to move forward from this?

He lay down on the woven mat but felt a knot in the branch stab into his back. The pegasus grunted and shuffled around, trying to get comfortable.

Somehow Marble couldn’t feel anything about it. He must have shoved it so far down that he simply couldn’t feel anything about it anymore. He heard of that happening before. Marble just pushed it so far down that he couldn’t reach it anymore. That was normal.

He shuffled again, grunting as a new knot poked him.

Marble figured he was overreacting anyway. Yes, Vanilla was gone, but it happened two years ago now, Sunny hit a sore spot, and he just reacted poorly. That was all. In fact, she took it like a champ. Maybe she spent a while being a therapist or something because she didn’t even blink when he tried to tear into her.

He grunted once more as he shifted before Sunny sighed. “Marble, are you having trouble?” she asked in an exasperated voice.

“I’m just trying to get settled,” he said.

Sunny sighed again. “Just come here.”

“What?”

“Come here, and get in the hammock.”

“Uh…” Marble hesitated.

“I am too tired to argue about this with you, and I and too tired to hear you shift all night long. Get in the hammock. Its weight has been cleared for two ponies.”

Marble blinked before stifling a yawn and spread his wings. He flew over, though he couldn’t say why when he thought back to it. He just flew over and slipped into the hammock next to the unicorn and felt exhaustion take him as he began to fall asleep.

---☼---

Sunny woke up first.

She went to bed earlier, despite the interruptions she had in the middle of the night. So it came as no surprise to her. What did surprise her was how comfortable she felt. She felt Marble’s body next to her, and the warmth radiating off of him seeped into her and strengthened her desire to stay in bed all day.

She shoved that aside and sat up, poking her head out of the hammock, only to find that nothing had climbed the tree to disturb them. Once she knew they were safe, she leaned back into the hammock and closed her eyes again.

Inner Celestia stirred.

Sunny smiled to herself as she lay back down in the welcoming warmth that separated her from the morning chill.

“Oh no,” Inner Celestia muttered. “No, you stop that right now!”

Sunny raised an eyebrow and wondered what, by the Sky, she was going on about.

“I’ve seen this before. You like him, and we need to stop.”

“What are you talking about?” Sunny muttered.

“Every time we’ve ever fallen in love, it happened just like this.”

Sunny rolled her eyes. “Sure, because I just invited ponies to sleep in my bed.”

“I am not joking!” Inner Celestia said. “This is how it started every time. You always tried to help a pony face their inner demons, get too involved, and then fall head over hooves because you just love doing that and—”

Sunny let Inner Celestia continue to ramble. She didn’t care right now. All the unicorn did was take a deep breath through her nose and relax a little longer. Right now, she could sleep a little longer just to gather her strength for the day’s journey.

Everything was going to be okay.

Chapter 20

The dragon continued to be a problem.

As they descended into the darkness of the dungeon, the dragon continued to heckle them at every turn. Ambushing them with a single breath attack before slipping away. He never stayed long enough for the party to burn through his legendary resistances and hold him still, and catching him in the flooded levels turned out to be completely impossible, just because he could dive into the murky water and hide. Beyond the swampy rooms, where the party moved through a crystal-encrusted cavern, the dragon still managed to hit them with an attack before slipping away again, striking in the rooms that had access to spaces big enough to hold his dragon form.

Because, of course, the dragon could shapeshift.

The dragon managed to slip into small cracks in the walls, hiding as the party passed him by, before leaping out, taking his natural form, and blasting them with acid before retreating down the hallways as a bird, flying too fast for the party to have a hope of catching him.

Luna had to admit she was impressed.

Dreadmane would mount the dragon’s head on her wall with pride and respect.

Luna looked out the window of her bedroom and pondered how exactly to deal with the problem. As she sat on one of the manor’s balconies, relaxing in the afternoon sun, the occasional flash of cameras from the journalists below reached up at her. They swarmed like starving rats at the sewer grate, hungrily snapping any picture they could to feed their various “newspapers,” though, for some reason, Luna didn’t feel the need to care about them today.

Instead, she focused on the dragon.

A dragon with the capability to shapeshift left her with few options. They could hide nearly anywhere and then ambush them from anywhere. Even if the monster only managed to strike at the party once a day, it still cut into healing resources that they couldn’t afford to lose. Yet, the party had to spend them simply because the breath weapon did too much damage for the party to ignore.

Ignoring the dragon was out of the question. Capturing him to fight was proving impossible, and while the idea of trying to trap the dragon had been floated at the table, they had very little to try and bait their trap with. The dragon would ignore any sum of gold they left out and didn't even think about budging for any meat or food. Instead, the dragon seemed out for revenge and wanted all of them dead before anything else.

At the same time, the terrible news was that the trap was the best idea the party had. If they could close off the dragon’s escape and force it into a fight, then they’d have a chance of bringing it down.

The question remained, however, how were they going to pull that off?

Luna frowned as she mulled it over before deciding that she needed to talk this out with somepony.

Luna glanced back down at the writhing mass of ponies below her balcony and regarded them for a long moment. A newspaper that came out not long ago said that Celestia had started playing Ogres and Oubliettes, and Luna heard through some old contacts that the company had a sudden sales spike.

A thought crossed the nocturnal alicorn’s mind, and a smile grew on her face. This would be a fun little adventure, and it would undoubtedly boost sales of some of her new favorite books.

She rolled off the lounging chair before she got up and teleported to the sidewalk just outside the gate.

A flash of light and the distinct pop of teleportation was the only warning the journalists received before Luna was standing, facing away from them, not five feet away. She didn’t stop, didn’t even acknowledge the ponies behind her, but merely began walking back into town.

They exploded into questions behind her, all trying to get a word in.

“Lady Luna, what’s your opinion on Princess Twilight appointing a Royal Spymaster? Especially ones whose records are near to non-existent?”

“Lady Luna! Lady Luna! Is it true your sister has become a shut-in to play ogres and oubliettes all day?”

“Lady Luna! Are you aware that you’re a foot shorter than you used to be?”

Luna said nothing.

She walked into town with her entourage, waving at the locals who crossed her path before making her way down to her now-favorite bookstore.

The alicorn entered the building with no fanfare and walked onto the sales floor. She immediately made her way to the back where the fantasy books waited for her and perused them, looking for a sequel to the Wyvernrider book she picked up about a week ago.

She picked up the paperback and examined the cover for her audience, and then nodded before she walked over to the coffee shop inside.

Caramel wasn’t there at the counter, but she did see a mare standing there. “Two things,” she said. “First, I would like a Lungo dropped into a mocha with a red-eye chaser, please. Second, could thee hold this book for me until I get back?”

“Uh, absolutely, Miss Luna.”

“Miss? Not Lady? Well, that’s an interesting development,” Luna thought to herself but nodded. “Thank you,” she said before she made her way to the restrooms.

She approached the mare’s room door before she paused and turned back to stare at the crowd of ponies behind her. “Do you at least have the dignity to let me have a moment of privacy? Or are you such animals that you need to be sent to the moon before you give me space?”

The journalists blinked before they all took a few steps back.

Luna nodded, satisfied, as she stepped inside.

The moment the door closed, and she was sure that she was alone in the bathroom. She teleported out of the bathroom. Luna appeared just outside the store, out of view of the windows, before she cast a Transform Image spell.

With a pulse of magic, she no longer appeared to be Luna. Instead, she appeared as a navy blue pegasus. She flapped her wings softly and flew her way inside, avoiding the crowd of ponies that hovered around the bathroom before she made her way back to the coffee shop. The mare behind the counter stared at the group around the bathroom but turned to face the pegasus illusion as Luna approached.

“Hello, what can I get you?”

There was a ring of magic, and the book Luna set down on the counter floated to her hoof. “I am wondering how my Lungo, Mocha, and red-eye is coming along.”

The mare behind the counter blinked. “Miss Luna?”

The pegasus winked. “Can thou lay blame at my hooves for this?”

The mare glanced back at the crowd at the restroom door. “No, I suppose not.”

She quickly began to prepare the caffeine monstrosity Luna ordered before Caramel finally walked out from the backroom. “Oh, Caramel, there you—”

He answered with his head slamming into the counter.

“Uh…” the mare said.

“Sorry, Beans,” Caramel muttered. “Thistle’s been hard on me this week again.”

Luna raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

“Well, aren’t you going to tell Luna about it?” the mare, apparently named Beans, asked. She glanced over at Luna’s illusion before she turned back to Caramel. “I heard her when she said she’d deal with it for you. She could definitely take care of it.”

“I don’t want ex-royalty involved,” Caramel said. “That’s not going to make things better. It’s just going to Thistle angrier, and he’ll get on my case even worse than he already is. At best, he just fires me at the point. Otherwise, he might cut my pay and make me work even harder.”

Beans handed Luna her cup of coffee. “Um, here you go, Miss Lu—”

Luna shook her head before she cast another image spell, Creating a new voice. “Thank you,” she said.

“Uh, absolutely, Miss Lullaby! Have a wonderful afternoon!” Beans said, catching on, thank the Sky.

Luna took her book and began walking over to the check-out line. She chewed her lip as she thought about what she had just heard.

Calling Caramel over to help her meant his boss did hold it against him, and Caramel himself refused to have her help. The alicorn could fix it for him very quickly, but he simply refused to be helped. How was she supposed to work with that?

What’s worse, he seemed to want the job. He must truly love working in the coffee shop if he wished to keep his position that badly that he’d be willing to put up with his boss acting like this. She frowned as she bought the book and made her way outside, Transforming her Image back into her true self as she left the building.

She must have overstepped. She shouldn’t have asked Caramel to take her to the books like she did.

“Oh, Luna, why do you keep doing this? Why do you always ask for a little too much and ruin everything?”

Luna pushed the thought aside. She made a mistake and could recover. Beating herself up about it would not help. The question was, what could she do to help fix this? Obviously, interacting with Mr. Thistle would not solve the issue according to Caramel’s wishes. Instead, she needed to figure out how to help him without going against his wishes, but the question was, how?

She needed to research this.

---☼---

Everypony gathered around the table, and Luna smiled as they got together. This was not a game night. Instead, Luna got in contact with Rolling and managed to put together an impromptu get-together.

Luna offered to host again, mostly because she didn’t want to subject one of her new friends to having their home flooded by paparazzi on an off chance they found out. Still, the others brought food; sandwich vegetables, potato chips, hayfries, cupcakes, and drinks.

The lunar sister would have preferred to grill some of the vegetables on a proper grill, but that would leave all her friends in full view of the camera ponies, which would defeat the purpose. So, without too many other choices, they grilled in her kitchen.

“Hot behind!” Sundance said through clenched teeth as he brought a sizzling frying pan around Ivory and began serving the vegetables onto open sandwiches.

Rolling rubbed her hooves together. “Wonderful!” she said. “Some Sundance cooking is just what the doctor ordered.”

“You need to let it sit five minutes,” the earth pony warned, “so cool it a second.”

Ivory picked up a bag of chips and began using telekinesis to split the pack into portions for everyone. “Oh, she’s just excited. You know that she basically eats hayburger and nothing but hayburger.”

“Lies, slander, and only a touch of hyperbole!” Rolling responded as she grabbed a single chip off her plate.

Platinum hovered over the plates and handed out soda cans to everypony while Luna glanced around at her gathered friends. “I have to assume then that thou work in a kitchen, Sundance?”

He nodded as he pulled a kitchen knife that he brought himself. “What gave it away?” he asked, smiling. He got to work slicing up a cucumber into wafer-thin slices. “But yes, I went to culinary school and then wasted that degree by working at a Rockcarrot Bar and Grill.”

“Hey, I like Rockcarrot.”

“Sure,” he said, “but it’s not the cutting edge of gastronomy or anything like that.”

“And how long have thou worked at this Rockcarrot?” Luna asked.

“I’ve been at it five years now,” he said. “The jobs okay, but working in a kitchen will kill you eventually.”

Luna frowned. “How couldst thou say so?”

“Oh, it’s just food service,” he responded. “Everypony needs their food out as soon as possible, if you get one thing wrong you have to do it over, everypony else in the kitchen is terrible at their jobs if not outright incompetent. From what I’ve heard, that’s basically the normal experience of the average food service worker.”

Luna furrowed her brow. “And dost thou not demand better conditions?”

“They wouldn’t listen to us,” Sundance said with such casual disdain that Luna frowned when she heard it. “You have to remember that most cooking in a kitchen today is done by recipe. If we complain too much, they’ll just fire us all and hire ponies that can follow a recipe, which is not a terribly high standard.”

Luna frowned. “That is not how it should be.”

“That’s how it works, though, Luna,” Ivory said. “There’s an excess of ponies looking for a job. So any good businessman will try and hire the pony that will do the job for the least amount of money. If they can’t find any pony locally, they’ll hire somepony from the next town over. At the cost of a train ticket, they’ve hired a pony with a lower standard.”

Luna blinked.

“It’s not about lower standards. It’s about the corporations,” Platinum said. “Companies like that have so much money that they can bully whoever they want and do whatever they want. You want to know where evil is in the world. It’s in corporations.”

“Oh no, here we go,” Caramel muttered.

“You see, we need to do is dismantle the corporations completely and—”

“Platinum, we don’t want to hear it. I’m sure even Luna knows where you stand on corporations and what you think about them,” Rolling said with a sigh.

“I’m sorry if the voice of the revolution bores you, Rolling,” he responded, but he didn’t push the conversation any further.

Meanwhile, Luna thought that she understood what was happening a little better. “Let me ask ye a question, then. How many of ye would rather quit your job but don’t?”

Every hoof but Rolling’s went into the air.

Luna slowly nodded. “I see,” she muttered.

She smiled and began moving the topic to something else, but she already saw the writing on the wall.

Employment was becoming more difficult in this era, and she already knew it’d be nearly impossible to enforce any kind of law that cracked down on this sort of behavior. At the same time, changing these rules would be a massive hit to the entertainment industry, and she knew that bread and circuses were many times enough to keep a civilization happy. Messing with either pillar would spell devastation.

On the other hoof, it wasn’t her place to dictate law anymore, and raising a classist revolution the year after Twilight took the throne seemed, well, mean.

A grand sweeping change isn’t what was needed right now. Instead, she needed to help these ponies right here.

The real question was how?

Being a better employer seemed like the most immediate answer, but Luna wasn’t running a business, and being retired typically meant that you weren’t working at all, but…

She had to think about this, try and figure out what to do.

For now, Luna enjoyed the company of her friends and ate and drank.

“So, what do we think we can do about the dragon?”

Chapter 21

Inner Celestia continued to rant.

A part of Sunny was impressed by how doggedly she stuck to the comment. The mental mare went on and on about responsibility, robbing the cradle, and a bunch of other nonsense that Sunny agreed to in theory.

But none of it mattered because she wasn’t falling in love.

“Like Tartarus, you’re not!” Inner Celestia growled. “We’ve both been around long enough to know better. You have a bad habit of latching onto peers just because you don’t have a lot of them. You’ve done this every time you’ve gone out, for Sky’s sake! Then they find out you’re the Princess and just wither under your gaze. This is going to turn out exactly the same, and you know it.”

Sunny didn’t even think about what Inner Celestia just said beyond noting the irony that she was the one telling her to keep her distance now.

“I wanted to make sure Marble was safe, not float him down the tunnel of love in the middle of the wilderness,” the mental construct shot back.

Sunny rolled her eyes. The alicorn projection apparently had trouble with overreacting.

“I’m only saying it because you know, deep down, that it’s true. Don’t ever forget we’re the same mare, Miss Smiles.”

Celestia, dressed in a disguise, briefly became consciously aware of who she was. The thoughts and feelings of Sunny and Inner Celestia crashed together after she tried keeping them separate for so long. The simple act of being herself took over in a tsunami of responsibility, guilt, and a desperate desire to just be an average pony. The alicorn wallowed in it all for just a second before she compartmentalized again.

“Okay, look,” Sunny whispered to herself as she chopped a vine in half in front of her. “The fact is, even if you’re right, we can’t do anything about it. We’re stuck with him until we get to the north coast. The sooner we get there and get him to safety, the sooner we can let this all go and get back to having fun, right?”

Inner Celestia huffed but agreed.

“What did you say?” Marble asked, hovering above her and the knee-deep water.

“I’m getting tired of the water,” Sunny replied. “It’s slowing me down too much.”

Marble nodded. “I can understand that. Do you want me to help you out?”

“What, you’re going to carry me across the whole swamp? You’ll wear yourself out, and then we’ll both be tired and slow.”

Marble hesitated.

Sunny sighed. “Thanks for offering, but I’m not sure it’s the best move.”

“Fair enough, I guess.”

Sunny shoved some plant life aside, and she found the road finally rose up through the swamp, cutting through a valley between two hills. “Oh, finally,” she muttered before she pushed forward and climbed out of the swamp. “I was starting to think it’d go on forever.”

She stepped onto the smooth stones of the road and shook the water off her legs. Marble landed next to her a moment later, avoiding the water. “I guess that solves our problem,” he said.

“Well, it solves the problem of trench hoof,” she agreed before she finished shaking the water off of her. “We’re still days away from where we need to be, but we’re working on that.”

Marble nodded before he blinked.

“What?” Sunny asked, following his gaze.

“I think I see something.”

“What?”

“Just...hang on one second,” he said before he took off, flying up into the air and pushing his way past the canopy.

A moment later, he dropped back down, a frown on his face. “It’s another Windtower.”

“Okay, so a place to stay for the night. Why are you frowning about it?”

“Because it doesn’t make sense for it to be there. All evidence we have says that Windtowers were used to mark the borders of the Lusitanpec territory, but we’re obviously inside their territory. Unless they decided to build a temple right on the frontier, but that doesn’t make much sense.”

Sunny resisted the urge to roll her eyes but managed. “That’s why I don’t think they were used for that.”

Marble glanced at her. “Is this another one of your simple insights to the universe? The ones that you don’t have any reason for knowing, but you’re somehow right about.”

“Look, my mentor at Celestia’s school had some crazy theories, but he made sense.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Marble said. “You went to Celestia’s school?”

“Yeah,” she replied. “Being a Royal Conservationist requires some serious schooling.”

Marble blinked as though he just now entertained the thought of Sunny being educated at all. “Oh...I...I supposed it does.”

Sunny decided that she wasn’t going to start a fight and let the slight go. “My mentor had some interesting ideas about the entire region and even more beyond. He was certain that the Windtowers—which is a direct translation, by the way—wasn’t used as political markers or anything like that. There were too many of them dotting the entire kingdom, and they were typically too close to towns and other structures. There had to be a different reason for them to be there, and this is another example of that.”

“So, what were they for?” Marble asked. “According to your mentor.”

“That’s the trick,” Sunny said. “He wasn’t sure what, and because he didn’t have the evidence for it, he couldn’t put forward an alternative.”

Marble blinked again. “Is this where you got the idea of the monument?”

“Of course,” she replied.

She wasn’t exactly lying either. There had been an archeologist that worked at her school years ago who spent his entire life trying to come up with some proof that the towers had another use, and the totem was, in fact, a monument, among other things.

The last time Celestia saw him, he lay on his death bed, terrified that he wasted his life trying to prove something that had no basis in reality.

She broke her rule about knowledge with him just for that.

“Professor Bristle had a bunch of ideas like that.”

Marble slowly nodded. “I...I see.”

“Anyway, there’s a tower, right?”

“Uh, yes. Tower. It’s not far, maybe a quarter-of-a-mile.”

Sunny nodded. “Great, let’s get going! I could use a rest in an actual room tonight.”

They pushed forward, now crossing ground much faster now that they had a good road under them, and soon found their way to the tower.

That’s when they heard a scream. The pair glanced up and saw a stallion in a black vest falling from the top of the tower.

Sunny and Marble both went on edge when they saw him, and Sunny quickly pulled him into the underbrush. She forced the branches of the greenery around them to grow thicker, covering them completely.

“What are you doing? That stallion’s hurt!” Marble asked.

Sunny shushed him and wrapped a leg around him to hold him close. “No pony would walk out into the middle of the jungle to commit suicide. Something pushed him.”

The pony wheezed as he hit the ground, and before either Sunny or Marble could do anything else, a creature leaped down the tower, gripping into the stone with powerful fingers to slow his descent. He dropped to the ground and heaved his way over to the wheezing pony. “At least now you do not need to worry about any more deadlines, eh? I’m sure that pleases you.”

The mandrill then grabbed the pony by the throat and squeezed hard enough for the two hiding ponies to hear the crack. With the pony in his hands dead, the mandrill looked back up to the top of the tower. “Find the last piece of the key,” it roared in a deep booming voice that made Sunny’s bones vibrate. “Lady Dusk’s patience wears thin.”

Sunny carefully moved a leaf and cleared her view to the top of the tower, where three ponies stared down from the open balcony.

They all looked terrified.

The mandrill began to walk away with a snort, using all four legs to propel it into the jungle.

Sunny glanced back up the tower and shook her head before turning to Marble, whose mouth hung open wide. “Th-that thing...that thing just killed that stallion.”

“Keep your voice down,” Sunny warned, hoping to catch the panic rising in his voice before it got too loud. “But yes, it just killed him, on someone else’s order.”

Marble blinked and looked at her. “A pony was just killed right in front of you, don’t you care?”

“Right now, we have to deal with the living ponies. We can worry about the dead ones later.”

---☼---

Marble gaped at the unicorn as she began moving forward toward the tower. She completely blew off the murder that just happened in front of her and continued to sneak to the building as though nothing happened.

Sweet Celestia, he just witnessed a murder!

Sunny pushed herself up to the side of the tower and glanced back at him. “Come on!” she whispered.

How could she…? How could she do any of this? This mare just watched a stallion die in front of her, and she barely reacted.

Sunny waved him over again, and he moved, though not entirely sure why. “What are you doing?” He hissed as he closed the distance.

“The Mandrill—”

“The what?”

“The giant monkey monster,” she continued. “That thing mentioned a key, and whoever this Lady Dusk is wanted it. I need to know why.”

“What possible reason would you have for needing to know that?”

“It’s why I’m here, Marble,” she said as she began to creep toward the entrance. “The Royal Conservation Committee has a vested interest in making sure that Equestria as a whole is conserved.”

“What?” Marble asked. “Do you hear yourself? You sound like a Daring Do novel!”

Sunny didn’t even look back at him as she poked her head around the corner and glanced into the tower. She slipped back and turned to Marble. “How are you in a fight?”

“What?” he asked.

“They’re two stallions in the first room. Both earth ponies, but they’re armed with crossbows. Can you help me fight them, or not? You did pretty well with the thessalhydra, but fighting ponies is a different matter. Do you think you can do it, or am I on my own?”

Marble couldn’t believe her. “Why are we even here? A pony was just murdered by a monster, and you want to go fight them?”

Sunny sighed before she pressed forward. Marble tried to back up, but Sunny wouldn’t let him before he felt her voice in his ear.

“Marble, do you know how often the country has been in danger of some terrible calamity? Just in the past ten years or so?”

It’d been a few, Marble wasn’t ready to count them all off the top of his head, but he knew that there had been more than one occasion where everything nearly fell apart.

“Somepony needs to make sure that whoever these are don’t make another near-crisis for us, and we’re the only ones here. We’re the only ones who can make sure that this doesn’t spiral out of control and become another Storm King. Now, are you able to go fight these ponies, or do I have to do it myself?”

Her words were cold. They had a bite that Marble could only imagine being matched by a Guard sergeant training soldiers. He felt like he could forge a sword of ice that had a core of steel.

“I…” he hesitated. “I’ll let you handle this, but I’ll be right behind you.”

She nodded and seemed to accept the answer before she turned and faced the door.

Marble watched her take a deep breath before she rounded the corner and unleashed. Yells and crashing stone rang out, and Marble could only stand there as he heard Sunny tear them apart.

He shakily grabbed the dagger from his side before he closed his eyes to strengthen himself.

The yelling stopped, and Marble chanced a look around the corner.

The entrance hall of the tower, a stoneworking piece of art according to the last building, was a mess. Sunny must have ripped the stones apart to use as weapons as she did with the Zorbs, and in doing so, she destroyed an incredible piece of art.

He couldn’t say she was wrong, though.

He walked past the two guards she mentioned, lying flat on the floor, unconscious and bound by stone manacles. However, Marble didn’t stay to study them too long beyond a cursory glance that they were still breathing. After all, he told Sunny that he’d be right behind her.

He started climbing the stairs and passed a pony struggling to get out of the stone bindings that pinned him to the wall. Marble gave him a passing glance before he continued up, moving at a slightly faster pace.

Marble reached the landing just in time to see another unconscious pony slide down the stairs with a broken leg to his name. He flew over that pony and up the next flight of stairs until he could hear the combat ringing in his ears.

He turned the corner to see another pony flying toward him.

Marble ducked, and the pony flew over his head, the rock that slammed into his gut carrying him down the stairs.

Sunny moved like a dancer, just like she had in the swamp against the hydra. The ponies around her simply could not touch her as she danced around them with such skill and grace that it seemed wrong for it to be on the battlefield.

A unicorn fired beams of fire, light, and lightning against her, but Sunny’s own magic intercepted it. Clusters of rock rose up out of the ground in front of her snatching the magic from the air. With Sunny’s little shields, she managed to weave her way through the battle unscathed.

A pegasus got between them, interposing himself between the unicorn and the Dancer. Sunny answered with an actual, honest-to-Celestia cartwheel. The action was so smooth and so ridiculous that Marble didn’t notice the stone bracelets Sunny strapped to his hooves until the pony she just cartwheeled past cartwheeled himself.

Unwillingly.

The pegasus slammed into the wall, pinned like the one Marble saw on the stairs, leaving only Sunny and the enemy unicorn on the battlefield.

Sunny paused in her dance, stuck in a pose of grace.

The unicorn glared at her, horn sparking.

Marble looked down at the knife in his hoof.

The unicorn’s eyes shot over to Marble, and she unleashed her spell.

Marble yelped and leaped into the air, but the fire spell arcing toward him already began to turn and reach up for him.

A rock dropped from the ceiling, intercepting the attack, and Marble turned to stare at Sunny, who just saved his life.

Just in time to see a bolt of lightning slam into Sunny’s chest.

She dropped to the ground, the fur on her chest ignited by the blow. Marble dove for her, putting out the fire on her chest before the enemy unicorn shot another flaming bolt at him. He leaped back, taking to the air as he felt panic rising in his heart.

A rational part of him said that Sunny probably survived the blow. Most ponies struck by lightning survived, though there were long term side effects, and the burns from the heat would usually leave her in the hospital, but—

Another fireball interrupted the rational part of his mind, and he stared down at the enemy mage.

Sunny’s chest was on fire again.

The mare wouldn’t let him get close to Sunny, and he needed to get close.

He felt the dagger in his hooves.

He moved. Marble didn’t even have the time to think about it. He just moved. He dropped to the ground under another spell before he shot forward, skimming the floor before he drove the knife into the unicorn’s neck.

She gasped, a whistling sound escaping her throat that—

“Don’t think about it! Don’t think about it! Don’t think about it!” He thought to himself before he spun and kicked off the body, flying as fast as he could to Sunny’s side.

He patted out the fire on her fur and risked a glance at the red flesh beneath. The burns were bad, but she was definitely breathing. The burning embers in her coat nearly lit up one more time, and for a third time, he put out the flames.

He glanced around, ignoring the bleeding corpse behind him. This wasn’t the place to tend to a wounded mare. He carefully hefted Sunny onto his back and moved down the stairs.

---☼---

Sunny blinked.

She looked around and immediately regretted moving. She pushed it aside for the fight before realizing it wasn’t happening anymore.

Soreness flooded her body, and she took in her surroundings. Sunny found herself on a stone bench in a room that she vaguely recognized. It might have been the same kind of room they camped in the last tower.

“Well, the sudden memory loss feels like we were hit by lightning,” Inner Celestia said.

The soreness was a great clue as well.

She tried to sit up and clenched her teeth in pain as she looked down at the burns on her chest.

“Good thing we brought Body Spells,” Inner Celestia commented.

Someone inhaled beside her, and she looked up to see Marble staring at her from across the room. “Sunny! You’re awake!”

“Yeah,” she muttered. “What happened? I was fighting a unicorn and….”

“And you saved my life,” Marble said. “You used magic to defend me, and it left you open. The unicorn got to hit you with a lightning bolt, and you dropped. The burns are bad, but you’ll probably live. You might have some side effects, though, some personality changes, dizzy spells, or depressive episodes….”

Sunny knew that. She’d been struck by lightning enough when flying, and luckily, she shared the pegasus’ ability to shrug off such blows.

“And the unicorn?” she asked.

Marble blinked.

And then a vacant look passed across his face.

“Oh, Marble,” she said before she pulled him into a hug. Sunny held him tight, despite the burns, because she knew that he was hurting more than she was.

Chapter 22

Marble watched as the skin on Sunny’s chest healed.

Healing magic was difficult, he knew. Some wounds could only be cured with multiple unicorns involved, but burns were apparently easy enough.

Sunny told him, as she was stuffing her face with food, that the spell just sped up her body’s natural healing, at the cost of aging her a few weeks. Along with a need to feed her body as though she had been resting in that time.

Now the burns were a mass of peeled skin, and while her fur hadn’t grown over it yet, it appeared to be nothing more than an old scar.

She finished her fourth whole taro root before she stood. “There, see? Good as new.”

“Good as functional,” Marble thought to himself, but he didn’t say as much out loud.

“So,” she began absently scratching at the furless patch on her chest. “Let’s go talk to our prisoners, shall we? I’m sure they’ll be glad to give us a little info.”

Sunny hopped up, away from the fire and whatever food Marble managed to find before they stepped outside. The stallion with the broken leg looked up at the both of them, seething the entire time, daring either of them to cut his ropes loose so that he could have a chance at them.

Sunny smiled as she walked up. “Good afternoon, sir. A quick couple of questions for your time. Who is Lady Dusk, and what does she want?”

The stallion with the broken leg continued to glare.

“No? Well, that’s quite alright,” Sunny said before her horn and with magic. The stallion nearly gasped as Sunny just picked him up and carried him down the stairs.

“Where are you taking me?” the pony asked.

“Well, if you had answered at least one of my questions, I would have told you,” she replied.

She continued to head down the stairs, past the pony still strapped to the wall, who watched them go past with a confused, exhausted, and curious expression. Sunny didn’t so much as look at the stallion. She continued forward without stopping and didn’t even glance at the two guards who were still lying on the floor of the tower entrance.

Sunny carried the pony outside and dropped him in the mud. “So what are you going to do, huh? Torture me? Tear me apart? Threaten to kill me?”

“Wonderful suggestions!” Sunny said. “I’m sure I could get some fruit juice on your face and drop you in an anthill somewhere. If that’s not sweet enough, I’m sure I can get some honey somewhere, but either way, it’d probably have you screaming in a few seconds.”

The stallion clenched his teeth and steadied himself.

And then Sunny turned around and left him in the middle of the jungle and went back into the tower. She walked back in and looked down at one of the guards that lay on the floor. “Maybe you could answer my questions. Who is Lady Dusk, and what does she want?”

The guard on the ground glanced at the door where she dropped off the first pony. “Um... what’s in it for me?”

“Well, I’ll let you go, for one,” she replied. “Which means that when I leave, you’ll actually be able to defend yourself from whatever monster tries to eat you.”

“What?”

“Oh, I won’t kill you, but I certainly will make it easier for the jungle to kill you. Sort of like an executioner, if you will.”

The guard blinked.

“There’s a thessalhydra in the swamp, you know,” Sunny said. “I’m sure it’s hungry.”

The color drained from the guard’s face. “I-I’ve seen it, yes.”

Sunny nodded. “I know it’s claimed the swamp as its territory. I’m sure all I need to is splash around, and it’ll head this way.”

“You know—”

“Assuming, of course, something else doesn’t get you first,” Sunny said. “I mean, thessalhydras are terrifying, but even a normal panther would be devastating against a tied-up pony. They wouldn’t even stand a chance.”

“You’ve made your point, miss.”

The other guard, lying not far away, nodded. “Very clear.”

Sunny nodded. “Wonderful. I’m glad. Now, about the answers to my questions?”

“Oh, uh,” the first guard began. “Lady Dusk is a mad pony that paid us a lot of money to find these feather things because she thinks it’ll let her control the weather.”

The second guard nodded. “It’s true! Totally crazy. Somehow got that monkey thing on her side, and if we argue, she sends it to kill us.”

“I see, and you still work for her?” Sunny asked.

“Because if we talk about quitting, she kills us,” the second guard said. “Or if we talk about desertion. Or a raise. Or complain about the high turnover rate. Or the lack of benefits.”

The first guard nodded. “Definitely would not rate her as my best boss.”

“So what I’m hearing is you all were hired for a job and then found yourselves held hostage?”

“Yeah, that sounds right,” the second guard said.

“That’s unfortunate.”

“Tell me about it!” the first guard said.

Marble blinked. This certainly wasn’t what he expected an interrogation to look like.

“So about these feathers or this ‘key,’ do you know what either of them does?” Sunny asked.

“Oh, not a clue,” the first guard said.

“Ruby Moon probably knows,” the second guard offered. “She knew magic stuff.”

Sunny frowned and glanced over at Marble. “That wouldn’t happen to be the unicorn, would it?” Sunny asked, glancing back down at the guards.

“Yeah?”

“Well, then we’re not going to get much out of her.”

“Uh...why?” the second guard asked.

“She took our fight a little too seriously, and we had to make some unfortunate decisions.”

The guards slowly blinked before they realized what she meant.

“You know, she wasn’t that nice of a pony anyway,” the first guard said.

“Sure,” the second guard agreed. “Bit of a brown noser, you know?”

“Well, thank you, gentlecolts. You’ve been so incredibly accommodating.”

“Helpful enough to be let go?”

“Absolutely!” Sunny replied. “Now, I can try teleporting you back to Equestria, but there is a possibility that you won’t make it back in one piece.”

Both stallions went white. “Uh…”

“I mean, your other option is to walk.”

“I’m good with walking!” The second guard said. “I mean, it’s only a few thousand miles away. That’s no big deal!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” The first one nodded. “It’s just a walk, and like my dad always said, ‘everything is within walking distance as long as you have the time,’ and if I walk away, I’m unemployed, so I have all the time in the world. It’s a win for everyone.”

“Alright, as long as you’re sure,” Sunny said before releasing the restraints around their hooves.

The two guards stood on their own, gave a polite wave, and began running as fast as they could.

Marble watches them leave, still stunned as to what just happened before he heard Sunny speak up behind him. “Come on, let’s go see if any of the other ponies know about this key.”

Marble felt the implied sting. “We’ll have to since you killed the only pony that knew something.”

“I’m sorry,” he muttered.

“For what?”

“I kill—”

“Are you apologizing for saving my life?” Sunny interrupted.

“No, I—”

“Marble,” she began. “You did what you had to save my life. I can’t blame you for that. Nopony can.”

“But she knew what—”

“Marble, look at me,” she said, cupping his muzzle with her hoof as she looked him in the eyes. “Marble, you saved a life, and you did everything you could to do it. You put your own life on the line to do it, and you just managed to walk away. You’ve done something that only the bravest ponies I know think about doing. You saved a life, Marble, and there is no evil in that.”

Maybe it was the way she said it, with such a calm, reassuring tone that sounded so motherly and gentle, but Marble felt something in those words, some ringing truth that he knew he was there but couldn’t find on his own.

He blinked away tears. “Okay. Okay, you’re right. Sorry.”

Sunny hugged him for a long moment before she pulled back. “Why don’t you take a moment out here. Take some time to breathe and unwind for a bit while I go talk with the other prisoners.”

“You sure?” Marble asked as he held back a sob.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about a thing.”

“Okay, okay.”

---☼---

Marble sat outside of the tower as ponies slowly began to make their way outside. Most ran into the jungle, though Sunny did deliver a couple more bound ponies out into the middle of the clearing just in front of the tower, where they sat staring at him angrily.

Finally, Sunny came back down and smiled at the gathered ponies as the last one she interrogated slipped out behind her and into the jungle.

“Well, then that just leaves you three,” Sunny said.

“You won’t get anything out of us!” the one with the broken leg said.

“And I don’t need to,” Sunny said. “Everypony else gave me enough information. I can work the rest out on my own. As it stands, the only thing you three represent is a threat.”

The ponies looked between themselves.

“I could release you and let you all go, but the truth is that just means I might have three ponies that don’t like me know where I am going and chase me. You might guess I’m not a fan of that idea, and you might even respect that. Or you might not. That’s entirely possible as well. The point is, I don’t want you following me, and I can’t afford to let any of you go if there’s even a chance of you coming after us. This puts me in a bit of a pickle, as you might guess.”

Sunny paused a bit before she looked them all up and down one more time. “So, as it stands right now, my only real option is to leave you all here and let the jungle rip you apart. Killing you wouldn't be that hard for it, I’m sure you know, but at the same time I’m such a gentle soul, and I’d rather not send you all to your deaths. So if any of you have any suggestions, go ahead and let me know.”

The three ponies in front of her stared at her for a long moment.

Sunny waited.

They didn’t answer.

“Well, that’s very unfortunate,” she said eventually before she magically picked up one of the ponies.

The pegasus stallion, who had both wings pinned to his sides, winced as though expecting some incredible pain before Sunny simply launched him into the air.

He disappeared into the sky above, and both still-bound ponies stared up at his disappearing figure, eyes wide.

One of them glanced back at Sunny. “I thought you said you’d let the jungle take us,” he said, panic rising in his voice.

“I did, but I also said that it seemed too cruel, and I am a gentle soul.”

“Gentle soul?” the one with the broken leg asked. “You just killed him!”

“Sure,” Sunny said, “but it was quick. I threw him high enough that he probably passed out from lack of air. With luck, he won’t wake up again before impact, but even if that happens, the death itself will be nearly painless. It’s certainly better than letting an animal tear you apart. It’s an excruciating way to go, I imagine.”

“You’re crazy!” the pony with the broken leg said.

“Maybe,” Sunny admitted before she grabbed a second pony.

“Woah, Woah! Hang on!”

“There’s not much to hang on to, I’m afraid,” Sunny said. “I can’t trust any of you, so I don’t have much choice.”

“I promise! I promise I won’t come after you!” the bound pony cried, panicked.

“Yes, but all I have from you is your word, and how can I trust that?”

“I can pay you!” the panicking pony yelled.

Sunny paused and looked him in the eye. “Pay me? What good is gold in the jungle?”

“What’s wrong with money?” the pony said.

“I need to live to spend it,” she replied before she glanced up.

“There’s a feather at the top of the tower!” he yelled.

Sunny glanced at him, a smile on her face before they all heard the throaty, terrified scream of the first pony she tossed in the air.

She grabbed the pegasus as he fell back down next to her. He bounced in her magical grip for a moment before he puked onto the ground, but otherwise unharmed.

“There’s a feather at the top, you say?”

“We didn’t manage to get it before you arrived,” the earth pony in her grasp said.

“That’s a fascinating piece of information,” Sunny said before the bindings around the earth pony’s hooves dropped to the ground. Though, the earth pony did whine when he didn’t hit the ground.

“Yeah, yeah, the feather’s up top. We didn’t get to it yet. That’s why the Mandrill was angry.”

Sunny nodded, pleased with the information. “Alright. So there’s a magical feather at the top of the tower somewhere, and you haven’t found it yet. I guess that’s good enough information to buy you your freedom.”

The pony with the broken leg glared at the earth pony in Sunny’s grip, but neither said anything.

Sunny hummed and hawed for a moment before she dropped the pair of ponies. “Get out of here,” she said to both of them, “and take your friend with you. He certainly won’t make it out without help.”

The pegasus and earth pony scrambled, grabbing the prisoner with the broken leg as they ran into the jungle.

Sunny let them run, watching them as they disappeared into the underbrush before she turned. “Well, that should hopefully buy us some time.”

Marble nodded from where he sat. “You really put them all through the paces on that one.”

Sunny shrugged. “Honestly, I was trying to come up with a way of just getting them away from here.”

“So you weren’t just going to leave them here to die?” Marble asked.

“I would have if they gave me no other choice,” Sunny replied.

Marble could hear the unspoken but gentle rebuke. “Just like you had to when you had no other choice.”

Sunny sat down next to him. “I will say though,” she began, “if that earth pony didn’t break just now, I’d have no idea what to do with the pegasus when he came back down.”

“You weren’t going to let him drop?”

“Next to me? No! Besides the moral problems, I don’t need to sit down for hours just to scrub blood out of my coat.”

Marble smirked, despite himself. “You’re a very strange pony, you know that?”

Sunny smirked. “I bet you tell that to all the mares.”

Marble rolled his eyes.

She chuckled and sat next to him. “Any other deep, burning questions you have?”

“Well, just one, I guess,” he replied. “Where did you learn to interrogate a pony like that?”

“The Royal Conservation Committee requires three years of guard training,” she replied.

“What?”

“It’s true!” she replied. “Back when Celestia ruled, she wanted every single one of the ponies that were rushing off to the frontier to know how to handle themselves. So she said they need guard training, and it’s been like that for the past, gosh, six hundred years?”

“I never knew,” Marble replied.

“Most ponies don’t. Celestia didn’t want to make anypony nervous that the actual size of military-trained ponies was three times bigger than it appeared.”

Marble shook his head. “That explains why you know so much about survival.”

Sunny shrugged and smiled.

“I guess I have one last question, though.”

“What?”

“Do you really know how to teleport?”

Sunny paused for a second. “Yes...and no,” she finally said. “Teleporting is based on the same spell mechanics as your simple telekinesis spell, but normally the amount of energy required to pull it off is so large that most unicorns don’t bother. I do have the energy and familiarity to pull off the spell in short bursts, and I could, in theory, jump back to Equestria in a long chain of short jumps.”

“But we’re walking across the entire jungle because?”

“I don’t have the practice,” she said simply. “I was serious when I said I don’t know if they’d all make it back in one piece, and it only gets harder the more things you’re trying to move.”

“So what you’re telling me is you could have gone back, but I’d be stuck here?” Marble asked.

“That’s the long and short of it, yes.”

“Okay, I guess that makes sense.”

“I hope it does,” Sunny replied.

Marble smirked.

The unicorn stood up. “Alright! So, there’s a magical feather at the top of the tower. Do you want to go see what’s up there?”

Marble frowned.

The body was up there.

“It’d be an incredible discovery. You might find evidence that shakes the entire field of hippopology.”

“That...that does sound enticing,” he said.

Sunny raised an eyebrow and smiled.

“I...I don’t know.”

“Would it help if I told you that I cleaned up the fight scene a bit?”

“It...It might.”

“Then come on, discovery waits!”

Marble followed after the mare and slowly made his way up the stairs. The tower, now empty, looked trashed for the debris that filled the hallways and stairs. Marble felt that the rise happened too fast despite the slow climb they made so they wouldn’t drop face-first into rubble.

Before he knew it, he found himself on the landing where he last saw the body. True to Sunny's word, though, the unicorn cleared her away, and he didn’t even see blood on the floor. Nonetheless, he tiptoed over the now desecrated ground.

They came up to the room at the very top of the tower.

“Alright, now that I know what we’re looking for, I can cast a finding spell,” Sunny muttered to herself before her horn lit up.

Marble stood behind her before she leveled a stare at the bookshelves before she picked the tomes off and set them aside. “And there.”

A door of stone slipped open at the back of the shelf and revealed a sky-blue feather.

“There it is.”

Chapter 23

The feather didn’t seem special when Sunny looked at it. It appeared to be a simple primary feather, and the only real quality of note seemed to be its size. If the unicorn grabbed the shaft in her teeth, Sunny could twist her head and dust the floor, making it longer than her legs.

“That’s a big feather,” Marble noted.

Sunny nodded as she pulled the feather out and looked up at it. She waved in the air slowly and noticed that it seemed firmer than it should be. “You could almost swing it like a sword,” she noted before giving the feather a test swing. They both could hear it cut through the air with every swing before Sunny glanced at it.

Inner Celestia sighed and wished she brought Energy spells so she could actually try and figure out what it did. But the limitation was the point, so breaking it by now wouldn’t help anypony.

“What do you think it does?” Marble asked.

“I have no idea.”

“Did you have any training on using recently discovered magic items?”

Sunny shook her head. “They mostly work on their own. Of course, this one’s even weirder than normal.”

“Why?”

“No gem. Every magical item I’ve ever seen has a gem to hold a spell matrix. This one does not, but between all our prisoners and the fact that the feather was hidden in a secret compartment in the wall, I’m sure it is magic despite that.”

Marble nodded. “Okay, so would it still do its thing on its own, or…?”

“Oh yes, the real question is what triggers it?”

Marble looked around, but Inner Celestia had an idea. “You know,” Sunny said. “If I had to guess, the Lusitanpec ponies probably had the feather up here in the tower for a reason.”

Marble blinked. “Do you think there’s a connection?”

“There might be,” Sunny said. “There’s only one way to find out, and we should probably wait for a day or two anyway so that I could heal myself up a little more.”

“So we’re here anyway, and we might as well try and figure it out?”

Sunny nodded. “Might as well. It’s not like we have too many other options, do we?”

Marble blinked. “I guess.”

She nodded. “Why don’t I go ahead and get dinner. Make sure that the camp’s set up, and when you’re done, try messing around with this feather and see if you can get anything to happen.”

Marble took the feather’s shaft in his teeth and nodded. “Alright.”

“I should be back soon,” Sunny said. “If I don’t come back soon, be ready. It might mean that the ponies we sent packing might have tried something.”

Marble frowned. “O-Okay.”

“We’ll be fine,” she told him. “The chances of that happening are small, not zero, but small.”

“Filling me with so much confidence, there.”

Sunny smirked. “We’ll be alright.”

Marble shook his head as Sunny began to make her way down the tower’s stairs toward the jungle.

“Don’t think I forgot,” Inner Celestia said.

“What?”

“Don’t think I forgot what you said. ‘Oh, we’re not falling in love. We’re just traveling with this pony! Never mind that he saved my life, and I’ve been a sucker for that my entire life.’”

“What are you talking about?”

“Do you want a list? Thunder Spark, Crimson Mask, Night Thunder, Silver Spirit, Nimble Gust—”

“Okay, okay. Sky above, you’re not pulling punches today.”

“You fell head over hooves for each of them, and nine of them happened to save you from one mistake you made that would have cost you your life if you weren’t nigh-on immortal.”

“Look, that’s a coincidence at best. Besides, you said it yourself; it never worked out. Why are you worrying about this one?”

She didn’t get an immediate answer for that one, but they both knew what it would be.

“You’re just afraid we’ll get hurt again is all,” Sunny hissed, keeping her voice down in case Marble was somehow listening. “Well, we don’t have to worry about it because neither of us is going to move on those feelings. Which, you and I both know, mean nothing at the end of the day.”

“They don’t mean nothing,” Inner Celestia argued.

“And I didn’t think I’d have to argue specifics with the mental construct in my head. Of course, they don’t mean ‘nothing,’ but they don’t matter much if we choose.”

Inner Celestia didn’t argue any further, and Sunny focused on trying to find some food.

She cast another Perceive Body spell to find living fruit or vegetables that she could eat and noticed a large clump of food not terribly far away. She began making her way over, carefully avoiding the puddles of thick mud that seemed to surround her now that she wasn’t on the road anymore.

Her food-finding spell pinged off a tree to her right, and she looked up to see ripe mangos hanging in the tree next to a few chimps. They watched her, curious, yet cautiously as she made her way below the tree and decided that mangos weren’t worth fighting a troop of chimpanzees.

“It’s for the best,” Inner Celestia said eventually. “We don’t need another pointless heartbreak because ponies can’t get over the fact that we’re royalty. Besides, outliving friends is bad enough. Outliving a husband would be devastating.”

Sunny agreed.

Though a thought did pop in her head. “Of course, we’re not a Princess anymore, though.”

“No!” Inner Celestia roared as she pounced on the thought to rip it to shreds. “Don’t even think about that! We just agreed it’s for the best.”

“And I agree,” Sunny said. “I’m just pointing out that we’re not royalty anymore.”

“You are opening a door,” Inner Celestia accused. “You’re opening a door, and you’re doing it deliberately! Are you trying to fall in love with Marble? Is there a reason you’re making excuse after excuse?”

“I am not falling in love with him.”

“My eye, you’re not!”

“Please, what do I get out of falling in love, hm? Ooh, I get to pretend to have a relationship for a few weeks before Sunny drops off the face of the earth. Then what happens? He gets a summon from Lady Celestia to her manor house and finds out that the mare that walked him through the jungle was lying to him about who she was and started crushing on him on their journey. It’ll go over so well, with no way of ever going wrong!”

“Then why are you pursuing this?”

“I’m not!” she nearly shouted before realizing that she just yelled in the middle of the jungle like a mad mare. “I’m not pursuing this. I’m not pursuing anything other than a little adventure in the jungle.”

“Doing a very terrible job of that,” Inner Celestia said with an eye roll.

“Because I have a mental projection of my boring, responsible self breathing down my neck. Let me make this perfectly clear: I am not in love with Marble, I was never in love with Marble, and I certainly don’t plan on ever being in love with Marble. Are you satisfied?”

The wind howled. A maelstrom erupted behind the unicorn and nearly picker Sunny up off the ground as trees creaked, groaned, and snapped in the sudden storm. She glanced up and saw a tornado spun up above her, throwing half-buried boulders and trees through the air.

Sunny barely held on the ground, and she needed to use her magic to open up a ditch in the dirt to hide in as debris smashed past her.

Sunny glanced up to see the clouds rushing past at terrible speeds before a boulder smashed into her ditch and blocked her view of the sky for a moment before the wind picked it up again.

Sunny realized with horror that whatever caused the storm that tore the boat apart had unleashed itself again. And then a terrible thought struck the mare like a lightning bolt.

Marble.

He was alone in the tower, and this storm could have just ripped the whole structure away. He could be dead.

The thought stabbed deep, and she began looking for any sign of cut stone in the raging winds above her. Large, smooth boulders and tree trunks answered her, giving her no answer.

Biting her lip, Sunny did the only thing she could think of.

She teleported.

Sunny made a short jump that she should be able to pull off, and she appeared in the middle of the wind. Debris battered against her, and the mare could barely keep her eyes open. Sunny forced her eyelids open for a second and saw a massive tree trunk flipping end over end in her direction.

She made another jump, teleporting out of the way of the giant club that the storm just tried to smash her with, before trying to make her way back toward the tower.

And then the wind slowed. Almost as quickly as it picked up, the storm faded, leaving only destruction as the sign that it passed through.

Sunny wasted no time. Now that she wasn’t fighting the wind, the disguised Lady began rushing for the tower, leaping over the fallen trees in her wake.

Her hooves pounded into the dirt as she rushed back to the tower, and she finally saw it in a break in the trees. It mainly seemed intact, though her blood ran cold when she saw the very top, where the room—the same one she found the feather in—lay cracked open like a broken egg.

She galloped to the entrance, and began climbing the stairs, and ran head-first into Marble.

“Oh, Celestia! Sunny, you’re okay!”

“Me? The room at the top of the tower is destroyed! I thought the wind tore you out!”

Marble took a deep breath. “No, no...I...I found out how the feather works.”

“What?”

“Uh, come on up to the camp. I’ll tell you there.”

“Okay,” Sunny muttered.

Marble began heading back up the stairs, and Sunny followed shortly after him, her heart still pounding in her chest.

“So feelings don’t matter, huh?” Inner Celestia asked. “It certainly doesn’t have us rushing into a storm to go save him?”

Sunny ignored her.

Even though she was right.

---☼---

“So, I finished setting up camp,” Marble explained, “and I went back up the room at the top of the tower. Looking at the pedestal, pulleys, and ropes hanging from the ceiling, I wondered if there was a connection between all of them and using the feather.”

Sunny nodded, following along. Marble’s assumption made sense, and since this was the second set of ropes that they found in as many towers, she also wondered if there was a connection.

“So, I set the feather onto the pedestal and started looking around for something to try and get it to work.”

Marble motioned vaguely in front of him. “I tried messing with the ropes, but I didn’t see what they did, and then I pulled one of them, and a hole in the ceiling opened up. Sunlight flooded in, and the next thing I knew, the feather lit on fire.”

“What?” Sunny asked, surprised.

“Yeah, the sunlight just lit the whole feather on fire,” Marble explained. “I wasn’t sure how it happened until it was too late. A moment later, the fire was out, the feather was gone, and the storm happened. It tore through the whole jungle, ripped the wall apart, and...well...you kind of figured out the rest.”

“So the feather combusts, and as it does, it causes a storm?” Sunny asked.

“I think so,” Marble said. “I even think that the window I opened could have had intervals that allowed a certain amount of sunlight to hit the feather.”

“To control the rate that the feather burns?” Sunny asked.

“Which might control how strong the wind blows from the feather. That’s what I think, at least, but I don’t have any way of proving it without another feather.”

Sunny nodded. “So, I guess we need to find another one to prove the theory, then?”

He nodded. “More importantly, this means that the Lusitanpec ponies could alter the weather and probably used these feathers to change it at these towers. That alone would have made the Lusitanpec tribe a powerhouse just because they were an all-earth-pony tribe that had access to weather magic.”

Sunny nodded. She knew of several tribes that tried to take control of the other tribe’s works. An excellent example would Talatitlan tribe attempted to control the sun without unicorns by using the Rings of Scorchero. She didn’t claim complete control of the sun at the time, but Celestia still warned them that if they used all the rings, it might just usher in eight hundred years of incredible heat. Regardless, the point was that it wasn’t unheard of for ponies to try and work around peace and unity.

Because apparently, playing nice was just too tricky back in the day.

“I can see how that’d be useful,” Sunny said.

“More than that, it means that hundreds of references that describe the Lusitanpec ponies as using the storm were being literal and need to be re-examined to look them over again. The implications are staggering!”

Sunny smiled. “I’m glad you’ve found something to bring back.”

“Well, I need a feather if I’m going to present it with actual proof if it’s going to be considered valid.”

“Well, we know this Lady Dusk character wants them, and we should probably stop her anyway, what with seeing as how she seems to be rather flippant about causing massive storms and puts very little value on pony lives.”

“She does have a murderous monkey backing her,” Marble said. “On the other hoof, isn’t that beyond us? Shouldn’t we let the Guard handle it?”

Sunny glanced over at Marble for a moment. The pegasus, well, he certainly wasn’t a fighter. That wasn’t any fault of his own. Most ponies weren’t made for fighting, and those who had the constitution to fight typically wound up in the Guard anyway. Forcing Marble into an adventure was perhaps a little unfair, not to mention that she should probably get him to safety first.

“Not to mention that keeping him around is only going to make the inevitable breakup all the worse,” Inner Celestia muttered.

“You make a fair point, Marble,” Sunny said. “We can’t all have guard training under our belts, I suppose.”

“Yes, thank you for remembering there are normal ponies out here.”

“But, if you want another feather, then we still might want to hit another ruin before we start booking it for the coast. Does that sound like something you want to try, or do you just want to head north?”

Marble hesitated for a second. “We can...we can try. If things get difficult, we can pull back out and try again. I don’t need to get one of the feathers right now. It’d be nice, but it’s not too important.”

Sunny nodded. “Alright, that sounds like a plan then. We’ll try to find another ruin, see if we can’t find a feather, and hope that we don’t run into any more of these ponies until we get you to safety. Once we do that, you can go back to Equestria, let the Guard know I’m hunting these ponies down, and I’ll do what I can.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Marble asked.

“I mean, you saw me deal with the team in the tower,” Sunny replied. “I can deal with most ponies without too much trouble. I might need to be a little careful when dealing with other unicorns, but I can certainly work with it.”

Marble frowned. “It’s a little dangerous.”

“Of course it is,” she replied. “But I’ll be honest, I signed up for a little danger on this one.”

Marble continued to frown.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sunny said. “I can take care of myself, despite what my recent burn says.”

“If you say so,” Marble replied.

Chapter 24

Dreadmane grinned.

She couldn’t help herself as she marched into the caverns. As they discovered, the indoor swamp gave way to a flooded but otherwise immaculate section of cut stone and expertly carved rooms.

Or at least, they would be if the crystals weren’t growing into the chambers. The large sapphire-colored gemstones grew from cracks in the walls, pushing away the excellent stone for the haphazard growths.

The perfect spot for their ambush.

This cavern was the same one that the dragon continued his hit-and-run attacks on, though it seemed that the dragon had somehow flooded the rooms since their last incursion.

It only meant that their trap would work even better.

They came up with their bait. Now all the party needed to do was set the trap.

“Art thou sure this plan will work?” The mare who was born on the battlefield asked. “I don’t even know if we can find the dragon again.”

“He’ll show up,” Shadesong said. “We have all his gold, and he’ll want that back.”

“But what if he merely grabs our bait and runs?” Dreadmane asked, trying not to sound too loud or too obvious.

“Then we still have more back at the camp,” Shadesong replied. “At the end of the day, he can grab as much bait as he wants, but we’ll still have more back at the camp.”

“Then I must ask, is it wise for us to leave the camp behind, unguarded?”

“There’s no way that the dragon can find it on his own. We’re the only ones who can navigate the labyrinth level. He’d have to—”

“Enough, both of you,” Luckstep said. “The dragon could be listening to us. The last thing we need is for you to give it ideas.”

More like they didn’t need to be too obvious. If Dreadmane and the others pushed it, the dragon might catch on.

Now they had to sell the trap.

They sloshed forward into the flooded caverns before they found a room that they could use.

“Let’s hope the dragon doesn’t watch us hide for our ambush,” Brightflame said.

“I can probably hide anyway,” Shadesong said.

“I say you probably can,” Hercule noted.

“We don’t want to take that chance, though,” Luckstep said before she began casting a spell. “This should help, but we need to move quickly.”

Shadesong nodded before he dropped a large bag of money into the water. It splashed loudly, and the party began to take their positions, hiding in the room for their ambush.

---☼---

“Okay,” Rolling said. “I guess the question then, is how long do you want to wait for your’ ambush?’”

“Long enough for it to be believable, I guess,” Sundance replied.

“And how long is that?”

The party members looked between themselves.

“Have you ever done anything like this, Luna?” Ivory asked.

“I may have spent some time in various wars waiting for an ambush, but perhaps if thou had listened to thine teachers in school, thee would have the answer,” she said with a smile.

“You definitely have,” Caramel said as he downed a twenty-ounce cup of iced coffee. “But the books don’t say how long you waited.”

Luna glanced down at him for a minute or two before smiling. “I suppose I’ll accept that. Yes, I have done something like this, and typically, I found that we would have to wait several hours for a trap to be sprung.”

“But we’re explicitly waiting for the trap to fail,” Sundance said. “We expect the dragon not to fall for it.”

“Then the question is how long do we want to risk being in the open,” Platinum said. “How long before the dragon loses patience with us and attacks, or something randomly stumbles across our path.”

Rolling smiled. “Random encounters are rolled every hour,” she reminded them.

“We have to wait some time, though, just so the dragon feels like we’re serious,” Ivory countered.

“Then let me ask thee a more important question,” Luna offered, “what is the longest we wish to stay? Is it feasible to spend the night waiting on the gold? Do we want to set up camp in the next room and take a watch while the others sleep?”

The negative replies around the table made it clear they did not think it would be a good idea.

“Then I propose that we wait just under the amount of time for a long rest,” Luna said. “Even if the dragon is watching us, as long as he’s aware we do not want to spend the night waiting for him, then it shouldn’t tip him off either way.”

“Isn’t this a little meta-gamey?” Platinum asked.

Rolling spoke up. “I’m willing to say that you guys have worked with each other long enough that you’d be able to pick that signal off of each other.”

“Sounds fair,” Luna said.

“Now,” Rolling said with glee. “I get to make seven random encounter rolls.”

The party groaned. “This seems like a bad idea,” Sundance muttered.

They heard the die bounce around into Rolling’s dice tray. Landing with a click-clack each time.

Click-clack.

“Ooh,” Rolling cooed before she looked up over the edge of her Gamemaster’s Screen and smiled. “Four hours in, you five are watching the obvious trap you set in the middle of the room.”

---☼---

Dreadmane suppressed the urge to yawn. Their watch was taking time. A lot of time.

She never personally enjoyed waiting, and even the mare who killed as quickly as she breathed hated the fact that the wait tore at her nerves at times. Still, she needed to sit here, if only to make the dragon believe their little trick.

She shifted in her hiding spot before she began thinking about what she would do the next time they got back to town. Another round of drinking and bedding any stallion she could lay her hooves on was starting to get boring in town, but there wasn’t much else to do in—

The water moved.

Dreadmane’s eyes snapped to the ripples that moved just above the floor, and her gaze turned to the door where they originated.

Her magical grip tightened around her greatsword, and she took a deep breath as she readied herself.

Slow, methodical steps sloshed forward, and Dreadmane saw the water splash into the room. It couldn’t be the dragon, she was sure, but the fact remained that something was making its way, rather obviously toward their trap.

What turned the corner shook the mare that knew no fear to her core.

Stomping forward came a giant of blue crystal. Flat, shining sapphire surfaces covered every face of the bipedal monster as it pushed through the water. The angular faces and sharp angles made it clear that the monster had grown into its shape.

But staring into the faces is what truly unnerved the barbarian.

Just beneath each of the flat surfaces sat a face. An agonized, tortured, screaming face, pounding against the crystal barrier that kept them trapped inside. As the golem lumbered by, Dreadmane was horrified to discover that the faces she could see weren’t even the only poor souls caught in the monster. The ones that pressed themselves against the crystal walls were shoved out of the way by more trapped, tormented figures. Some had avian features, to the point where you’d almost mistake them for ornithians, while others bore horns, like minotaurs or unicorns. Some even had the strange but unmistakable form of orcs.

And then it struck her.

Dreadmane realized precisely what she was looking at.

The gem golems, or whatever they were called, acted as prisons for souls. The literal spirits of the dead were trapped inside the monster. The same demon that made its way across the room as though nothing were wrong. Dreadmane’s goddess, the incredibly fair, just, and beautiful Luna, shook in revulsion and told her servant that these things must not survive.

Dreadmane nodded at the order, but she knew attacking the monster here would only throw everything they worked for into the trash. Instead, she just let this monster pass by, for now.

The beast lumbered past, and the ripples in the water quieted until the monster left the room.

---☼---

“I knew you were going to make a custom monster,” Caramel muttered.

“Well, of course, you did,” Rolling said. “But did you expect a walking soul jar elemental?”

“No, but I knew to expect something I wouldn’t expect, so it doesn’t count,” Caramel countered.

“More importantly,” Platinum said, “why does this thing exist?”

Rolling smiled. “Well, you’ll just have to get to the bottom of the Sapphire Depths and discover that.”

Platinum glared at her. “I hate it when you make me care about your really cool lore.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Luna smirked.

“Alright,” Rolling said. “Let’s see if anything else happens during your wait.”

Luna heard the die hit Rolling’s trade three more times before Rolling sighed. “The rest of your time spent watching the trap goes by quietly.”

The party collectively sighed.

---☼---

Dreadmane continued to glare into the pit of water before Shadesong walked out into the middle of the room, sighing loudly. “I don’t think the dragon’s showing up,” he nearly yelled to the others.

With the cue given, the others began to move out from their hiding places and gathered up. “We might need to face that crystal creature on the way out,” Brightflame noted, “and if we do, I think it’s best if we take pieces of it for study.”

“The entire thing needs to be destroyed,” Dreadmane growled. “Luna wills it.”

“I do say I agree,” Hercule added. “That thing is an abomination upon the earth.”

“I hope we don’t need to fight that and the dragon,” Luckstep said.

Everyone else glared at her.

“What?”

“Don’t you know the universe is listening?” Shadesong muttered. “Come on, let’s go.”

They gathered the bait, their stuff, and everything else they could grab before they began making their way back.

As they entered each room of the cavern, they readied themselves for any chance of attacking, or, at least, any chance of running into the crystal golem. Yet, despite that, they didn’t see anything all the way until they got to the swamp.

They glanced at each other as they began moving to the other end of the massive room, passing the temple as they squished their way through the mud. They marched all the way to the waterfall that flooded the swamp level and used the secret key to open the staircase that led to the labyrinth above.

The staircase was narrow, but they still managed to climb the stairs without much issue or sign of the crystal monster. Then they came to the submerged section. The stairs stopped suddenly, broken apart by a collapse somewhere in the stone that left a pit that filled with water over the years. Brightflame cast a water-breathing spell, and the party slipped into the water.

The trip through the submerged tunnel was always a long one, but the party had several trips worth of practice now and got through the twisting, broken tunnel quickly. They broke the surface of the water a little later and resumed their climb up the stairs.

As soon as they finished the climb and walked up into the warm brown, smooth walls decorated in murals of nature scenes, they let Brightflame take the lead. His natural minotaur senses made navigating the labyrinth trivial once he knew where they were going, even when the large maze sections moved on them.

The only way through the dizzying, shifting walls was either with the help of a magical ball of yarn that the party kept in Shadesong’s bag for safekeeping or with a minotaur’s help. More importantly, the maze divided the dungeon’s upper levels of easier monsters from the lower levels of true monstrosities.

With any luck, the crystal golem would be lost down here, while the dragon would follow a short distance behind.

---☼---

“I am really sorry that I trivialized your maze, by the way,” Platinum said.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Rolling said. “Mazes typically don’t work well in O&O just because if I do it right, you have no way of marking your progress, which is a stupid way of playing that becomes very boring very quickly.”

“And I still do not understand why,” Luna interjected. “Could thee explain why that is?”

Rolling smiled. “Okay, you come to an intersection, going left or right. Which do you choose?”

“Left,” Luna said.

“Alright, you go left. You walk for a while and then come upon another intersection. Going left or right. At that point in time, you have no way of knowing if it’s the same intersection you just passed or not, not without some sort of mark. The easy answer for the players then is to stick to the left wall, which gets rid of any challenge to exploring the maze, while just taking more time, but even then, it only takes more time if the players don’t already know where they’re going. Sticking to the left wall is the answer for any maze-based challenge in O&O.”

“I see,” Luna said.

“Now, I know that. That’s why I put the magical yarn in the room right next to the maze entrance. If Platinum didn’t pick a minotaur, this whole maze would still be trivialized by design. The maze is only there, so I have an in-lore reason to separate monsters’ challenge ratings. Mostly, anyways.”

Luna nodded. “I understand. Thine cleverness shines through your design, Rolling.”

“Flattery will not give you a second divine intervention chance,” Rolling warned.

“Wait,” Caramel said, nursing a freshly-brewed cup of coffee. “What do you mean by ‘mostly?’”

Rolling just smiled.

---☼---

As Dreadmane exited the labyrinthine halls into the standard, rectangular rooms that they discovered earlier, she felt a sense of relief flood over her. Each time she entered the twisting corridors, a part of her feared that they’d never get out again.

Yet Brightflame’s sharp mind had led them out once again, and she once more thanked Luna for setting the shy but amiable minotaur on her path. “Alright, we’re nearly there. When we get back to town, I suggest we spend some of our bait on some true carousing.”

Shadesong smirked. “You certainly know how to speak my language, Dreadmane.”

“Drink is the language that speaks to all things,” Dreadmane said. “I need not of the monk who can speak to animals or plants when I have a keg in my hooves.”

Luckstep smirked while Shadesong began opening the door.

It swung open, revealing a familiar clear room with a set of stairs that climbed up to the room to a platform. And at the top of the stairs stood the crystal golem.

The party blinked.

The monster turned and charged, the only noise being the heavy thuds of its feet slamming into the floor as it rushed them.

Shadesong moved first, leaping out of the way and slipping behind the monster, setting up a flanking attack.

Dreadmane covered the distance, bringing her greatsword to bear and slamming it down into the creature’s rocky hide. The moment she hit, Shadesong struck, using one of his enchanted knives to stab into the monster’s back.

Hercule came up next, unleashing a powerful strike backed by divine energy, while Luckstep prepared a mantra, releasing a spell into Dreadmane. She felt the world slow around her, and her own reflexes and mind began to speed up as she felt the familiar hasting magic take hold.

Brightflame moved next, opening with fiery rays of power that scorched the air around them with burning roars.

But it was the golem’s turn. It raised one of its might hands and slammed it into Dreadmane’s head, landing a blow that would nearly kill Shadesong outright. With her mind ringing, she barely registered the fact that the monster grabbed her, and a terrible sense of dread filled her when she thought she heard the words “Make a Wisdom saving throw.”

The mare, who faced a thousand terrors, looked on in horror as she felt and saw her own soul being torn from her body. She could see her own form, like chalk lines on a blackboard being pulled into the monster’s head where the screaming face of a long-dead ornithian wailed in agony.

Panic settled into the others.

Shadesong ran around the beast before he managed to feed Dreadmane a healing potion before he stabbed at the creatures and began to retreat out of arm’s reach of the terrible monstrosity.

Dreadmane swallowed the potion and called her thanks before she began unleashing her rage in a series of blinding attacks. Under the effects of the spell, she could attack twice as fast. With Luna’s righteous power backing her, she quickly began to tear into the beast with her greatsword, breaking free of her grapple before maneuvering around the monster and out of the way of its grasping arms.

Hercule brought his own blade down again, pouring more divine energy into each of his attacks.

Luckstep seemed to split in two, with one of the Abyssinians rushing over to Dreadmane to begin healing her.

Brightflame, eyes wide, began casting another spell, and the temperature started to drop drastically as a hail storm began to form around the golem.

The golem swung at Hercule, and the mighty, club-like arm caught him across the beak. The sapphire giant grabbed the paladin by the neck, but he managed to resist whatever dark magic the crystal monster cast on Dreadmane, and his soul remained in place.

Shadesong rushed back in, stabbing into the monster’s exposed back, even as the hail storm battered them all down in the blizzard.

Dreadmane struck out again with her blade, and it struck true, cracking the gem that made its torso in half.

Force slammed into her as the souls inside exploded out of the monster, screaming into the sky. The blow knocked her over, and her skull rang from the explosion. She lay there on the ground, stunned for a moment before she finally managed to get back on her hooves.

“Sweet Luna,” she said. “That thing hit harder than the dragon.”

---☼---

“Why does that thing have a death burst?” Ivory asked.

“Why does it stun you for a round?” Platinum asked.

“The day we face two of those at once, we’re doomed,” Sundance muttered.

“We still have to face the dragon once we lead him back to the camp,” Caramel noted. “I don’t know how we’re going to do that.”

“I just blew my fourth level spell for this,” Platinum moaned.

“I could use more healing as well,” Luna said. “Although, I know that our healing resources are going to be pressed when we face the dragon.”

Sundance shook his head. “We need a new plan.”

Rolling just smiled. “Then how about we pick up next week, then? It’ll give you a little time.”

They agreed and began to pack up.

“T’was indeed a good fight, and wonderful session, Rolling.”

“Thank you very much,” she replied.

“And I have to thank thee, Caramel. That was a ‘good save,’ as thee say with the potion.”

He smirked. “Well, you know, us non-magic types need to stick together, is all.”

Luna nodded. “Indeed.”

Chapter 25

“Get in, try and grab a feather, get out,” Sunny recited. “Seems easy enough.”

The road led them to another pyramidal temple, though it stood twice as tall and four times as wide at the base. What’s more, a carved statue of the Coatl sat at the bottom of the stairs up the structure, marking it as a temple to the flying serpent. Between the sheer size and the statue, there was little doubt that a feather lay hidden inside. Of course, the bigger question is whether or not the black-vested pony and their murder monkey were already there. Luckily, they wouldn’t be there, and Sunny and Marble could deal with the traps themselves without worrying about anypony trying to get the jump on them.

“Easy?” Marble asked.

“Sure,” Sunny said.

“Easy?” he asked again.

“Of course! The worst we have to do is work through a few traps, maybe a small group of thugs, no big deal.”

Marble blinked at her while giving her an unamused look that Sunny began to enjoy. “How much of this bravado is an act you’re putting on, and how much is just the fact that you’re just crazy?”

“Who says that I’m putting on an act?” Sunny replied with a smirk. Marble frowned, and the unicorn bit back a laugh. “Well, are we going to stand here all day, or are we going to get up there and find the secrets of a long-dead people?”

“You worry me, you know that?” Marble asked.

“I should hope so,” Sunny said as she began to climb the stairs. “I’m a mad mare chasing an adrenaline high by leaping into the jungle. If that doesn’t inspire some concern, then much of what I understand about the world is incorrect.”

Sunny continued to climb, leading the pair up without looking back, a habit she developed as Princess until they made it about halfway up. There, the pyramid flattened out, with a second-tier upon which the rest of the temple was built.

“So do we want to try for a side entrance here, if there is one?” Marble asked.

“I’m not sure,” Sunny said. “If there is a side entrance, it will let us get into the depths of the pyramid fairly quickly, but since we don’t know where the feather would be hiding, even if it’s in there, to begin with. It could be at the top for all we know, in the little altar building.”

“Yes, that’s why I asked which way you want to go,” Marble asked, clearly unamused.

Sunny shrugged. “Hey, if we’re on the same page, then at least we’re communicating well.”

“You still haven’t answered the question, though,” Marble muttered.

The disguised Celestia raised an eyebrow. “Let’s keep climbing, then. We know the temple has a way in, but we don’t know if the temple has any side entrances. I’d rather not waste time looking for a door only to wind up heading back up to the temple if we don’t find one.”

Marble nodded, accepting that answer.

With only a few more moments of rest to catch their breath, they continued the climb to the very top. Inside the small temple building, they once again found the image of the coatl covering the back wall and ceiling of the room, above the altar that dominated the room.

Sunny glanced around at it before she found the two narrow stairways that began to descend into the pyramid below. “Well, Marble, do you—?”

Marble already began hovering over the right-hand stairs as he began searching the walls and stairs, looking for traps.

“Alright,” she replied. “On the same page, as I said.” Despite that, though, she decided she’d glance down the left-hand stair just to satisfy her curiosity.

A pony lay charred at the base of the stairs.

Sunny turned back to Marble as he began to make his way down the right-hand side, step-by-step. “Avoid this one,” he said, pointing to one of the treads, “there’s a pressure plate.”

“Why would someone just put a trap on the stairs?” Sunny asked as she walked down. “It would be a pain to avoid all the time.”

“That’s why I think there’s only, at most, two on this staircase,” Marble said. “It’s easier to remember a couple of steps at the start to stop most thieves. After that, we’ll need to discover the pattern.”

Sunny furrowed her brow, and Inner Celestia blinked. This...this was actually something she hadn’t heard about. “Pattern?”

Marble didn’t even look up from his work. “Typically, there are patterns to traps. If every denizen of a trapped temple had to remember every single trap, they’d kill themselves whenever they forgot the smallest detail. Instead, there’s typically a set of general rules to follow, which would help otherwise. Things like: walk on the right-hand path, avoid the third turn, or bow under the gaze of Celestia. That kind of thing. It’s easier to remember one or two general rules than every single spot that’s been trapped in the entire building.”

Sunny blinked. That...that made far too much sense for her to be learning about this now. How had she not figured this out, between the adventures she’d taken and the years she spent alive?

“If it’s a trial, though, then there’s typically a riddle or something that gives a clue, but that’s only if they’re trying to prove a point of some kind.”

“I...and these are used a lot?” Sunny asked.

“I mean, it’s a working theory my sister and I came up with,” Marble said. “We don’t have any real evidence to prove it, but Vanilla pushed it in the archeology field so hard that I think a bunch of ponies started believing it. It’s probably accepted for its logical working and the fact that it seems to work, but unless we get actual confirmation from a pony that used to live there back in the day, we can’t prove anything.”

“But it works?” Sunny asked.

“Most of the time, something like 80 to 90 percent,” he replied. “This step’s also trapped.”

Sunny avoided the step before she continued down all the way down until they got to the landing. “So, how do we figure out what this ‘pattern’ is?” she asked.

“Well, we need to find some traps, and from there, we’ll need to start finding similarities to it and the other traps. From there, we could start trying to reverse engineer the rules.”

“So, how are we going to look for traps?” Sunny asked.

“To start with? No way of knowing for sure,” Marble said. “I’ll have to try and be thorough, and that’ll hopefully let me catch everything that’s coming our way. With any luck, we might not even trigger anything.”

They turned the corner and found more bodies. A long corridor stretched ahead of them, with statues lining both sides of the hall. They bore the shapes of jaguars, dragons, coatls, and snakes.

Sunny glanced over at Marble and watched him tense, but slowly, ever so slowly, he began to relax back into his previous stance.

“Are you going to be okay?” Sunny asked.

“I...yeah, just give me a second.”

Sunny nodded and stayed put, not moving from her place as Marble recovered, but she did glance about, trying to read the bodies for any secret she could pry from them.

“Lovely way of putting that, Sunny,” Inner Celestia muttered. “So glad to know you care.”

Sunny ignored the jab. That one, in particular, was something she came to peace with a long time ago. Between ruling a country, commanding an army, and simply outliving everypony around, Celestia learned to deal with death a long time ago. The ex-Princess still cared, though. She refused to let herself stop caring for the ponies beneath her, but time still marched on, and every passing year made death a closer companion and a more efficient tool to use.

The dead ponies on the ground showed a variety of wounds. Cuts and burns mainly, though Sunny did note that some of the ponies did have yellow-fletched darts poking out from their chests, a sign of poisoned darts if she ever saw one.

And she did. They were right there.

More importantly, she saw where the bodies lay. All of the ponies that died to darts seemed to lay in front of the snakes. There was a possible venom connection there, but that seemed a little shallow. Nonetheless, there was a possible pattern there.

“Okay, okay…” Marble began. “I think I’m good. Uh...there might be a connection there with the snakes and—”

“—and the darts. Yes, I saw that one,” she said. “Would it really be that blatant, though?”

“Sometimes trapmakers aren’t the most creative bunch,” Marble said. “Either that or they spend all their creativity coming up with the trap themselves.”

Sunny frowned. “If it’s that overt, then maybe the dragon spews fire.”

Marble nodded and began moving forward. He walked up to one of the dragon statues and began glancing at its mouth. “There’s definitely soot around the thing’s mouth. The fire’s probably a good call.”

“How’s it triggered, though?” Sunny asked.

“It’s either a pressure plate, light through a lens that heats a mercury thermometer, simple hair triggers, or even a tripwire. The light one is complicated and was typically only used by the richer members of history, but then again, this is a temple.” Marble glanced around the room before he looked down the hallway. “Can you get that...what is that? That stick?”

Sunny squinted as she looked down the hall but found it and used her magic to pull it toward them. Her magic helped her realize that the object was a wooden post of some description, left discarded presumably by one of the ponies that now lay dead in the hall.

As it passed by the jaguar statues, something triggered, and a large disk of glass rose from the ground and sliced a section of the wooden post clean off.

“Well, that answers the question about the jaguar,” Marble said, as Sunny kept pulling the wooden post toward them.

It passed another pair of jaguar statues, and again a glass disk shot up from the floor. Sunny maneuvered the post out of the way this time, tried to watch where the giant spinning blade emerged from the floor, but saw nothing beyond a line between the flagstones that appeared no different from the other grout lines.

The other statues didn’t react to the post, and Marble finally grabbed hold of it once it got within reach. Taking one end of the post in his hooves, he began to tap at the flat stones on the ground using the very end of the piece of wood as he glanced up at the dragon statues. As the pegasus tapped the cut stones, Marble began moving from one side of the hall to the other. As he got to the center of the hallway, the post suddenly hit a pressure plate, and the dragon statues spat flames from their open mouths, flames cooking the very end of the post.

Marble nodded. “Alright, so the dragons have pressure plates in the middle of the hallway, so stick close to them, and it would probably be best to duck under the mouths anyway. How much do you want to be that the snakes hit at the edges?”

“You sound very confident about that,” Sunny noted.

“Oh, of course,” he replied. Every good set of traps makes you jump through hoops to stay safe. Just imagine if a thief came in and tried to stick to the walls, he’d totally miss the dragons, and considering that’s probably who they want to stop, to begin with. Meanwhile, they want to make sure that invaders, those who wouldn’t be sneaking and walking in the middle of the hallway.”

Suny nodded. “Alright, and the jaguar?”

“Probably for use against pegasi,” he replied. “The trigger is probably the light mechanism I described earlier, which means that it works incredibly well against flying ponies.”

Sunny nodded.

“In our defense,” Inner Celestia said. “The intricacies of trap design were never important for ruling a country.”

Sunny wanted to take comfort in that, but she also remembered installing a thousand and one secret passages in their Everfree Castle, not to mention Canterlot Castle. She probably should have spent a few years studying the work that her architects did for her.

Marble stood the post straight up and moved back to the edge of the room. Taking the piece of wood by the very bottom, he pressed it into the floor.

The snakes responded immediately. Darts shot out from around the snakes, hitting the post five different times from five individual points. Marble nodded as though expecting this before he moved back to the center and tapping again.

Nothing happened.

He began moving back toward the edge and finally found the edge of the trapped area. “Alright, so stick close to the dragons, avoid the snakes, duck under the jaguars. That just leaves the coatls.”

Sunny nodded before she began to follow the pegasus, using the rules he came up with as he began to examine the space in front of them. “I...I think the coatls are safe. Which has a religious theme to them as well.”

“Are you sure?” Sunny asked.

“There aren’t any pressure plates. The light method’s a little too expensive to use consistently, and I didn’t find any tripwires at that.”

“So, we have to stick close to the dragons, avoid the snakes, coatls are safe, but duck under jaguars?” Sunny asked.

Marble nodded. “Sounds right. Of course, we can only trust that for this hallway. Assuming the pattern is about the position you need to be in may turn out very bad for us. It could just as easily be something like ‘dragons breathe fire,’ or something equally simple.”

Sunny sighed. “Okay, I was hoping for an easy answer,” she replied.

“Too easy an answer can be infiltrated,” Marble pointed out. “We want to avoid that.”

Sunny nodded, conceding, and began to follow after Marble as they navigated the hallway, moving past the statues that clung to the sides of the walls. As they turned the corner, though, they found the following problem ahead of them.

The passage split into four different stairways, each descending deeper into the temple. From the lack of dead ponies, both could tell that none of the entrances were trapped, though Sunny suspected that’s because the traps were further in than she could see.

At the front of each passage, another pair of statues flanked the stairs. One had the coatls, one had the jaguars, another had the dragons, and the last had the snakes.

“We...we want the coatl passage, don’t we?” Sunny asked.

“Not necessarily,” he replied. “If the assumption that it’s safe holds out, then that’s where we want to go, but if we misunderstood the coatl statue, it might wind up being more dangerous.”

“So, how do we go from here?” Sunny asked.

Inner Celestia provided an answer, but Marble beat her to it. “We have to check the wear on the stone,” he replied.

The pegasus dropped to the ground and glanced at the rock beneath it. He looked at each set of stairs carefully, comparing the stairs with a discerning eye. “The coatl stair was definitely the most popular set of stairs, though the dragon does have a lot of traffic going down there as well.”

“So...if the coatl is safe, that makes sense, but why the dragon passage?” Sunny asked.

“That’s the big question,” Marble replied, “but first, which one do we go down?”

Sunny debated for a moment. “Let’s head down the coatl passage,” she said.

“Alright, whatever you say,” he replied.

They continued down, moving through the corridors and refining the pattern with every trap they ran into. The bodies they found warned them of more surprises, and Marble worked quickly. As they predicted, the dragon statues continued to breathe fire at a more extended range, the snake at close range, and the jaguars all hit any floating targets. What’s more, despite their initial worries, it seemed that the coatls were, in fact, safe. In fact, as they ran into more intersections, they found more coatl statues, and they took the coatl path each time.

Then they found the door.

Sunny was tempted to name it a gate, as the monolithic stone reminded her of the doors to the first walls of Canterlot Castle. They towered over the pair of ponies and the bodies that lay in front of it. They bore minimal decorations, only a twisting coatl that danced in across the doors, with two large gemstones in the eyes that thrummed with magic. The arcane aura radiating off the gems was strong enough that Sunny could feel it vibrating against her horn.

The bodies lying in front of the door appeared burned and lay in tight balls as though trying to curl up into the fetal position. Some had muscles that were still tensed, and the faint scent of ozone made it clear that lightning of some description was to blame.

“I...uh...I don’t think they got through,” Sunny said.

Marble nodded as he stared at the destruction around him before taking a deep breath. “I concur,” he muttered. “I can feel the lightning magic coming off those eyes, so I have to assume that there’s a key to open the door, and without it, the door won’t open. One of the few traps that pure numbers won’t beat.”

“Do you think it was down that first dragon passage?”

Marble nodded. “That makes sense to me.”

“Alright, let’s head back up and check that out. If these ponies couldn’t get through, then the vault here has probably been untouched. If anything has a feather in it, this does.”

Marble nodded again. “And the sooner we get that, the sooner we can get out of here.”

---☼---

Zalxayl moved through the jungle as quickly as he could. Lady Dusk’s patience was wearing thinner by the day, and she would not suffer these delays for much longer. He needed to get her some results, and quickly.

He moved quickly to the last ruin the Sons of the Storm infiltrated, the one that had not reported in for the past three days. The mandrill heard of this blatant act of defiance and moved to dole out punishment if any of Lady Dusk’s ponies still lived. If the temple’s traps took care of them all, then he’d merely send a new team to see if there were any more secrets to find.

Zalxayl broke the tree line and landed in front of the temple. Its massive size was impressive but unimportant, though it did have a statue of the Great Storm Snake at the base of the stairs. He frowned as he saw it. The sprawling size of the temple would make it challenging to explore efficiently, but he would have to if only to please Lady Dusk.

And he lived to serve.

Chapter 26

The dragon passage led down into a different temple section, but there were fewer traps than the coatl path. However, they quickly realized the reason why. On either side of the hallway, new rooms appeared, kitchens, bedrooms, ancient study rooms, and more all appeared down this path. Obviously, this is where the priests once lived, and as they snuck through the old rooms, they found the remnants of long-dead lives.

“So, what do you think we’re looking for?” Sunny asked.

Marble wasn’t sure. In his experience, these kinds of “keys” could be any number of things. He’d seen coins open doors, staves, even jewelry could be properly enchanted to open magical doors. These were rare in Lusitanpec territory. The gems needed for such enchantments had to be made by foreign unicorns and then traded for excess food that the Lusitanpec ponies produced in large quantities. “A magical item of some sort,” he answered, hoping that he didn’t sound like an idiot. “I have no idea what kind, though. My best guess would be a headdress or something. Anything that might deal with the Coatl himself.”

Sunny accepted that without any question or comment, which he hoped was a good sign that he still had some credibility with the mare that seemed so good with everything.

Less bitterly, he did concede that Sunny knew what she was talking about, more than he initially thought. The mare could easily be a leader in his field. She could go hoof-to-hoof against any of the ponies he knew back at the university and talk circles around them. Sunny could just walk straight into academia and metaphorically take the crown from the rulers as though she were a barbarian of old.

But, at the end of the day, she was out here. The mad mare could be making so much money at the university. Instead, she decided to move into the wilderness and apparently fight cults for a living.

A part of him thought it was crazy, another thought she made a perfect choice, and she probably didn’t belong anywhere else. Everything he saw about the unicorn revealed a mare made for adventure, and, well, she was very good at it.

“Trap here,” Marble said, avoiding the trigger he spotted before moving further down the hallway.

Sunny avoided the pressure plate he pointed out and followed after him. “I still find it weird that they’d trap the area they lived in.”

“This is where they wanted to catch thieves more than anything,” Marble explained, though he suspected that Sunny might catch on once he got through half of his sentence. “If a thief wanted to steal something, he might get away with taking some jewelry from a crooked priest rather than stealing an artifact from their actual gods. Stealing from mortals is a lesser crime compared to that. So the priests needed to protect themselves.”

Sunny nodded.

“Besides, if the priests know the rules well enough, they won’t have to worry about the traps nearly as much. There’s a tripwire above us. You should be fine, but watch your horn.”

Sunny ducked behind him just in case. “I suppose that makes some sense,” she replied. “Though I do wonder about the wisdom of keeping the key in the less-guarded area of the temple.”

Marble shrugged at that one. “Sometimes ponies aren’t the most logical beings in the world.”

Sunny nodded. “I can attest to that, at least.”

Marble turned back to the hallway in front of him and worked carefully but confidently as he slowly solidified the reverse-engineered rules of the traps of the temple. Despite the essential job of finding traps and making sure both of them survived, he couldn’t help but think about the mare following him.

How well-traveled was she? How much did she actually know? At this point, he’d already decided to look into her crazy theory about the monument once he made it back to civilization, but did she have any other secrets?

He tripped a pressure plate in front of him and watched as a blade dropped down like a guillotine. “Another one,” he noted.

“I did notice,” she replied.

Marble let the silence sit between them for a moment before he spoke up again. “You’re... you’re very good at this.”

“What? The traps?” Sunny asked, confused.

“No,” he said. “I mean everything...well, everything else. The whole adventuring thing. You...well, you handled an entire tower’s worth of ponies, and,” he glanced down at her scarred chest where the lightning bolt hit her, “and you mostly came out alright.”

Sunny raised an eyebrow. “You say, trying not to look at the lightning scar on my chest,” she said with a smirk.

“Well, I mean, you got hit, but you were saving my life when it happened, but you dealt with most of them before that. You could have probably done it alone.”

Sunny nodded slowly. “I suppose,” she said. “But really, it’s not that impressive. It’s mostly just training, confidence, and time. Anypony could do what I can if given enough education and training.”

“I don’t know about that,” Marble said, “and besides, you spent your time learning that. That matters.”

Sunny nodded. “I guess it does,” she replied.

They devolved into silence again.

Marble wanted to say something again, but everything he could think about just sounded like empty flattery. He kept working, moving forward, and heading down the hallway before he found a new trap.

“I don’t know, I just—”

“Hush, do you hear that?”

Marble froze as all of his instincts from his years of delving into ancient tombs stood on end as he began to sweat, leaning over a stone he just checked for triggers.

“I hear something,” she whispered.

Marble still didn’t move but strained his ears, listening for something, anything that Sunny might have heard.

“The side room, is it clear?” Sunny asked.

“The door’s not trapped,” he said. “I can’t speak for the rest of the room.”

Sunny whispered back. “The odds?”

Marble thought about it for a moment. The individual rooms were probably the quarters of the priests who lived here. The chances of any one of those rooms being trapped were low, but it could just as likely be a dummy room meant to lure a thief in. Those would most certainly be trapped and would have little other use than to kill somepony. Most had to be actual rooms, though.

“Decent,” Marble replied.

Sunny moved, tugging at Marble as she disappeared into the next room, pulling in the pegasus after her. Spinning blades didn’t jump out of the floor to tear them to shreds, which Marble took as a good sign. Sunny moved carefully, nearly closing the door behind her as she pressed herself up against the wall.

Now Marble could hear it. The unmistakable slapping sound of flesh against the stone floor got louder and louder with each passing second. Something moved toward them, something without hooves, but what—

The mandrill.

Marble’s eyes went wide as he pressed himself against the door as well, hovering over Sunny as she stared into the hallway from the door.

The mandrill came into view, stopping right up next to where they stood a second ago, just visible through the crack between the ancient stone door and the frame.

The mandrill sniffed the air deeply, moving his head carefully as though searching for a scent in the air. “The scent dies here,” he muttered in a deep, resonating voice that Marble felt in his bones. “Why? Why stop here?”

The mandrill glanced around carefully, and for a brief moment, Marble looked into the monster’s eyes. Marble stared into the bright yellow but somehow terribly dark eyes, with pupils wide and searching. The pegasus felt that cruelty that didn’t even bother to hide in the thing’s eyes, and the shiver that ran down his spine nearly had him falling to the ground.

The mandrill began to move forward with a sharp exhale, only for another guillotine blade to drop from the ceiling.

In a move that Marble couldn’t believe he saw, the giant primate did nothing but raise an arm and bring it down on the falling blade like a hammer blow. The glass blade shattered in two, falling forward in an explosion of a thousand crystal shards that scattered down the hallway, leaving the mandrill entirely unscathed.

Mable’s breath caught in his throat. The thing moved so fast, with such terrible strength, that it broke the trap while it was deploying.

There was no way that could have actually happened. He must have imagined that or something because there was just no way—

The mandrill moved around the corner, and the moment it did, Sunny moved. “We need to go.”

“What?” Marble asked.

“We can’t stay still,” Sunny replied. “If that thing catches us, I don’t think he’ll just let us go with a warning. We need to get out.”

“But what about the feather?” Marble asked.

“We can get another one somewhere else,” Sunny replied. “Right now, I’m more worried about you getting out alive.”

Marble blinked, and a part of him noted her word choice. He shook his head. “Sunny, these black-vested ponies are willing to throw so many ponies at the temples. At this rate, I don’t know if there are any other feathers. We know that the vault here is untouched. This is our best chance. We’ve got to make this work.”

Sunny blinked. “I wasn’t expecting you to say that, but are you sure?”

He was. Ever since the tower, the thought had been burrowing at the back of his mind. If these ponies were being forced to die, then either the feathers were such a limited resource, or they probably managed to brute force their way to enough that neither Sunny nor him could count on it.

Marble nodded. “I don’t think we have the time we thought we had.”

Sunny nodded slowly. “Alright. Okay, here’s the plan, we need to go through these rooms to try and find the key. The faster, the better. We need to be careful of both traps and the mandrill. The moment things get too dangerous, we leave and maybe try to regroup, no arguments, alright?”

Marble nodded.

Sunny sighed. “For the record, I don’t like this, but we’ll make it work.” She glanced back over at the door. “The monster seems to be smelling us somehow. We’ll need a way to mask our scent.”

“There’s not a lot we can do with that, I think.”

Sunny nodded. “Then our other option is to get our scent everywhere, and we’ll have to be fast too. I don’t like the chance of him turning around to follow after us once he knows the scent trail ended.”

“I thought it did end?”

“He said he’s not sure, and we need to capitalize on that. If we can flood the room with pony-smell before he gets back here, that’s our best bet to remain hidden.”

“How do we do that?”

Sunny checked the door one last time before pushing it open. “Start rubbing your body against all the doors and walls. If the monkey’s sense of smell is strong enough to follow us anyway, then it won’t matter.”

Marble wondered why he should bother then but moved nonetheless, finding every non-trapped surface and brushing against it. He ran down the hallway, rubbing against everything he could while Sunny did the same.

“What next?” Marble asked as he pressed against a wooden door.

“Then we need to hide,” Sunny said. “Leave that to me.”

Marble watched as she disappeared into a side room as the pegasus kept rubbing against every surface he could reach.

“That’s enough. We can’t waste more time,” Sunny said, calling him into the room she ducked into. Marble quickly joined her, and he blinked when he saw an open hole in the wall held up by magic.

“Wha—?”

“Get in, quick!” Sunny called.

Marble moved, though he was wondering if it was a good idea or not to move into the hole in the wall. Sunny moved in behind him and used her magic to close the open gap, sealing them in.

Marble waited for a moment before he whispered. “Is...is this safe?”

Sunny shushed him. Then, a moment later, the unicorn answered. “Probably, just don’t break my concentration. I don’t know if this is a load-bearing wall or not.”

Marble glanced around the small pocket in the stone and wondered how well this would work.

“Marble,” Sunny hissed.

“What?”

“I’m going to make a peephole in the stone. If you see the mandrill, let me know because that will be our chance to move.”

Marble nodded and watched as a small hole opened in the wall.

The mandrill stood in the room. The monkey’s breathing was deep, and his eyes scanned the room as it searched around for something, anything that might give away his prey.

“They are close,” the mandrill muttered to himself. “They must be. But where? And why hide? Have ponies decided to betray Lady Dusk? I must kill them if they have. Can’t have traitors to the Lady, no-no.”

Marble glanced up at Sunny, but her eyes were closed, concentrating on the spell that kept everything up around her.

He turned back to his peephole.

The mandrill took another deep breath before he roared and slammed his powerful arms into the ground in a fit of rage before rushing out of the room.

Marble waited a moment, checking to see if the monster didn’t run back in before he whispered. “I think we’re good.”

Sunny opened the wall again before her magic began picking up rocks from around the room and slipping them back into place. A minute later, the stones looked basically correct, though a bow that wasn’t there before started to develop.

“I hope that holds,” Marble said as Sunny panted slightly.

“I hope so too,” Sunny said. “Come on, we can’t waste any more time.”

Sunny galloped out of the room, and Marble followed after her, running down the hallway he hadn’t explored yet. Marble took the lead here, using every secret he pried from this temple to avoid the traps that lay in front of them, those that weren’t shattered by the mandrill, of course.

Another turn and they found themselves staring at the entrance of a singular but strangely opulent room.

Marble took one look at it and recognized it as the quarters of the High Priest. “Grab anything that looks important,” Marble said as he flew into the room.

Sunny followed after him and began searching wildly through the cabinets and containers around the room.

Marble tore up a basket and saw a pristine feather headdress staring back at him. The superb condition of the brightly-colored plumage, untouched by time or dust, gave away the thing as magical, and the pegasus pulled it out. “I think I found it,” he said.

Sunny took one look at it and nodded. “We need to head back to the vault.”

“But won’t the Mandrill be in the way?”

Sunny bit her lip before she turned to look at the wall. “Well, I have a terrible idea.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll head back, and if we run into the thing, just worry about getting around the thing, I’ll distract him and then catch up.”

“Are you sure?”

She smirked. “I can teleport short distances. I’ll be fine.”

Marble sighed and nodded. “Alright. Let’s go.”

With the headdress in his hooves, he took to the air and began flying back up the hallway. Sunny followed close behind, using the same path Marble showed her on the way in. They passed the room they hid in and heard stone grinding as the bowing wall began to bend more.

“That’s going to collapse,” Marble said.

“And I don’t want to be here when it does,” Sunny said. “Keep going.”

They pushed forward, heading back upward toward the split pathways, with Marble flying—

The massive form of the mandrill smashed through a door and barked in a terrible laugh. It fell in behind Marble, roaring as he chased the pegasus. “There you are! There are the traitors!”

The beast raised one of its arms to bring down onto Marble’s back before the primate was enveloped in golden light.

Sunny pulled the monkey off his feet with a mighty magical heave and threw him back behind them both. The mandrill tumbled but regained his feet quickly and laughed. “Strong traitors, eh? Most disappointing.”

“Keep going, Marble!” Sunny said. “Get to the vault! I’ll keep him distracted.”

“How?” Marble asked.

Sunny answered by pulling one of the stones in the walls free.

Rock groaned as the wall began shaking, but none of the stones from the ceiling fell on top as they moved.

“Are you crazy?” Marble called. “You’ll bring the whole place down on us!”

“Not yet,” she said with a smirk before she threw the stone behind her. It crashed into the hall, followed by a cry of surprise from the monkey. “Hopefully, you’ll be out of the temple by the time it actually starts collapsing.”

“You want to bring it down?”

“If it stops that thing?” Sunny asked before they both heard the sound of the boulder that she pried from the wall whistle through the air before it flew past them and smashed into the corner. They turned around. “Yeah, I think that would be a fair trade.”

They turned another corner and appeared in the room with the differently marked passages. Sunny nearly screeched to a halt and made her way to the snake passage. “Head down to the vault, and grab whatever’s in there. I’ll try to hold off the monkey while you get it. Grab it, and then head back up as fast as you can. I’m only able to give you five minutes. Can you do that?”

He glanced down the hall. He might be able to make that. It’d be close, though. He turned back to Sunny.

“I can do that.”

She smiled. “Then get going.”

He nodded and took to the air again, rushing down the way.

And all he heard was Sunny yelling behind him. “Hey ugly! I bet you can’t follow me!”

Marble hoped to Celestia that she’d be okay.

Chapter 27

Shadesong released a sigh of relief as they passed out from under the entrance to the Sapphire Depths. “We’re finally back at the camp,” he said.

The camp wasn’t terribly luxurious. A handful of tents, with a few sitting on top of a wooden deck erected, provided a flat surface to study on. The handful of scholars, priests, alchemists, and bodyguards they hired to work on whatever they found in the dungeon would typically wander around the base as their hired teams researched everything the party found. Still, night already came, and they were asleep.

Or, that’s what Shadesong wanted the dragon to think. In reality, most of the ponies retreated to the town of Hopesedge. Many of them were happy to get out from under the shadow of the tower that stood a few dozen yards from the entrance to the Sapphire depths. Instead, the base camp ran on a skeleton crew of five or so guards whose job was to make the place seem lived in while the others waited in safety.

“Be it ever so humble,” Luckstep agreed, walking up to the mercenary on patrol.

“Ma’am,” the pony in the brightly-colored “uniform” greeted as he leaned over his greatsword.

“Captain,” Luckstep greeted back.

“All’s quiet up here, Ma’am. Nothing’s made so much as a peep since you’ve been down.”

“Good. The last thing we need is any surprises.”

The keyword was Shadesong’s idea, naturally. The mercenary had been told to prepare for an evacuation if the word “surprise” was used.

“Well, if any surprises do happen, we’ll be ready.”

“I say you will!” Hercule agreed. “You’re some of the best mercenaries we can hire, what with the dragon’s hoard and all.”

The mercenary nodded and smiled. “Gold does a lot of good talking, sir.”

“I’m sure it does,” Hercule said.

“More than you know,” Shadesong added. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to live my fantasy of sleeping on a massive pile of coins again.”

“Didn’t you say that hurt your back?” Brightflame asked.

“It’s a good pain.”

“Then let me introduce you to a worse pain,” a voice said behind them as the dragon played his card.

The party spun, grabbing their weapons, and the mercenary did what he had been paid to do. He grabbed a whistle and blew a loud piercing note as the dragon began to rear up, and the party scattered out of the range of its acidic cone before an iron net came crashing onto the dragon.

The iron links smashed into the dragon, weighing it down.

“Captain, get your men out of here!” Luckstep yelled to the mercenary before she prepared a spell in her paws.

The mercenary nodded before he blew his whistle three more times before he picked up his greatsword and sliced through a rope that released a wooden box. “Good hunting, Ma’am!” he called before he rushed off, taking his men with him.

The dragon roared, furious, and his voice dropped to a low growl. “You laid a trap for me? You must know I will not let you live through this.”

Dreadmane crossed the distance over to the open box the mercenary left behind and reached into it before pulling out a war hammer. “Says the dragon facing a weapon made to break it.”

The dragon growled.

---☼---

“Alright, everypony,” Rolling said with a smile. “Let’s roll initiative!”

“Let us slay a dragon!” Luna cheered with glee as she lifted the greatsword behind her in triumph. “18!”

“16!” Platinum called.

“10,” said Ivory.

“Also 10,” Sundance said.

“Really?” Ivory asked.

“I rolled an eight,” Sundance replied with a tired tone.

“25,” Caramel said, smirking.

“Alright!” Rolling said. “Give me a minute to set up the battlefield, and we’ll see if you actually manage to kill the dragon.”

Caramel stood. “While you do that, I’m going to head to the bathroom real quick.”

“Do not take too long!” Luna cried. “I shall be hard-pressed to forgive thee if I am denied the chance to kill a dragon.”

He nodded before retreating from the library and heading back into the manor. He walked the familiar path to the bathroom, and as he did, his mind began to wander. His boss, Thistle, finally seemed to calm down after his initial tantrum, and Caramel looked like he finally had a chance to get a good night’s sleep for once.

He went to the bathroom and did his business before he made his way back to the table.

“Caramel!” Luna cried the second she saw him. “Get in here! I wish to use this dragon bane hammer, and I cannot fight the dragon until thine seat is filled!”

“Can’t a stallion have enough time to go to the bathroom without being disturbed?”

“Nay! Now seat thyself!”

Caramel rolled his eyes. “As you wish, your Ladyship.”

“Alright,” Rolling said. “Let’s start.”

“Remember,” Platinum said. “Hit him with a bunch of heavy stuff as fast as you can to burn through his Legendary Resistances. Hopefully, he’ll use one to get the net off him, but we still need to go through two of them.”

Caramel smirked as he looked down at his character sheet. “Leave the first one to me.”

---☼---

Shadesong moved first. He rushed the dragon, still pinned by the large net, and the thief prepared the dagger with the unique paralyzing poison he’d been saving. The heavy mesh gave him all the advantage he needed to plunge the poisoned blade deep into the dragon’s back, dealing a vicious blow. The dragon roared but seemed unaffected by the poison, its incredible constitution overcoming some of the venom’s effects.

The creature opened its maw and unleashed a torrent of acid aimed at Brightflame. The minotaur moved too slow to get out of the way, but the spell he cast to protect him from acid helped him keep on his hooves. More worryingly, as the acid breath trailed off, it revealed a hole in the net, still hissing as the metal dripped to the ground.

Shadesong watched in horror as the monster began to tear its way free. The dragon wasn’t supposed to get out that easy. The good news was he wasn’t completely free. He only managed to wiggle halfway through the net, but the fact that he got through without much difficulty still concerned him.

Luckily, Dreadmane attacked.

“In the name of Luna!” she roared before she brought down the magical hammer.

The strike slammed into the dragon, nearly sending it to the ground as it staggered. The holy glow coming off of it no doubt adding Dreadmane’s own particular punch to the blow. The unicorn laughed before she attacked again, slamming into the dragon with another bone-shattering strike.

Brightflame answered the dragon with a spell of his own. Sparks flying from his fingers as he cast the attack, a rain of fire dropped onto the captured dragon burning its scales and scorching its back.

The dragon answered. Its long, serpentine neck swung over to Dreadmane and bit down hard, grabbing her in its teeth before he tossed her aside. The mare merely laughed.

Luckstep and Hercule moved next. The Abyssinian summoned a large, spectral scimitar to slice into the dragon before Hercule unleashed his own spell. The dragon’s eyes locked onto Hercule as the magic took hold, and the griffon knew that the duel he asked for would soon begin.

Shadesong stabbed at the monster again, hovering over it as he hovered over the dragon and drove his knife between the wing’s shoulderblades. The dragon, in response, tore himself free of the net and dragged its body out into the open before it stretched its wings and took to the skies.

Taking off, it swooped toward the griffon before its claws and teeth chomped down on him, bending armor under the incredible jaw strength.

Dreadmane charged, but the dragon was out of her reach. She couldn’t bring the war hammer to bear, but she dared not waste a moment of not hitting the beast. Without much choice, she pulled a pair of javelins off her back and threw them with all her might. They struck true, digging into the monster’s back.

Brightflame unleashed another spell, throwing up spikes from the ground that tore through draconic wings, and forced the creature back down to the earth. It landed with a devastating blow, and Luckstep moved up his spectral scimitar for another slash before a powerful, brilliant spell slammed into the dragon to light the way for another attack.

With the cleric’s guiding spell, Hercule found the brilliant weak spot left behind and struck. The blade hit a critical area in the dragon, and as Hercule’s holy radiance tore into the beast, it roared again and bit down on the paladin once more.

Shadesong moved carefully, diving underneath one of the torn wings of the dragon before stabbing into the pit between body and wing. “Come on! Die!” he cried through grinding teeth before he looked up to see the dragon staring at him, eye to eye.

He couldn’t even cry out before the dragon’s acidic breath nearly drowned him. He felt the liquid burn and bubble his skin before he passed out.

He didn’t know how long he was out, but when he opened his eyes again, Luckstep was standing over him. She picked him up onto his hooves and yelled his face. “Go, we’ve almost got him down!”

Shadesong glanced over and saw Hercule bring his blade down again, cracking one of the dragon’s horns before the rogue got his wings under him. He took off, climbing into the air as he prepared another strike.

The others were looking ragged. Half of Dreadmane’s fur was gone, and blood seeped down her side. Hercule’s armor was nearly ruined, barely hanging onto him. Brightflame’s robe hung off of him and revealed the boiling skin beneath. They were being pushed to the very edge.

Shadesong turned in the air, getting his knife ready before he dropped like a stone. He dove down and held out his blade, keeping his knife out in front of him. Shadesong fell like a star and slammed into the dragon’s back, dislocating his shoulder as he stabbed as deeply as he could.

---☼---

Rolling looked up at him from over her screen. “Alright,” she said. “How do you want to do this?”

A roar shot up from the table as six rounds and an hour-and-a-half came to a close. “I guess,” Caramel said as he watched the rest of his friends listen intently to the narration he earned by right of conquest. “I guess then since I’m diving for him, that the best move that makes the most sense is that I hit him with my body so hard that I knock some of his vertebrae out of line.”

“Are you saying you want to break the dragon’s back with a rogue?” Platinum asked.

“I’m not saying I snap it like a twig,” Caramel said. “I’m saying I hit it in the right place and gave him a fatally serious spinal misalignment.”

Rolling smiled. “By a stroke of luck,” she began. “Just as Dreadmane was about to unleash another blow of her hammer into the dragon’s jaw, Shadesong dove through the sky like a screaming meteor and slammed into one of the dragon’s spines along his back. As the hammer blow hit at the same exact moment, you both managed to turn the dragon’s head too far one way and its body in the other direction, snapping its neck. Congratulations, you have killed Ergenth the Clever.”

Cheers erupted around the table, and Luna held her greatsword aloft in celebration. “Huzzah! Great Sky above, we killed a dragon!”

“A pretend dragon, Luna,” Caramel reminded her.

“Do not ruin my fun, Caramel, I warn thee,” she replied.

“Alright, alright,” Rolling said. “Let’s bring it back in. The camp took the attack about as well as you did, and the hissing acid that splashed onto it is still bubbling. Your Landsknechts are returning at this point, carrying their massive swords and giving low whistles of appreciation at your kill.”

“I hereby claim the skull!” Luna declared as Dreadmane. “To mount in my tent.”

“You can have it,” Caramel said as Shadesong. “I just need a moment to rest.”

“Dreadmane picks thee up,” Luna said, “and begins to carry thee to thine tent.”

Caramel raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing, Dreadmane?”

“Thou art a victor, sir!” she replied. “And victors, especially exhausted ones, deserve to be carried!”

“So you’re carrying me to my tent?”

“Art thou going to complain?” Luna asked, smirking the entire time.

Caramel finally smiled. “I suppose not.”

“Ooh…” Ivory cooed scandalously across the table. “Is Dreadmane going to partake of the forbidden fruit that is Shadesong?”

“First and foremost,” Luna began. “That was, as thou say, cheesy enough that I think I just bit into a block of cheddar, and second, Dreadmane is suffering a few acid burns. Sleep is quickly becoming the only thing on her mind.”

“Honestly, I think Shadesong’s in the same bed,” Caramel said.

The others blinked.

Luna glanced over to him. “Did you perhaps mean ‘boat,’ or did the saying change?”

Caramel tried to correct himself, but the others were laughing too loud to hear him.

---☼---

Caramel got up, yawning as his day began. His breakfast consisted of a toaster pastry, and he typically picked up a coffee once he got to his job. The small pastry popped up and out of the toaster, and he began wolfing it down as quickly as he could as he made his way out of his small apartment.

He closed the door and began to run down the stairs as quickly as possible before he broke out into the early morning of the seaside town.

Caramel made his way to the book store and walked in.

Beans blinked as she watched him walk in. “Caramel?”

“Hey, Beans, can you set me up with my usual while I get ready?”

“Get ready?” Bean repeated before her eyes widened. “Oh, you don’t know.”

“Know what?” Caramel asked.

“You’re... you’re not on the schedule.”

Caramel stopped. “What?”

“You’re not on the schedule.”

“I don’t have any hours this week?”

“You’re not even listed.”

Caramel blinked again. “Did...did Thistle fire me?”

“I mean, he’s got to tell you, right?” Beans said. “He can’t just fire you without telling you.”

Caramel walked past her into the store’s backroom, where the brown tiles marked the employee area. The schedule hung from a corkboard hung in the middle of the hallway, stapled together. Caramel pulled it down and began checking the charts, reading every line as he went through it.

He read through each line without finding his name at all.

“Where’s my name?” he asked aloud.

“So you decided to show up for work, huh?”

Caramel spun to see Thistle standing in the door of his office. “A little too late at this point.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You missed a few days last week,” he said. “It happened so much I had to let you go.”

“What are you talking about?” Caramel repeated.

“Didn’t you get your warnings?” Thistle said, a smile growing on his face. “I suppose they didn’t get through the mail yet.”

Caramel blinked at the audacity. “Did...did you fire me by mail?”

“Your various infractions should be very well documented that way.”

Caramel’s eyes narrowed. “You spineless…”

Thistle shrugged. “Get out of my store, Caramel. Your last paycheck’s in the mail.”

Caramel glared at his former employer for a long moment. Thoughts of bashing his head in with one of the coffeepots sprang to mind, but instead, he clenched his jaw and began walking out of the back office. He walked back to the counter, where a cup of coffee waited for him.

He glanced over at Beans, who looked back at him with a hopeful glance.

Caramel shook his head. Beans frowned before she pulled him in a hug. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

Caramel sighed, his anger already leeching out of him. A part of him saw this coming. This would be the passive-aggressive move that a coward like Thistle would use. “It happens, I guess,” he said.

“Take the coffee,” she told him. “I’ll cover it, and Thistle can choke on it if he tries to pull something.”

Caramel nodded. “Thanks, Beans, you’ve been the best part of being here.”

“And don’t you forget it,” she said with a smirk. “Stay safe out there.”

Caramel nodded before he grabbed the coffee and left the bookstore. He stepped outside as the store finished opening and stood on the sidewalk for a long moment.

Well, that was it.

He’d been fired.

By mail.

By that spineless coward Thistle.

And he had no idea what to do.

Chapter 28

Sunny ran.

Grabbing at the stones around her, she ripped the walls of the ancient temple apart. The unicorn tore them out and catapulted them behind her to try and smash the mandrill behind her. The boulders crashed into the hallways doing even more damage to the walls and structure of the pyramid.

If she kept this up, she’d bring the entire thing down on the three of them.

Inner Celestia commented about destroying another relic, but Sunny ignored her in favor of trying to stay alive.

She swerved toward a carved dragon head, sticking close to it as she ran past it, before leaping to the other side of the hall as she passed a snake. So far, the pattern had kept her safe, but she didn’t want to test it more than she had to. Sunny slid under the gaze of another jaguar before tossing a rock her size at the mandrill.

The giant monkey grabbed the stone from the air before tossing it to the side, closing the distance between them.

A part of Sunny loved it. This, in some way, was the very thing she was looking for. This was the adventure and danger that she loved from her days as an adventurer. Her heart pounded in her chest, her blood singing in her veins, and a smile growing on her face.

“Adrenaline junkie,” Inner Celestia muttered to herself, but even she had to admit there was something fun about the chase.

Sunny threw another rock, tearing a hole in the wall as the mandrill chased her, and the wall began to tremble. A little too unstable, but she could fix that. She cast a different Control Matter spell, and a stone wall slammed out into the hallway, blocking most of the hall. Sunny slipped through the open space before the mandrill followed, slowing only for a second or two, but the unicorn used those seconds well.

She dove forward under another jaguar before scrambling ahead, reinforcing the hallway again with another wall that left a tiny bit of crawlspace for her to slip under. Sunny slid under the bracing barrier and heard the Mandril roar as he reached out with his hand into the space.

Sunny smirked and blew a raspberry before running down and around the corner. The moment she turned the corner, the unicorn’s horn lit up, and she used her short-range teleportation to appear behind the first wall, on the opposite side to the mandrill. She heard it snarling before she peeked around the corner to watch the primate reach down with his massive hand and grab the opening in the wall.

She blinked and watched the mandrill rip the stone apart with nothing but its own strength before he chucked the broken wall aside and moved down the hall in the direction she just ran.

She waited for a second, trying to make sure that the monkey had been properly confused before she raised a new wall in place of the one the mandrill just took down. She wasn’t sure how long it’d last, but she needed to keep this thing distracted long enough for Marble to get whatever was down in the vault.

After that, well, bringing the temple down on the primate might just be the best idea she had.

Her hind leg was shaking with the adrenaline rushing through her, and she shook it to try and get her body to calm down a little.

Inner Celestia huffed a little before she finally spoke up. “How is it that we’ve basically become a teenager again?”

“Oh, hush,” Sunny replied. “You love it just as much as I do.”

“Of course I do. We’re the same pony.”

---☼---

Marble flew down the hall, ducking beneath the jaguars which had the traps against flyers before he found himself standing in front of the Coatl’s gaze once more. He glanced up at the massive gems before he glanced down at the jewels in the doorway. They still stunk of ozone and lightning, but Marble didn’t have the time to worry about it. Sunny was still running from that monster.

He slipped the headdress onto his head, but nothing happened. A part of him wasn’t surprised. Magic items as a whole could have any kind of command words to activate, including chants, mental triggers, or who-knew-what else. The question was, what did he need to do?

He thought back to all the traps in the pyramid that he saw so far and tried to think if there was some kind of clue that he could use from all of them. Stay close to the dragons, avoid the snakes, duck under the jaguar, and the coatl...was safe. Perhaps there was more to that? Did he need to bow to the coatl? They did revere the giant sky snake. Maybe that was it?

He bowed his head to the giant door, but still, nothing happened.

Was there a chant he didn’t know? If that was the case, then he’d have no chance of figuring out what to do.

Marble set the thought aside. He needed to work on something, anything that he could do. Worrying about stuff he couldn’t do wouldn’t matter.

He tried bowing lower, just to do something while he thought.

The good news was that magical items didn’t have the concept of language, so if there was some kind of magic code phrase, he wouldn’t need to know any ancient languages to get it. “Praise, Oh Great One!” he started, trying to come up with something that would—

Kraka-thoom!

Lightning shot from the giant crystals, and Marble leaped into the air by instinct. Without being grounded, he made for a heavily resistant connector for the lightning bolt, so it passed by him in the fraction of a second it took him to jump into the air before the bolt shot past him and slammed into the ground where he’d been standing a second ago.

“Okay,” Marble thought as he dropped back to the ground before glancing at the gems. “don’t get many chances, do I?”

“Oh great one” had been a long shot, he admitted to himself. It was simple, and if this were a book, cliche even. Instead, he needed the correct answer, or something would shoot him dead. More importantly, the fact that there was a reaction meant he might be on the right track.

He glanced back at the gems and thought. What did he know about the Coatl and the Lusitanpec ponies? He knew that the Lusitanpec ponies revered the coatl as a god, as an ancient being of the storm. He also had a theory that the Lusitanpec ponies used the coatl’s feathers to control the weather. If that was true, the feathers brought the crops and everything around it, which would be vital to a tribe of earth ponies.

Marble took to the sky for a moment, “Bringer of life, I come to honor you!”

The gems fired again, slamming into the ground, but Marble noticed with a growing sense of dread that it hadn’t struck in the same place and hit the wall instead. Somehow the lightning, which generally found the path of least resistance to the ground, was searching for him specifically.

He needed to be careful here. He might not have a chance to be wrong again. Marble slowly began to walk down a list of possibilities while trying to keep the thought that he didn’t have much time in the back of his mind.

The pegasus shook his head. “Come on,” he whispered to himself, “you’ve got to think of something.”

He started mentally running through every single ancient tome and book he read through. Every thesis and paper that he ever researched flashed through his mind, though most of the documents he remembered simply remained blank in his head. Not a single idea flowed through his head at all.

He stared back at the door with the gemstone eyes and the snaking body carved into the wall around the door. Serpent of storms? Bringer of Lightning? Heavenly Snake? Cloud Dangernoodle? “Come on, brain! There has to be something!”

He stared back at the gemstone eyes and tried not to think about the fact that Sunny was being chased by a maniac of a primate. There had to be something he knew somewhere in the back of his head that had the answer here. He just needed to find it somewhere in his memory.

He bit his lip before a thought entered his mind. For years, a pony on the very edge of academia commented about the possibility that the Lusitanpec ponies committed pony sacrifice monthly with a new pony dying on the altar, even full moon. The theory was absurd. Of course, there had been absolutely no evidence of any pony-based sacrifice of that level of frequency, but there had been evidence of the skeletons of smaller animals. Most archeologists thought the sacrifices were occasional religious rituals that were held maybe once or twice a year.

But maybe...maybe they were both right?

The question of how the Lusitanpec ponies came to possess these feathers had been bugging him. But what if they were given in exchange for sacrifice?

Marble looked back at the door and took a deep breath as he prepared for another bolt of lightning to fire toward him. “Herald of the Storms, I bring a sacrifice!”

The carved head stared at Marble for a long second before the rumbling of old stone sounded as the ancient door opened to reveal a dark room.

Marble reminded himself to write this whole thing down later before he stepped inside the darkened room. The space wasn’t ample. In fact, the vault was smaller than the room behind him, and most of its limited space was dominated by a table.

He approached the table, and he blinked at what he saw. A cloak decorated with sky-blue scales that were soft to the touch. They had the same color as the giant Coatl feathers and...and the scales were feathers.

It was a cloak of woven Coatl feathers.

There were dozens of them, maybe forty or fifty of the feathers held together into the cloak.

If just one of them could create a storm that tore the trees from the ground, then what could all of these do together? He couldn’t take this outside. The moment the sunlight hit this thing, the size of the storm that would blow through would destroy the entire jungle. Marble looked around for something that he could use to protect the cape and found the ratty skin of an animal hanging on the wall.

He tore it down and began wrapping the cloak into the skin, trying to be as careful as he could with the feathers. He rolled the skin up before he turned back to the corridor and hoped to Celestia that it wouldn’t explode once he got outside.

---☼---

Sunny turned the corner and found herself at the intersection. The four marked hallways and the one that led back up and out of the pyramid appeared empty. Marble hadn’t shown up yet, and she risked a glance down the hallway where she had just come from. The monkey hadn’t shown up yet and—

“Sunny!”

She turned her head down the hallway marked by the two coatl statues before she saw Marble running up with a rolled-up leopard skin in his wings.

“Marble! You’re alright. Did you get in?”

Marble tossed the headdress aside after it slipped over his eyes, and he nodded. “I found a—”

A thundering roar echoed down from the snake passage, and Marble interrupted himself. “Let’s go.”

Sunny nodded before her horn lit up, and magic tore the stones out of the wall. The temple began shaking as the walls started to bow inward, and Sunny turned to run. “Up the stairs and out before—”

“I shall get you traitors!” the mandrill roared as he turned a corner. “No one betrays Lady Dusk!”

Sunny and Marble booked it. Sunny used her magic to make short jumps across the more heavily trapped hallways, while Marble flew beside her, sticking close to the ground to fly under the jaguar traps. Sunny glanced over at him and nodded before a look of horror crossed his face. “Sunny, don’t!”

He didn’t have time to say anything else before a bolt of lightning shot across the hallway from one of the coatl statues and slammed into her horn. Sunny dropped to the ground, the world spinning around her before she felt a pair of solid legs pick her up.

She blinked wildly before Marble’s face swam into focus. He carried her through the halls, flying low over the floor before she glanced back.

The mandrill was closing in, teeth bared and moving fast through the hallway. The creature’s gait let him leap over the pressure plates, and he smashed through any blade that swung down. Sunny blanched at the terrible strength before the unicorn glanced at the walls. So far, the pyramid hadn’t collapsed, and a part of Sunny knew that having the stones slam down on the mandrill was going to be the only that slowed the monster down.

Her horn throbbed from the attack, and though concentrating on the wall sent a spike of pain through her skull, she could still cast some magic.

Besides, she’d felt worse.

Pushing through the headache that threatened to split her head, she grabbed another stone in the wall and tore it free. She tossed the boulder down the hall toward the mandrill, who leaped out of the way of the attack.

But the wall began to buckle.

“Finally.”

Sunny tore another rock from the wall, and part of the wall came with it. The floor beneath them began to crumble as the entire structure finally could take no more. Everything began to fall around them as the straight lines and corners of the pyramid gave way. All of her work to destabilize the temple finally came to a head, and everything around them fell apart.

Marble pumped his wings to rush through the corridor, moving as fast as he could to carry her out of the temple. The mandrill screamed behind them, roaring with a voice so deep that it vibrated in Sunny’s chest.

A stone dropped ahead of them, and Sunny grabbed it with her magic before moving it out of their way and tossing it directly at the monkey’s chest. This one caught the primate in a solid blow, and he fell backward into the mess of stones and wreckage that formed a wave of destruction that moved closer and closer to them.

Marble took a sharp corner and found the original four statues they passed by when they entered the temple.

“We’re almost out!” Sunny said.

Marble didn’t answer.

“We’re going to make it!”

Marble still didn’t answer.

The wave of the collapsing building got closer behind them, and as they turned the last corner, they saw the stairs collapse ahead of them. Marble pulled up short, halting just short of the wall.

The collapsing wall of debris was getting closer.

Marble looked left and right, but Sunny had already done the math. They were close to the top, it’d be rough on her, but she could do it.

“Fly up.”

“What?”

“Just fly straight up,” she said before her horn lit up.

Marble didn’t argue. He flew upward, and Sunny pulled the ceiling apart ahead of them, leaving them in a bubble of empty space before finally, finally, they reached cool, clear air. The sun shined with afternoon light, and the clouds appeared soft and wispy.

Sunny let her magic drop and felt her head spin. That magic trap might have taken more out of her than she initially thought.

“Sweet Celestia,” Marble said. “We made it out of there. We actually made it.”

Sunny smiled as her vision started going dark, and before her brain could tell her stop, she kissed Marble’s strong, heroic-looking jaw.

Marble blinked and looked down at her, and the last thing she saw before passing out was his eyes.

His incredible, pale blue eyes.

---☼---

Zalxayl held the stones above him with his legs as he slowly moved the rocks out from above him to the side.

Whoever this unicorn traitor was, they certainly knew how to get the job done. By tearing down the temple, he couldn’t in good conscious leave without first checking to see if the vault had been spared. Lady Dusk believed that traitors were secondary to her goal, so if he wanted to chase after these little traitors, he needed to be sure that the key survived first. If he didn’t secure them, he would disappoint the Lady, and he couldn’t allow that.

He broke through the rubble and saw darkness beyond. It took him more than a few hours to dig his way through the mess of stones and debris, so he assumed that night must have fallen a while ago.

Zalxayl casually tossed a bolder aside before he glanced around, looking for any sign of—

He found the vault. The only standing square structure left in the rubble around. The ancient ponies must have protected it with whatever primitive enchantments of protection. This also made his duty far easier. He crossed the collapsed stones over to the still in-tact box and pushed more rocks aside to find the large open doors of the vault.

Zalxayl frowned.

The vault was open. That could only mean that the traitors found whatever was inside.

He turned to the jungle where, no doubt, the two ponies ran and hid into it. They had Lady Dusk’s key, and between that and their treachery, he needed to chase them down.

He barred his teeth in a wicked, terrible grin. It seemed his duty to the Lady and his desire to kill traitors lined up perfectly today.

Chapter 29

Sunny stirred in her hammock. The sounds of the breathing, roaring jungle around her let her know that Marble managed to get her out into the wilderness around them. What’s more, a part of her was incredibly impressed and pleased by his work.

The other part of her, the Inner Celestia part, was waking up screaming.

“What did you do?”

Sunny rolled over and didn’t answer.

“Oh no, you don’t!” Inner Celestia roared. “You don’t get to ignore me after that stunt you pulled off! What did you do?”

Sunny smiled and responded with a breath barely quieter than a whisper. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t know what I’m talking about? You don’t know what I’m talking about? You don’t know what I’m talking about?” Inner Celestia asked, nearly yelling in Sunny’s mind. “You told me, you all but promised me that you wouldn’t move on your feelings! You know that any relationship we start is only going to end in pain. So why, by the Sky above, did you kiss him?”

“I was tired, exhausted by that magic trap,” came the simple reply.

“And now you’re trying to lie to your own conscience. Are you serious, Sunny?”

“You’re not my conscience.”

“I should be!” Inner Celestia responded. “Because nopony else has decided to speak up about this horrendously stupid thing you’ve just done.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Do I need to get the list out again? Do I need to go down the ever-expanding list of reasons why this is a terrible idea item-by-item for you? How about the fact that we’re lying to him, which is no foundation for a relationship? What about watching him grow old? Are you ready for that again? Until time takes away the ability for him to stand? How about the fact that if he does somehow accept your ridiculous attempt at courtship, we’ll only be dragging him screaming into a world of politics and—”

“We’re not the Princess anymore,” Sunny interrupted.

“Pardon?” Inner Celestia asked, even though she already knew the answer that Sunny had.

“We’re not the Princess. We don’t have to worry about politics, responsibilities, or nobles anymore. We don’t even know if we’re still immortal or not anymore. You told Princess Twilight yourself we could keel over any moment now. We could die in the middle of this conversation. If he did accept, then all I would offer him is a manor house and early retirement for the rest of our lives.”

“But you’re Celestia, and you know that name still carries weight, despite everything you’ve done.”

“Well, it was bound to happen anyway,” Sunny said in a defense that sounded more like a whine.

Inner Celestia blinked. “Are you listening to yourself? What happened to your intentions? What happened to the fact that you know better than that?”

They both knew the answer to that before Sunny even answered. Feelings rarely cared for logic or intentions.

“Then why? Why would you think that it was a good idea to even try and continue? Why did you let yourself kiss him?”

Sunny didn’t have an answer for that.

Inner Celestia sighed. “This...this can only end poorly, you know that, right?”

Sunny slowly nodded. “It’s nice to pretend, though.”

After all, that’s why they were here. They were here to pretend. Celestia wasn’t an average pony by any stretch, but Sunny was. Celestia couldn’t afford to throw her life away, she was too important, even without the crown over her head anymore, but no one would miss Sunny. Celestia wasn’t the incredibly talented, well-trained mare that Sunny was. She just had so many years behind her that she could fake being one.

In the end, Celestia couldn’t have any chance of a relationship with Marble, but right now, it was nice to pretend.

---☼---

Marble sat at the burnt-out campfire, watching the jungle for any sign of something following them. The morning sun already raised behind him, and his eye fluttered as he forced them open again. He’d kept watch all night after Sunny...after she went unconscious.

The warmth of her stayed with him the whole night, and he rubbed at his jawline where she planted the kiss.

“Crazy mare. Hates my guts one second and is kissing me the next. What is going on here?”

A part of him pointed out that she was probably delirious at the time. She probably didn’t mean it or even remember it. What’s more, she might not have even kissed him. She might have just brushed against him for a moment or two before she fell unconscious.

It was fine.

Besides, he kept her alive, didn’t he?

That thought stabbed at him with an icy grasp that traveled down his spine into his heart and stomach.

Marble managed to keep her alive this time. He didn’t lead her into any traps, and he didn’t kill her. But that wasn’t totally true, was it? He missed the Coatl trap completely, which was a stupid move. Of course, the ancient Lusitanpec ponies would have a tool to fight against unicorns. Why hadn’t he seen that? Most of the devices would be acceptable provided the unicorns didn’t fly, and there was a chance that the magic detection triggers had deteriorated over the years. However, a spell as potent as teleportation would, of course, still trigger them. How didn’t he see that happening?

Marble nearly killed her by overlooking that. How had he let this almost happen again?

The pegasus shook his head and forced himself to stay awake. He couldn’t let this mare down. He couldn’t go through failing someone like that again.

Marble glanced back at Sunny’s hammock, where the unicorn still lay asleep, drained from his mistake, and shook his head. How did this mare do this to him? How did she make it impossible for him to let her go and make her own stupid mistakes? Why did he care so much that he started taking responsibility for her like this? By Celestia, why?

Marble sighed before glancing back at the jungle surrounding them. If that monster followed them here, he wouldn’t have time to worry about much else.

His ear flicked behind him as he caught the sound of Sunny rolling in her hammock again before he heard her mutter and sit up. “What time is it?” she muttered.

Marble forced himself to stay in his seat instead of running up to make sure she was okay. Rushing to her side was a little more intense than he needed to be. “Getting close to noon,” he replied. “How are you feeling? You were out all night.”

“Fine now,” she replied. “That trap drained the magic and energy from me, but other than that, I’m fine.”

Marble felt his heart unclench as he learned she was okay before he nodded. He wasn’t sure he could take the knowledge that she was hurt in some way.

They sat in silence for a second or two before Sunny spoke up again. “You never told me what you found, by the way.”

Marble pointed over to the rolled-up skin that held the feathers. “You know the Coatl feathers?”

“Yes,” she replied, speaking with enough tone that Marble could hear her eyebrow rising in confusion.

“It’s a cloak of them. Dozens and dozens of feathers weaved together in a cloak. Enough feather to cause a storm strong enough to travel across the world.”

He turned and stared at her blinking face. “A-are you sure?” she asked.

Marble spent some of the last restless night trying to do the math in a vain attempt to get his mind off the unconscious Sunny. A single feather caused enough wind that it tore boulders of the ground and snapped trees like twigs. Taking that kind of wind, a hurricane-force gale that could casually pick up homes and multiplying it by thirty times would be bad enough, but the cloak had at least fifty of the sky-blue feathers, each one a storm in its own right.

The pegasus nodded. “Even if the storm doesn’t physically reach, the fallout would be. That thing has the power to destroy countries, Sunny.”

The unicorn blinked before she slipped out of her hammock and crossed the distance to him. She sat beside him and stared down at the skin that held armageddon. “It’s worse than I thought it was,” she finally said after the silence between them stretched on a second too long.

Marble nodded. “It’s worse than I thought too.”

They sat there, staring at the jungle around them. “Okay,” Sunny said, finally. “Getting you back to civilization just got a lot harder.”

“What makes you say that?” Marble asked.

“The mandrill was after this. I’m sure of it now. He’ll try chasing us if he has the chance and—”

“You think the mandrill’s still out there?” Marble asked. “I thought we killed when we brought the temple down on its head.”

Sunny shook her head. “Primates are incredibly strong and durable. You saw him smashing through the traps. Between his strength and the fact that we were all fairly close to the top of the temple when it came down on us, I don’t think we did much more than slow him down. If we’re lucky, we broke a bone or two.”

“How do we stop something like that?” Marble asked. “We collapsed a building on it, and the most you think we did is inconvenience it? What do we need to do? Kill it with a silver blade or something?”

Sunny shook her head. “It’s not like that. He’s tough. Far tougher than any pony has right to be, and ponies are pretty tough to begin with. Poisons or suffocation would work best, but that’s not for you to worry about. What we need to worry about is trying to get you and the cloak back to Equestria.”

Marble frowned. “You’re going to try and take on that monster and whatever this Lady Dusk is by yourself?”

Sunny blinked before she looked up at him. “I’m trying to get you to safety like you said you needed.”

Marble shook his head. He couldn’t leave her like this. Honestly, he couldn’t let her go no matter what she did. He’d never forgive herself if this went wrong, and with that mandrill thing chasing after them, things could go wrong very quickly. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said, “besides, if that thing wants the cloak, then I think splitting up would only make it worse for both of us. Either it will chase after me, or you by ourselves, and sticking together is probably the only way we’re going to make this work.”

Sunny nodded. “I can’t say you’re wrong. Honestly, I can’t. But are you sure you want to go with me and fight the entirety of this ‘Lady’s’ cult or what-have-you to do that? It’ll be dangerous.”

“More or less dangerous than running into an ancient temple in the middle of the jungle?” Marble asked sardonically.

Sunny gave him an unamused stare. “I’m serious, Marble. This is going to be very dangerous, and I can’t say for sure if we’ll both make it out alive if it comes down to it.”

Marble nodded. “I know, and if I’m being as serious as you are, then I can say that it will be dangerous, too dangerous for either of us to let this happen on its own.”

“And I can’t let you try and take them on your own,” he thought.

“Okay,” Sunny said eventually before yawning.

Marble yawned himself.

“How long have you been up?” she asked.

“Since we broke camp yesterday,” he answered honestly.

Sunny shook her head. “Alright, then you need to get some sleep. I think we need to move during the night now, despite the terrible idea of navigating a jungle by moonlight, just because it’ll help us hide from the mandrill. If we switch over to a nocturnal schedule, we’d have a better chance of avoiding the thing. Not to mention it’ll give the cloak more protection if we’re worried about it burning in the sunlight.”

“If it means I can finally get some sleep, then I am for this plan,” he replied, feeling the hours weigh on him hard.

Sunny managed a smile. “Go ahead and climb into the hammock,” the unicorn said. “Take the cloak with you, and we’ll try moving at sundown. We’ll have to set up a new procedure, but I’ll work on that while you get some sleep. It’ll work out better that way, I think.”

“If you say so,” Marble said, too tired to argue about anything else.

“Have a good sleep,” Sunny said.

Marble nodded and climbed into the hammock. “Okay, I’ll go to sleep, and then we’ll find a way to stop these ponies that are trying to control the weather.”

Sunny nodded. “Sounds like a plan, Marble.”

Now that he knew Sunny was okay, he found sleep coming to him nearly effortlessly. His muscles relaxed as he slumped into the cloth, and he felt an incredible weight lift off his shoulders.

Sunny was okay.

He didn’t hurt her.

As the last vestiges of consciousness slipped past him and the world faded away, a single thought warmed his heart.

He didn’t hurt her like he had hurt Vanilla. She was okay.

---☼---

When night fell, they began moving through the jungle with extreme care. The dangers of pitfalls, hunting animals, and thick foliage and mud became even worse without the ability to see. Sunny’s only advantage here was Marble, who she asked to scout ahead after he woke up before the sun went down, and the small candle-sized torch she used to see by.

The little torch barely offered any light, but Sunny pushed herself forward despite that, occasionally using her own magic to feel the ground around her.

“‘Energy spells just aren’t as fun,’” Inner Celestia muttered. “An amazing choice there, Sunny. Never mind that it would have been one of the most useful spells to have.”

Sunny ignored the jab as she moved through the darkness. She stood by her decision to stick with Control Matter and Body. It meant she was limited, sure, but if she didn’t want to go on an adventure limited, then she wouldn’t have bothered with a disguise.

Besides, it was part of pretending.

“Are we not going to talk about that?” Inner Celestia asked.

Sunny didn’t even respond.

“Deluding yourself isn’t healthy.”

“I’m not deluding myself. I’m just pretending.”

“What’s the difference?”

“I know who I really am. I’m just ignoring it for now.”

“Because that’s so much better.”

Sunny took in a deep breath. “Well, you know what?” she whispered harshly, “maybe, just maybe, it is better. Because Celestia has a lot of problems. She can’t walk out of her own home without being dog-piled by ponies. She can’t even tell them to mind their own business because she’s too busy being the perfect pony everyone knew her to be. Instead, I get to finally be myself for once. I get to be selfish and irresponsible instead of forcing myself to be the pony everyone thinks I am. So maybe I’m not deluding myself, maybe I’m who I was always supposed to be.”

Inner Celestia stared down at Sunny with her imperious gaze before she spoke again. “You know that’s not who you are.”

Sunny ignored her.

Right now, she had more important things to do.

Chapter 30

Caramel couldn’t focus on the game.

No matter how hard he tried to get into the role-playing, he could offer only a token line or two before his situation crashed back down on him. Luna especially kept trying to pull him into the game, but he just couldn’t bring himself to play.

After nearly an hour of his half-hearted attempt at playing, Sundance finally spoke up. “Caramel, are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” he said.

Rolling stared him down for a second before she called for a break. “Why don’t we take a second to grab snacks and stuff. Caramel, can I talk with you in the back of the library?”

Caramel sighed before standing and trying to shake off the feeling that he’d just been called to the Principal’s office. Thankfully, Luna excused herself and left the room for a moment so he’d be spared that humiliation, at least.

“So something is obviously wrong,” she said. “The question is: Is the problem off the table or on the table?”

Caramel took a second to answer. “Off the table and fairly personal, thank you.” A part of him regretted the bite in his voice, but another part of his mind thought otherwise.

Rolling kept an eyebrow raised before she spoke again. “Alright, now that I’ve asked you as your Game Master, let me ask as your friend. What happened? Is Thistle riding you again?”

The softness in her tone as she switched modes cracked him a little, and with a sigh, he felt everything flow out of him. “No. In fact, Thistle won’t be riding me ever again. He fired me a few days ago.”

“What?” Rolling ask.

“He fired me by mail, nonetheless.”

Rolling blinked. “Is that even legal?”

“There’s no law against it,” he replied. “It’s a fringe case, but technically legal, and I can’t afford a lawyer to fight it.”

“You’ve got to try!” Rolling said.

“Why? So I can get the job that I hated, with a boss that legally needs me around? It’s only going to get worse.”

“You can get wages.”

Caramel shook his head. “The reason I was officially fired was that I failed to meet certain quotas at work and some other bunch of horseapples. They can argue that all day.”

“Can’t you get to the District Manager?”

“My district manager gave Thistle his job,” he said. “The cronyism goes all the way up. Look, I appreciate that you want to help, but I think I’m just stuck. I just need to go find another job, is all.”

“But—”

“But nothing,” he said, a little surprised by the defeat in his voice. “I’ll be fine. Just...just don’t let Luna know. She already threatened to step in for me, but the last thing I need is for ex-royalty to come to my rescue. I don’t need somepony else to solve my problems for me.”

“But she could—” Rolling began.

“Just...please Rolling. I want to stand on my own four hooves here. I don’t need someone coming to my rescue.”

“O-okay. I won’t tell Luna.”

Caramel nodded. “Alright. Thank you. I’m sorry about the game. I’ve been trying to leave the problem at the door, but it’s been difficult. I’m working on it.”

“It’s okay,” she replied. “Take your time. This is just a game.”

Caramel nodded and didn’t notice the strange air currents above him as an unseen, invisible figure moved in the air.

---☼---

Thistle finished counting the money in the till before he slipped them all into the safe. The store had been doing well now that Caramel was one, and good riddance to him anyway.

The firing by mail was a masterstroke, he thought to himself. Caramel might have thought that using the Princess as an excuse would save him, but the termination-by-post definitely got the message across. Thistle was the pony in charge, and nopony would argue with that, not even the Princess.

Everything he did was above board. His lawyer friend made it clear that, while firing by mail should only be reserved for the worst employees, it was legal. The reason for termination was a failure to perform to company standards, which was true simply because he “wasted” time by doing pointless tasks instead of dealing with customers. It’d be a bit of a fight, but his company could hire better lawyers than Caramel ever could, and since nothing illegal was done, he was safe.

Thistle felt his spine freeze.

As though locked in place like a giant tumbler, Thistle was frozen, staring forward as an icy hoof reached for his shoulder.

The world around him shook apart as the desk, the safe, the walls, and the doors fell away, plunging end-over-end into the abyss that appeared beyond. He couldn’t see it, but he knew all that was left were a handful of tiles that supported his spinning desk chair.

The hoof on his shoulder tightened a terrifying grip, and a feeling of ice replacing his blood began to flow through his veins as it reached for his heart.

Thistle couldn’t see it, but he knew that the hoof was armored in pale sapphire moonsteel, as was the snout that dropped to the ear on the opposite side. “Oh, yes. You really are the big pony in charge. How dare I stand up against you?”

The terror flooding his mind made his vision spin, and he felt the looming presence behind him grow to a terrifying height.

The hoof on his shoulder spun his paralyzed body around, and he found himself staring up at the skyscraper-sized form of Nightmare Moon herself. “How dare I rise against somepony as important as you?”

He was tiny. Miniscule. A gnat.

“But perhaps,” Nightmare Moon said with a smile. “Perhaps somepony as vital, as influential, as crucial, vital, and meaningful as you could make a good…” she licked her lips, revealing massive fangs that promised pain and suffering “...offering.”

Thistle, still paralyzed, felt the chair lean backward before Nightmare Moon opened a maw of far-too-many teeth that moved in a circle like a saw blade and snapped it shut at the space he occupied a second ago. He tumbled in the air, still stuck to the chair as he fell into the endless abyss, with the evil alicorn following shortly behind him, mouth open wide and smelling of death.

He wanted to scream, but he could not move. He tried to run, but he could only fall. He wanted to—

Thistle shot up awake, breathing heavily in sweat-soaked sheets. He groaned before he checked the clock at his bedside, which read 2:30 am.

He sighed before throwing off the sheet. This was the fourth time he woke up tonight, and this was starting to get ridiculous. He didn’t even know why he kept waking up. Thistle knew there was some kind of nightmare he was facing, but he couldn’t remember what it was every time he woke up.

He fluffed his pillow again and laid his head down on the bed. He shut his eyes again and tried to go to sleep.

He finally drifted back to sleep before he woke up, covered in sweat again thirty minutes later.

He stared at the clock for a long moment of despair before he rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.

Thistle woke up an hour later, forced awake by another nightmare that he remembered nothing about. He groaned at the lost sleep before he picked up his pillow, which felt like it had been dunked into a pool for all the sweat it now held. He lay his head down on the piece of fabric before he tossed it aside as well.

He fell in and out of consciousness a few more times while laying on a nearly bare mattress for the rest of the night. By the time morning rolled around, he had maybe two hours of sleep from the whole night.

Thistle forced himself up and made his bed before he tied the tie around his neck and made his way downstairs. He opened his front door that morning and found himself staring into the toothy abyss. The teeth slammed down at the open door, grinding through the wood and wall as Thistle scrambled back into his living room.

Nightmare Moon laughed as she stared him down. “I used to keep the dreams of thousands of ponies a night! Dealing with you isn’t even going to slow me down!”

She opened her mouth wide again before she bit her way through the house. Thistle stared into the chainsaw depths of Nightmare Moon’s maw before he woke up.

His heart slammed in his chest as the dream passed through his mind and was already starting to slip past his consciousness, leaving nothing but a vague memory of not being able to get sleep and the awareness that he annoyed someone.

He checked the clock.

2:40 am.

Thistle sighed before he fluffed his sweat-soaked pillow and tried to go back to sleep.

---☼---

Caramel shook his head. He slapped down another newspaper with another useless wanted ad and fell onto his couch.

Silver Shoals was a lovely town, but as Caramel was quickly realizing, most ponies in town typically hired friends. His two options were fast-food restaurants or chain stores that all would shove him into working for the bare minimum as a part-timer to the point where he couldn’t afford his apartment anymore. His other options would hire ponies that were less qualified but lived in town their entire life and used to be buddies in school.

Caramel sighed. It’s not like he was a tourist or anything, but he grew up in Vanhoover before moving into town once he was an adult. All the friends he made in high school or college were back north, and he left that town for a reason.

Not that he could afford to move back at this rate. Vanhoover’s rent prices were infamous across Equestria these days, and if he couldn’t afford to live in Silver Shoals, then moving back to Vanhoover would have him homeless in a few days.

He rolled to his hooves before he looked down at the newspaper that now lay on the floor.

“Have a story to sell?” read a small ad on the back page. “Prices starting at a thousand bits.”

Caramel moved away and moved to his fridge, which was beginning to get thinner and thinner with each passing day.

The unicorn closed the door. He couldn’t afford to drown his sorrows in food.

He wandered back over to his living room before he glanced back at the newspaper on the floor. Caramel snorted before he moved to his bedroom and stared at his bookshelf. A small library of fantasy books stared back at him with covers that ranged from bright to dark.

He might get a couple of bits off of these, but it wouldn’t be enough to make a difference.

He shook his head. If he was honest, it would buy him maybe two meals, three if the pony at the pawnshop decided to be generous.

He stopped himself as he remembered that the local pawn shop actually closed down a month ago. Something about the owner being involved in a crime ring or something.

Excellent, he couldn’t even sell his possessions.

Getting back up, he wandered back into the living room, where the newspaper continued to stare up at him.

It...finding out where Celestia was probably wasn’t even worth it. At best, it would let him keep his apartment for a month or two before he’d have to do something else, and at that point, he’d have an angry Luna to deal with.

The thought turned over in his head. A simple “what if?” What if they offered more?

What, two thousand? Why then Caramel could afford the apartment for the rest of his life because Luna would hunt him down after she found out, and he wouldn’t have to worry about it.

He moved to the door, thinking about the walk he needed to clear his head.

There was no money they could offer to make this work. Besides, whatever prize any newspaper could offer would only get the unicorn enough cash to put a metaphorical bandaid on the problem. Caramel would still be out of a job, and he’d still have to pay as little as possible if he wanted to stay in his apartment for as long as possible.

His walk took him downtown, where the buildings grew taller in a weak imitation of Canterlot.

There was nothing they could offer him. Absolutely nothing.

He walked into the office of the Silver Shoal Sentinel.

There was no way they could offer him any amount of money to make this kind of thing worth it. No, they couldn’t.

He made his way up to the producer’s office, knowing full well they couldn’t possibly make selling a story on Celestia worth it. The only reason he was asking was to prove it to himself.

He stepped into the office.

“Hello, Mr. Swirl,” the producer, a mare in a prim business suit that looked like she could talk down a stampede, greeted him with a smile. “What can I do for you?”

“I have a hypothetical for you,” he said, knowing there was no way this would go anywhere.

“What’s your hypothetical, Mr. Swirl?” she asked, smiling with a warmth that didn’t reach her calculating eyes.

“Say I could get you a story about whatever Lady Celestia is doing in her manor house these days. What would you give me for a story like that, fifteen hundred bits? Two thousand?”

The mare’s eyes stared at him for a long, drawn-out second before she responded with a grin. “Oh no, Mr. Swirl. We’d offer far more than that, provided, of course, that this was a serious hypothetical case. Hypothetically, how do you plan on getting that story?”

“I’d... I’d rather not say,” he responded.

The mare’s eyes narrowed, but her smile never wavered. “As you so choose,” she responded before leaning back in her chair. “To give you a better idea of what you’re asking about, Mr. Swirl, I’m paying reporters to sit outside her manor one thousand bits a night. If you could get me an exclusive story about whatever’s going on in there, then I’d be willing to pay upwards of ten thousand if you’re legitimate.”

Caramel blinked.

The producer turned her smile up at him. “Hypothetically.”

She continued to go on about how it wasn’t smart if he wound up wasting her time, but Caramel didn’t hear that. All he could think about was the price tag this mare just casually threw out at him. Ten thousand bits? Upwards of ten thousand bits? He...oh, Celestia, he could start his own coffee shop for that much money. He’d be his own boss, sell his own coffee, not the over-priced dirt that he used to sell. He could even work with artisanal coffee with that kind of money and—

“What happened to not being worth it?”

Caramel brought his attention back to the mare, whose smile was starting to wilt now that he was officially taking up her time.

“I…” Caramel began as he stood. “I’ll keep in touch.”

“I’m sure we will,” the producer said dismissively.

Caramel walked back down the office building and exited back onto the street, where he wandered the town.

He’d be able to do so much with that kind of money.

But he couldn’t do that to Luna.

He could even hire some of the others in the group at his own place. Make it an actual cafe with Sundance as the cook!

Luna opened up her home for him.

Caramel could make a difference!

And Luna would never forgive him.

No amount of money would ever make betraying her like that worth it.

But he said he’d be in touch.

Chapter 31

Sunny and Marble moved at a forced march. They moved as fast as they could from sunset to sunrise, taking the fewest rests possible. Using simple oil lamps fueled by coconut oil, which they made using the unicorn’s magic, they managed to maneuver through the darkness. Even still, navigating a jungle by candlelight proved dangerous, and they frequently needed to take detours through flatter ground, let the mare tumble and get her leg caught in a hole.

Sunny felt the burn in her legs every morning and dropped to the ground when they made camp. The humidity of the jungle kept her whole body soaked straight through, and without the sun to evaporate what little moisture off her that it could, it left her breathing heavy and miserable.

She hadn’t felt this alive in years.

A race against the clock, while being pursued by a massive monster of incredible strength and toughness, while also carrying an artifact that had enough power in it to hold nations hostage? This was the sort of adventure that Sunny could have only dreamed of.

She dropped to the ground smiling as she felt her heartbeat thud in her legs before she lowered her simple lantern and blew out the cotton-strip of a wick that hung out of the broken coconut, and sighed as the half-light of dawn spilled over her.

Marble dropped next to her but kept on his hooves as he wavered. “I’ll set up the hammock,” he muttered, “then take a quick look around.”

Sunny nodded, a token gesture of acknowledgment before she stared up into the pink-colored sky still splattered with stars.

Inner Celestia didn’t say anything.

She’d been present but quiet for the past few days. The mental projection of her more royal self merely sat in one corner of her mind, drinking tea and waiting. Sunny didn’t even need to guess what she was waiting for, as it was all too obvious. Inner Celestia sat waiting for the moment everything went wrong so she could swoop in and say, “I told you so.”

The mental princess loved to do that to her. Nevermind the fact that literally everyone else received only gentle rebukes from the mare. No, Sunny wouldn’t receive such a luxury.

Marble hovered back down. “Alright, I got it hooked up, come on, let’s get you up there.”

Sunny shook her head. “No, I need to get food first.”

“Then you better hurry up. The sun’s coming up. I’ll be right back.”

Sunny groaned as she rolled to get her hooves under her, but she managed to stand. She used her spell to find some edible plants before she slowly collected a few things to eat. Once she gathered enough food for the night, er, morning, and Marble returned, she stood on her hind legs so the pegasus could hook his legs under her armpits to carry her up into the canopy. Marble lifted her into the air carefully before slowly dropping her into the hammock, which hung several hundred feet into the air.

Sunny passed Marble a mango, and the pair began to eat until they managed to finish both pieces of fruit.

Sunny sighed. “We’re doing well.”

Marble nodded. “We are. I’ve got good news too.”

“What?”

“I found some more ruins ahead,” he said. “And it seemed habited. Or at least, inhabited by a handful of black-vested ponies that looked like they were up to no good.”

The news cut through Sunny’s fatigue in a second, and she glanced at him. “What? You mean, we’re there?”

“We have been running hard for the past three days,” he offered.

“How far away?”

“About six miles,” he said. “As long as the monkey doesn’t catch us, we might get there in a few hours.”

Sunny shook her head and smiled. “We might just do this,” she said. “We’d get there a few hours into the night. We might catch them during the change of the guard even. We can stop this Lady Dusk figure and then start getting you home in the next few days. We’re going to do this!”

“You sound so excited about it,” Marble noted.

“Either I am, or I’m so tired that I’ve gone giddy. Or mad, or both.”

“You were sane to start with?”

“I mean relatively,” she replied.

“Ah.”

They sat in the hammock a little longer, with only silence between them. Sunny’s gaze slowly drifted over to him for a moment before she realized she was staring. She tore her eyes away before her mind began remembering the kiss she sneaked in while he carried her into the air.

Neither of them spoke about that moment, even though it’d been three days. They’d had time to think about it, but neither of them broached the subject.

Was he just pretending that it didn’t happen? Was it an attempt to let her down easy? She felt her stomach slowly drop as she thought about it before she pushed the thought aside.

You’re overthinking this, she thought. It’s fine.

Inner Celestia sipped tea in the back of her mind. Waiting.

Marble spoke up.

“I’ll go ahead and take the first watch. You can go ahead and rest up. I’ll get you up for the change.”

She nodded. “Sounds fair.”

More silence.

Sunny bit her lip, wondering if she made the right choice with her spur-of-the-moment kiss. A part of her told her that it was not the right choice, and she was acting like a dumb teenager working through her first crush. Another aspect of her disagreed, but she couldn’t bring herself to talk about it.

“You’ll be fine, Sunny,” Marble said. “Just go to sleep.”

She nodded and laid her head down on the hammock, closing her off in the fabric and shutting away the light and the noise. Marble was on the other side of the hammock, watching the jungle around them.

Sunny lay there for a long moment thinking about everything going on around her, the nearby ruin, the mandrill chasing her, and the kiss. Oh, Sky Above the kiss.

She sat there, laying still as her mind spun in circles until finally, the exhaustion in her body overtook her.

---☼---

Marble stared at the jungle, looking for any sign of danger while his own mind ran with the wheels spinning.

It’d been three days, but he still couldn’t shake the thoughts that plagued him from the night they left the temple. He’d barely managed to save her back when the temple collapsed, but he did manage it.

Then again, barely wasn’t a significant threshold when dealing with her life. “It’s alright,” a sarcastic part of him said in Sunny’s voice. “It’s fine that you only saved half of me. The rest will grow back.”

He shoved the thought away and tried to think about something else.

And that left the kiss.

Maybe it wasn’t a kiss. Maybe Sunny just brushed against him when he flew into the air. After all, she hadn’t talked about it, so either nothing happened, or she didn’t remember it happening. Either way, he couldn’t just bring it up. The resulting conversation would be a disaster.

“Hey, about that time you kissed me?”

“What? What are you talking about? Why would I kiss you?”

Yes, absolutely brilliant that would be, wouldn’t it? He sighed and focused on his surroundings, the jungle, and the screaming wildlife that hid just out of sight.

He forced his mind to think about the pyramid ahead of them. He tried to focus on the ponies working through the trapped hallways and trying to find secrets that could put the world at knifepoint.

Yet despite that, his mind wandered over to Sunny.

He had to tell her.

He shook his head. He couldn’t tell her that! He couldn’t possibly let her know so much. If she knew, if she knew what a failure he was, then she’d probably leave him alone, and he’d never make it back.

But he had to tell her.

He couldn’t let her know.

“Sunny, are you awake?” he asked.

Sunny didn’t respond.

“Sunny?” he called again. “Sunny?” this time with a sing-song tone added to it.

She didn’t answer either call.

He sighed. “I just don’t know what to do about you, you know that? The last mare I met that was as confident or crazy as you were, was my sister. In fact, if she’d be on this trip, you two would have hit it off and dragged me into the jungle laughing all the way.”

He paused for a second and glanced back at the form of the sleeping unicorn. Sunny hadn’t even shifted during his entire little speech, but he still wanted to be sure that she was asleep.

“I think both of you would have hit it off. Vanilla was the real historian between us. She’d probably take your theories and run them through her head until she saw exactly where you were coming from. Then, if she thought it was good enough, probably accept it as viable and force it into the universities until there wasn’t a first-year archeology student that didn’t know about it.”

Sunny still didn’t reply.

“She was the brains, and I was the brawn. I would go ahead and make sure that the traps would miss us, and she’d rip every ounce of knowledge or secrets out of the ruin to report back to the university. We were quite the team back then.”

The jungle kept roaring.

“I...I failed her,” he said. He could remember the temple perfectly. Tenochtitlan pyramid to an ancient feline creature and enough suns drawn on the walls that they looked so pitted that you’d think someone fired stones into them with magic. “We were making our way down the temple, and...and I missed a trap.”

He let the silence hang for a moment.

“I don’t know how I got past it, but I did. I just skipped over the trap, and then the next thing I knew, Vanilla was screaming. She’d been pierced by a spear that shot up from the ground. It went through her at an angle that managed to miss her heart, but it did get her lung. After her first scream, she began coughing up blood, and her voice grew weak.”

He paused for a long moment.

“She died slowly. Because I made a mistake. All it took was one. Because I missed the trap, she died. It’s my fault. It’s my fault, and I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself for that.”

The pegasus wiped his eyes, catching the tears before they started falling as he remembered that day. “And now, here you are, standing in the same place, doing the same things. Meanwhile, I’m watching and can’t help but think about Vanilla, about my failure to save her. Every moment I have to myself, and I can’t help but think about her and how the two of you would have been such great friends, and how you never can meet her because I failed her.”

He took a deep breath that threatened to become a sob before he took a moment to glance back at Sunny.

“I…” he began, “I’m not going to let it happen again. I promise. With Celestia as my witness, I promise you that I won’t.”

He stopped, forcing himself to breathe. He wrestled for control for a long moment before he finally got back his composure.

He stared down at the sleeping mare and opened his mouth to try and continue, but he just couldn’t bring himself to talk. The words caught in his throat and threatened to rip his composure to shreds.

He couldn’t keep going.

Marble sighed before he glanced around back into the jungle.

There...he told her.

Another part of him argued that she was asleep, that none of this counted, that he did the equivalent of talking to a wall.

At the same time, after all, he somehow managed to feel better after he said all that. Somehow.

---☼---

The evening came quickly. Sunny managed to pick a few more mangoes for both of them and ate quickly. “Well, if nothing else, this is going to do wonders for my figure,” the unicorn muttered.

“I’m so glad for you,” Marble said. “I was pretty happy with my figure.”

Marble took her down back to the ground and began to work on the hammock while Sunny began lighting the small coconut lantern that would help her maneuver in the dark. By the time the darkness encompassed them, they were packed and ready to dive back into the jungle.

“So, which way are we heading?” Sunny asked.

“The pyramid’s in that direction,” Marble said, pointing with a wing.

“Alright, we move carefully. Once we get to the temple, we snuff the light and start looking for this Lady Dusk. We don’t need to fight the rest of the ponies there. We just need to deal with the boss. Her treatment of them will be enough to turn them against her as soon as we can get her on the ropes.”

“And the traps?” Marble asked. “If things go well, we won’t have to deal with them. If we need to, though, you take the lead.”

Marble took a deep breath nodded. “Okay.”

Sunny smiled, and they began pushing their way toward the pyramid. After a few hours, they began to see the pinpricks of torchlight in the distance.

Sunny extinguished her lamp, and Marble landed beside her as they began to slowly make their way through the underbrush.

Before long, they found the temple, another massive pyramid that towered over the canopy of trees with expertly cut stone. A spiral of glowing lights surrounded the temple as torches flickered in the open air. Ponies crawled around the ancient structure like ants, and many of them were visibly armed as they moved between the giant coatl carvings that draped across the entire building.

“With luck,” Sunny whispered to Marble standing beside her, “this Dusk figure will be at the top. We just need to sneak past all of these ponies and take care of her.”

“Oh, is that all?” Marble asked sarcastically. “Besides, I’m pretty sure she’s inside, just because she’d want to be close to the vault for more feathers or whatever it is she wants. That means we’re going to have to sneak up and in. It’s not going to be the easiest job sneaking in there.”

Sunny nodded. “I think we can do it, though.”

Marble shrugged. “We might be able to.”

“Come on, we don’t have all night. If everything goes well, we’ll have this whole problem taken care of by the time the sun comes up.”

Marble raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything as they began to slip forward toward the pyramid.

Chapter 32

Luna smiled to herself as she set up the library. Yes, her guests wouldn’t arrive for another few hours, but Luna, being a retired mare, had little else to do besides preparing for their eventual arrival.

“Sky above, we need a hobby,” she thought. “Or at least one that doesn’t count on five other ponies showing up to actually enjoy it.”

She rubbed her chin at the thought. So far, she did a reasonably decent job connecting with the ponies of her group socially, at least, by her reckoning. She might work to deepen her friendships now that she had them. That was the one social aspect that she had taken time to learn.

Perhaps she could ask Caramel to go get coffee with her. Obviously, it would have to be her treat, but she could afford a few cups of coffee, and Caramel would probably appreciate a free meal. Thinking about it, she might even be able to get him in contact with someone back in Canterlot to get him a better job.

That might work out well for him. Luna should definitely try that. She smiled at the thought before she took a moment to wander over to the kitchen. Now that she thought about it, they all might enjoy a free meal. She wasn’t sure who started this “no such thing as a free lunch” saying, but they obviously didn’t have friends to make them food.

Using her magic, she transformed the kitchen into a whirlwind of ingredients, preparing some of her old favorites.

While the world spun around her, Luna continued to think. Perhaps there was another activity they could do together? Celestia informed her not long after she returned that the position of Court Jester no longer existed, but there were shows and plays to be watched. Maybe the nocturnal alicorn could track one down and have her little group of friends go to one. She hoped that lowborn ponies could attend, but then again, Celestia had assured her that those lines had blurred far more in later years.

It took her a few more minutes before the food just needed to be put over a grill to cook it, but as she did, she smiled to herself. Yes, she had an excellent plan coming together.

---☼---

“You stand in front of a grid of nine squares, three wide and three long. Sitting in the grid are four tiles that slide with no resistance. On each tile is an alchemical symbol, which Brightflame and Shadesong both recognize as the four classical elements, because of their various proficiencies,” Rolling said. As she finished her narrative, she passed a cardboard square onto the other side of her gamemaster’s screen.

“And there are no other clues as to the right order?” Platinum asked.

“No,” Rolling said with a delighted smile. “But there is a chopping block and a suspiciously clean cleaver within leg’s reach.”

“Well, that’s a great sign,” Ivory muttered.

Luna mused as she looked at the cardboard cut-out. “Well, we have four corners, four cardinal directions, and four elements.”

The others nodded.

Luna had a suspicion, but she decided that she’d wait for a little bit. She’d provide an answer later, but Luna also doubted that Dreadmane would have any clue, despite her average intelligence.

“Well, there is a desert east of here,” Sundance began, “maybe we should put the fire to the east to represent that?”

“Ooh, then we can put the water to the south as the ocean.”

Rolling nodded as they slid the pieces into their spots before she looked at it. “Honestly, that was a very good answer. It wasn’t the right one, but it was great. You guys get a reroll.”

“Hm,” Ivory muttered. “So, obviously they should cancel each other out, right?”

Luna smiled but decided that she’d give them a moment to think before offering any suggestions. “I shall return with more snacks.”

“More?” Platinum asked. “You already gave us a full-on meal and you’re going to feed us more?”

Luna smiled. “Am I not the host? Is it not mine own responsibility to care for my guests?”

Platinum raised his hoofs in surrender. “Look, I won’t argue with you, I’m just saying.”

“Indeed thou art, though what thou art trying to say, I’m not sure,” Luna replied.

“Do you need any help with that?” Caramel asked.

Luna thought for a second. It would be an excellent opportunity to get him alone long enough to ask him if he would enjoy going out for something to eat. “I can probably get it, but I will not say no if thou art offering thine aid.”

He nodded and followed after her.

They made their way over to the kitchen in an eerie silence that Luna thought was strange for him but led him into the kitchen.

The alicorn popped open the oven as she walked in the door and pulled a sheet of cookies out. She set the baking tray down before she cast another spell, and the cookies cooled to the perfect heat range for break-apart bites that trailed melted chocolate without burning anything. Another ring of magic and a set of plates ripped flipped and barrel-rolled out of the cabinets and slipped underneath the falling cookies as Luna teleported the baking trays into the sink. “Here, take one of these plates.”

“Ah, sure,” Caramel said. He took the plate of cookies, but Luna could see that he was nervous. “Can, can I ask you a question?”

Luna nodded, but as she stared into Caramel’s eyes, she saw it coming.

The lunar alicorn had lived for thousands of years. Throughout her reign, Luna had stared into the eyes of beggars, kings, traitors, and heroes. She’d heard a thousand speeches and seen a thousand emotions. Luna would admit that she wasn’t the best at reading those, not like Celestia could, but she still recognized what she saw.

Shame.

Shame burned in Caramel’s eyes as he looked up at her. “I was just wondering…” he began. He licked his lips before looking away, and Luna hoped that whatever he was about to do, he’d stop now. “I was wondering, I haven’t seen Celestia at all. Does she still live here, or did something happen?”

Luna blinked.

He...he was betraying her.

The thought hurt. Caramel, the first friend she had made in years, was betraying her.

She wasn’t sure to who, but she could only guess that it was to one of the hundreds of newspapers that wanted to know what she and her sister were up to. Yet somehow, that didn’t matter. What mattered was that he stood there, looked her in the eyes, and tried to betray her like this.

How could Caramel do this to her? She’d done everything she could to help. She would have offered him a place to stay if he asked, but he didn’t want her help. He didn’t like it for some reason and now turned on her for a quick bit.

“I was just wondering,” Caramel offered weakly. “Since I haven’t seen her at all, and I...I hope she’s okay.”

The shame grew stronger in his eyes, and Luna realized that she must have failed to hide the hurt on her face. Caramel had realized that she knew what he was doing.

She opened her mouth to speak to him, and her lip quivered. The anger that wanted to pour and tear into him was held in place by the hurt and the understanding that he was probably desperate. “She…” Luna began, tears welling in her eyes, “Celestia is taking some time to herself is all.”

Caramel nodded and looked down at the plate of cookies he carried in his own magic. “I see.”

Luna nodded before picking up a tray and moving past him.

Caramel stood still for a moment before following.

The only sound either of them heard was the sharp tap of hooves on the tile floor as they made their way back to the library. The silence from before had been tainted now, and each step agonized the alicorn.

She sniffed once or twice as she moved, trying to force herself into composure, but the anger and hurt that roiled in her made break.

Had she been the sister everyone loved, she could have held it. Celestia could hide anything under her mask. Instead, by the time she made it to the library, a child could have read her face. “I’m sorry, everypony,” her wavering voice said as she set the plate of cookies on the table, “but I’m not feeling well right now, and I’m going to retire for the evening. Feel free to keep playing, but—” a sob escaped her lips, “—but I’m done for the night.”

The others blinked as they stared at her, but Luna couldn’t stare back at them anymore. Luna turned and left, moving down the hall.

“Luna?” Rolling called after her.

Luna walked faster.

“Luna?” Platinum asked.

She moved faster still, breaking into a run. Luna just managed to cross into her room before closing the door behind her and locking it in place with a spell. That was all she could do before she fell onto her bed and wept.

Someone knocked on the door and called to her, but Luna ignored them. Right now, she just wanted to be alone.

After all, she had a lot of practice being alone.

---☼---

Caramel felt like scum.

He stood just outside the door of the now-empty library, the game forgotten, still holding the plate of fresh cookies. The others were down the hall, standing outside the door they saw Luna disappear through, and he stood there, like a moron.

“I told you this wasn’t worth it.”

How was he supposed to know it’d all come down so quickly? Originally, Caramel planned on having some time to work and plot, maybe lessen the blow. Instead, she knew. How did she know?

“She’s been alive for thousands of years, idiot!” his mind accused. “Of course she could figure out what was going to happen.”

Caramel wandered back into the library and sat down, setting the plate down by the one Luna left behind.

They smelled delicious, and it made him sick.

He sat there at the table for a long moment, staring into the center of the table as though it hid an answer somewhere before his eyes unfocused and peered into nothingness.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

“And how was it supposed to happen?” his mind asked sarcastically. “Did you think you’d be able to sneak away into the night? Did you think you’d be able to blame the ponies outside for this? What were you thinking?”

Caramel didn’t answer.

He sat there for a long time before finally, the others started coming back. Platinum was the loudest of them. “Caramel, what did you do?”

Caramel looked up.

Platinum’s face, twisted by rage, stared down at him from where he hovered. “What did you do to her?”

He opened his mouth but closed it again. There was no way he could explain this.

“What did you do, Caramel?” Platinum asked, slamming both hooves onto the table as he stared his friend in the face.

Caramel didn’t meet his gaze.

“What did you do?” Platinum asked again, bringing his voice down to a furious hiss.

“I made a tough decision,” Caramel said before regretting that.

“A tough decision?” Platinum roared. “You made a tough decision and somehow leaving Luna in tears was the right answer?”

“Platinum,” Rolling called.

“Somehow, breaking the mare was the best option you had? What’s wrong with you?”

“Platinum,” Rolling said, firmer this time.

The pegasus glanced over at her.

“You don’t know what he’s talking about. I do. I’ll handle it from here.”

“But—”

“I signed up to be your collective therapist when I sat behind the screen,” she said. “Half the time I mean that as a joke. This time, I’m going to have a serious conversation with him, and I’ll try to talk with Luna too and see if I can fix this. Alright?”

Platinum stared at her for a moment before nodding. “Alright.”

“Good, then for now,” Rolling said before pausing to sigh. “For now go ahead and pack up, I don’t think we’re going to game anymore tonight.”

The others nodded before they tried to collect their things.

Sundance grabbed a cookie as he went, and just watching him nibble at it made Caramel’s heart sink deeper into his stomach.

The others trickled out, leaving Rolling and Caramel alone in the room before she turned. “A tough decision?” she asked.

There wasn’t any accusation to her tone, just a need for an explanation.

“I...I needed some money.”

It sounded so crass now that he said it.

“Money?” Rolling asked.

“The Sentinel offered me more than ten thousand bits if I got a story about Celestia or Luna, so...so I asked her where her sister was.”

“And that sent her into tears?”

Caramel sat quietly for a moment. “I think she figured it out,” the stallion said. “I think, I don’t know, maybe she read it on my face or something. She...I betrayed her trust, and...and I messed up.”

Rolling sighed. “You didn’t make this easy on me.”

“What was I supposed to do?” he asked, his own anger building up in his voice. “I need money, and they were offering enough that I could get back on my own hooves. What’s wrong with that?”

Rolling shook her head.

“I just didn’t want to be kicked out of my own home!”

Rolling began packing up her own stuff.

“There’s nothing wrong with what I did!” he said.

Rolling glanced up at him and stared him directly in the eye. “You did nothing wrong?” she asked. “Then why are you acting like this?”

Caramel winced but said nothing.

Rolling continued to pack up her stuff before she sighed. “I’ll talk with Luna first, and see what I can do. You, though, need to figure out a way to make it up to her.”

Caramel still didn’t say anything.

As Rolling carried her stuff out of the room, Caramel stood there alone with only a couple plates of cookies and Luna’s prop greatsword in the room.

As he stood there, he could swear that he heard Luna’s sobs echo down the halls.

He sighed. “I messed up.”

Chapter 33

Marble and Sunny moved quickly.

Even with her limited spellbook, Sunny had everything she needed to distract the various guards that blocked their way up. A stone dropping down the causeway, a tree shaking off to the side, or even one of their torches falling over provided more than enough distraction for the pair to make their way to the very top of the pyramid without anypony noticing them.

As they approached the small covered structure at the top of the pyramid, Marble hooked his forelegs around Sunny. He dragged the unicorn to the top of the building, keeping her from the sight of the two guards watching the door. As they touched down, Sunny reached into her saddlebag and dropped another stone behind her and off the edge. It clattered loudly on edge opposite of the entrance to the sacrificial room.

Both guards’ ears perked at the sound, and they glanced at each other before they slowly moved around to investigate the sound. The moment they turned the corner, Sunny and Marble slipped through the open archway and took the right-hand staircase down.

Luckily, it seemed that enough ponies died in this temple that the black-vested ponies already marked many of the traps with pink neon flags that Sunny distinctly remembered seeing at a construction site. Avoiding the flags, they descended down before they turned the corner and found even more stairs.

“This one looks deep,” Marble whispered. “I’ve seen this kind of temple a few times. They only have two or three livable levels, but they’re a maze once you get down there. We’ll have to stick close, and we need to avoid dead ends when we can. They’re almost always trapped.”

Sunny nodded, and they continued to climb down flight after flight of stone steps, each carefully carved and many marked with more pink flags.

They both descended for what felt like hours before they finally came to the bottom.

The landing at the bottom revealed a hallway, five feet wide that turned left immediately, and a door just opposite the stairs. The wooden door sat snugly in its portal and didn’t even let light through the bottom if anything was on the other side.

Marble sighed when he saw it. “We need to be careful. This kind of temple will swallow us if we’re not careful. There was one Vanilla, and I explored that had more than ninety rooms down there, and those were just the ones we could find.”

Sunny nodded. “Good to know.” She slipped up next to the wall and moved down the hallway until she found a corner that she carefully peeked around. She didn’t see anything around the corner except for another wooden door in the distance, shadowed by darkness.

Sunny briefly wished she had access to Transform magic to give herself some night vision but snuck back to Marble. “The ponies down here might have already explored a good chunk of this place. If we follow the flags, we might be able to navigate without running into anything.”

“That’s the hope,” he replied. “Of course, that’s where all the ponies will be, so we’ll have to sneak around them.”

“High risk, high reward, right?” Sunny asked.

He glanced at her, unamused.

“Better question,” she asked. “Which way do we go?”

Marble glanced around before shrugging. “We might want to stick to the right. That’s the tradition, after all.”

She nodded and looked to the door. Sunny slid over to it before she pressed softly against the wood. It didn’t budge the slightest bit. “Well,” she said, “you’re about to see a totally new side to unicorn magic, and I hope you’re ready.”

“What more is there to throwing lightning bolts and making objects float?” he asked.

Sunny’s horn lit up, and the door clicked before swinging open. “Incredibly easy breaking and entering,” she muttered.

Marble blinked, obviously a little perturbed.

“Celestia has had all locks magically enchanted to resist Control Matter spells to open them, but a lot of those enchantments can be forced open anyway.”

“So basically, any unicorn can just open my front door?”

“Most can’t,” she said. “The locks are stronger than that, but if somepony know what they’re doing, they can work around it, but no different than anywhere else. More importantly, these doors are old enough that they don’t have any enchantments on the doors. They’re basically open.”

“Good news, I suppose,” he said as they began to move.

The open door revealed a large room, tagged with flags all over the place, each with a matching bloodstain covering the floor. A lone torch on the far wall offered the only light, but it was evident that hundreds of ponies had been through the room several times already.

“So this one isn’t so bad. We have a few options. Shadows to hide in and traps to exploit.”

Marble stared at it for a second before he began moving toward the right wall.

“You have a plan?”

“No, I’m just looking for a secret door.”

Sunny glanced over at it but didn’t see anything that would tip her off, no wear on the stones or smoothed ledges that a door might swing from. Celestia was fond of secret passages and did her best to stuff as many of them as she could into every castle she ever lived in. Still, she let him look, just in case.

He moved all the way down before sighing. “I don’t think there’s one over here.”

“Then let’s go,” Sunny said before opening the next door.

A large pegasus stallion stared back at her.

Sunny moved in a second. She grabbed the stallion by the neck and pulled, rolling back into the room and carrying the pegasus with her. The stallion tried to scream, but he landed hard on the tile, knocking the air from his lungs, which gave Marble all the time he needed to react. He flew up and dived back down, slamming into the prone stallion and knocking him unconscious.

Sunny rolled back onto her hooves and reached into her bag to grab a rope. She weaved it around the unconscious pony, tying him up and gagging him with the excess. Then, lifting the pony with her magic, she set him aside and turned back to the door.

No one else came.

“Well,” she said. “That’s not quite how I wanted that to work out, but that wasn’t too bad.”

“Then I’d hate to see what terrible looks like,” Marble said.

Sunny smirked and glanced at him. “You actually did a pretty good job there, Marble.”

“Well, let’s not get carried away here.”

Sunny smirked before she turned back to the door. “We should probably be quieter.”

“That wouldn’t be a bad—”

A familiar roar interrupted him, and both ponies looked to the stairs behind them where the sound originated.

“Did that sound like the mandrill to you?” Marble asked.

Her shoulders slumped. “I was really hoping he’d lose us. Come on, we can’t let that thing find us.”

They moved into the next hallway, and they took the first right and came to another room. Luckily, this one wasn’t filled with flags marking traps. Unluckily, it was filled with ponies.

Sunny glanced at Marble.

He glanced back.

Then the room exploded into a flurry of motion.

Two ponies, an earth pony, and a pegasus, charged Sunny. She answered with magic. Tearing up the floor beneath her and revealing a room below, Sunny threw expertly cut boulders at the charging ponies before she grabbed Marble out of the air and yanked him down into the room she revealed.

A handful of pegasi tried to follow, but Sunny stuffed the opening with more stone from the floor below her and then used another Control Matter spell to reshape the rocks into the proper shape to lock in place.

“That works too,” Marble said, sliding his knife back into place.

“We need to keep moving,” Sunny said. “We’ve poked the ant’s nest. It’s only a matter of time before they find us.”

Marble opened his mouth to reply before they both heard grinding stone above them.

Looking up, they saw powerful, spindly fingers grip into the rock that Sunny just put down before staring into two yellow, evil eyes. “I knew I’d find you,” the mandrill said, grinning.

Sunny picked up another stone and threw it straight up into the opening. She didn’t bother watching if the rock hit. Instead, she grabbed Marble and pulled him toward the open door in front of them.

The mandrill landed behind them and followed, grinning as he loped after them. Sunny took the first right, running down the pathways, with Marble flying behind her. Her hooves pounded on the stone beneath her as she ran, the clap of her hooves ringing on the flagstones and letting everypony nearby know where she was. She cursed before she saw the next intersection and frowned. “Marble, go right. I’ll catch up!”

“What? Are you sure?”

“I’ll find you, don’t worry!”

Marble didn’t reply, but he went right when they hit the intersection, while Sunny went left. She glanced behind her for a moment and saw the mandrill chase after Marble.

She skidded to a halt before rushing after the primate, tearing chunks of rock from the walls beside her. She picked one, magically smoothed it into a small cone, and fired it straight into the mandrill’s back.

It yelped, leaping into the air, before spinning around and staring at Sunny with fierce eyes.

Sunny smiled and fired another stone into the mandrill’s chest.

He roared and began running toward her. Sunny smiled and ran back down her left-hand passage, firing a handful of rocks back into the mandrill as she ran. She found another intersection and dove left, specifically heading down the path that would most likely kill her following Marble’s theory.

She found a door ahead of her, marked with a large, painted “x” over the door.

Perfect.

She ran up to it, magically ripping the paint off the door before she burst through the door and slammed it shut behind her.

Doing everything she could to stay out of the middle of the room, she hugged the wall just long enough for the mandrill to burst into the room.

He wandered it, and as he did, the traps snapped.

Poisoned darts fired out of the wall, saw blades popped up out of the ground, and swinging pendulum blades swung out to slice him into pieces. Sunny smiled as she saw them before popping away, hoping that the traps would at least slow him down.

She began retracing her steps, running as fast as she could before she made it back to the first intersection and taking a deep breath. As she panted, she cast another spell, a Perceive Body spell, to light up Marble’s path down through the hallways.

Nothing happened.

For a second, her heart leaped into her chest. Was he dead? Perceive spells typically fail if the target stopped existing or…

She used Perceive Matter to look for something on his body but again turned up nothing.

Something was blocking her magic.

She took a breath. He’s fine. I just need to try something else.

She refocused her spell to look for the room he moved to, and this time, a misty line of glowing magic appeared to lead her to the room he was in.

Gotta love loopholes. That and more complex spells that need a little brute-forcing to get through.

She took one more breath before she began to chase after the magical light, deeper into the temple. She followed Marble’s path through the twisting hallways and crossed any rooms that she ran across. Sunny pushed through the doors ahead of her and then came to a sudden stop.

Marble sat in a cage. The cage itself, she barely recognized as thronestone, the magic-blocking rock that made the changeling throne several years ago. He sat in the center of a large room, surrounded by ponies, including a burnt orange pegasus with a red mane and a single wing. On the other end of the room stood a massive door carved in the likeness of the Coatl. The vault.

“So,” she said in a voice that sounded dead. “This is your partner, is it?”

Sunny glanced around, the range of the stone would block most of her magic, but she might be able to fight them on this side of the room. As she looked around the others, she found one of the ponies laying by the wall, with the magical knife in his shoulder. Marble tried, at least.

The orange pegasus flipped up her one wing to reveal a set of blades in her feathers. She brought them up to Marble’s neck and spoke in that same, emotionless voice. “Surrender, or I will kill him. I can assure you I have no qualms of killing him.”

Sunny hesitated, and that was all it took for the mass of ponies to begin to surrounder her. She wasted her only opportunity to attack, and now she was on the defensive.

“I can assure you that your magic won’t work,” the one-winged pegasus said, “and I doubt you’d be able to fight all of these ponies at once and keep your friend alive.”

Sunny glanced around at the ponies around her. She could throw a stone at them, their momentum would remain even if the magic behind them disappeared, but that knife was very close to Marble’s throat.

The sound of panting grew behind her, and wet breath hit the back of her neck.

She glanced behind herself to see the mandrill standing over her, breathing heavily.

“Zalxayl,” the pegasus said, staring up at the mandrill, “where have you been?”

“This...traitor found the key,” the beast replied. “I was hunting them.”

Stoping the mandrill would be very difficult, but combining that with all the ponies in the room, she wasn’t sure Sunny could take them all.

“They’re not traitors, Zalxayl. I’m fairly certain I didn’t hire anypony that is actually competent enough to get the cloak, but I appreciate your efforts.”

“Of course, Lady Dusk,” Zalxayl replied, bowing. “Then I deliver you the ponies that found the key.”

The pegasus smiled. “Thank you.”

Sunny didn’t have a lot of options.

“No, she doesn’t,” Inner Celestia said.

Sunny grimaced. She didn’t need her talking right now. She needed to think about how she was going to get them out of here.

“You can’t. I have to.”

Nope. No, Sunny could make this work. She just needed to think about this.

“Now, as I said, surrender, or I will kill your friend,” Dusk repeated.

Inner Celestia stepped forward and became Celestia. Sunny retreated and whimpered. “You will not need to do that. In fact, just let him go. I’ll have everything you need.”

“Or really, and what’s that?” Dusk asked, amused.

Marble glanced around, looking like he was trying to find something that he could work with somewhere.

“Don’t do this to him,” Inner Sunny begged. “He’ll hate me for it.”

Celestia reached into her bag and pulled out her changeling amulet.

“He’ll wonder why I didn’t just teleport him to safety. He’ll wonder what I lied about this whole time.”

Celestia took a deep breath and transformed into her true form.

Sunny was gone. Instead, Celestia stood in her place, taking the responsibility she had to bear. “I am Lady Celestia the Firstborn, once called the millennial queen, the solar ruler, and she who has seen a thousand generations, and a thousand more will burn out before I am spent.” She smirked. “At least, that’s what they called me. I’m not sure anymore.”

Celestia glanced around the room. The ponies in the black vests cowered in front of her with fear in their eyes. The mandrill behind her stepped backward, reassessing the threat, while Dusk stared with only a glint of satisfaction on her face. “Perhaps you do have what I want, Lady Celestia. Why don’t we start negotiating?”

Celestia nodded before her eyes fell to Marble.

The solar alicorn spent thousands of years reading ponies. She learned how to gather the most profound insights from the most guarded of ponies.

Marble was an open book. His eyes were wide with confusion that shook him to his core as he tried to piece everything together. Mixed in the bewilderment hung betrayal and hurt.

Celestia glanced at him and took a deep breath through her nose before saying one last thing to Sunny before the mare was absorbed into her mind.

“I told you so.”

Chapter 34

Marble’s mind swum.

Sunny was Celestia.

Somehow the mare that did nothing but get on his nerves was the literal ex-ruler of the country. That mare had enough magical energy in her left forehoof to move the entire jungle, and she still chose to lead him on this wild goose chase without doing more?

Why did she even disguising herself in the first place?

His mind came to that answer on its own. He’d seen a picture of the Royal Sister’s manor house with at least three dozen ponies camping outside her main gate. She disguised herself so that she could avoid attention.

She could have stopped, though. She could have stopped and revealed herself once the ship sank. That would have been the perfect time to admit that she was none other than Lady Celestia and pop him to safety. Or she could have even done that on the Crystal Flare to save the passengers on the ship. She could have teleported everyone to safety or flown him to the shore.

She could fly. Every time Marble carried her up into the trees was pointless, and she could have done it herself.

Sunny could have done all of this herself.

Sunny could have solved everything, and instead, she dragged him into all this danger.

She was the princess, and she put herself in so much danger. Why, by Cele—Why would she do that? What made her think that this was okay? How on earth did she think this was a good idea to put herself in this kind of danger?

How could she do this to him?

“I can offer myself, and the cloak you want, Ms. Dusk. Though I will warn you, I will burn all of these feathers with the sunniest summer day if you so much as touch my little pony.”

“I suppose you do have that advantage, don’t you?” the one-winged pegasus remarked. The orange mare turned to the black-vested ponies and raised an eyebrow. “Well? You heard the Lady. Release the prisoner.”

There was a flurry of motion as the ponies around the cage began to move. They began pushing back and forth to try and fulfill their orders while Celestia and Dusk stared at each other.

“She’s not the princess anymore,” Marble’s mind told him. “She doesn’t rule the kingdom now, Princess Twilight does that. It’s not like if something happened to her the entire country would fall to its knees. In fact, out of all the times, it ever could have been, this is probably the safest time for her to do something this stupid.”

None of that mattered, though. Somehow none of it mattered at all.

“I want him escorted to safety,” Celestia said as she pulled the cloak free before encasing it in a ball of glass that then transformed into steel before the ball slammed into the ground with the sound of a ringing gong. “If not, then the cloak stays in the ball.”

Dusk frowned but nodded. “I suppose I can grant you that, after all, it’s not every day you get an audience with Lady Celestia herself. Zalxayl, pick a small contingent of ponies to take the pegasus to safety. The Lady and I have much to discuss.”

“Of course, Lady Dusk,” the mandrill replied before bowing to the pegasus before he pointed to a few stallions in the back.

The cage opened, and somepony pushed Marble out of it. He stumbled as someone pushed him onto the stone floor, but he managed to catch himself and stood just in front of Celestia.

He stared up at her and looked into her brilliant, magenta eyes. Eyes that looked at him with a soft but intense sorrow. She’d been caught with her hoof in the cookie jar, and now he knew.

---☼---

Celestia took on her responsibility.

She couldn’t run from it anymore, and she couldn’t ignore it anymore. She needed to be an adult and deal with it as adults do. The part of her that was still Sunny, the part that wanted to enjoy herself, the part that wanted to be an average pony, the part that already fell for him even though she wouldn’t admit it, screamed.

That part wanted to tell him something, to apologize or something, but Celestia held firm.

She said nothing as Marble was forced through the cage and stumbled out to stop just in front of her.

Celestia was an iron locomotive, unflinching and unstoppable.

Marble glanced up at her. He stared into her eyes for a moment that seemed to stretch on for an eternity.

Celestia stood like an icebreaker, smashing through the glaciers and caring not for what stood in her way.

“Lady Celestia,” he greeted.

She wavered.

The hurt, the chill, even the distance in his voice slammed into her like a war hammer.

Celestia wavered but stood. Her prow bent, but she continued to sail. Her train cars derailed, but her engine chugged on.

Marble moved on, grabbing his knife before he walked past her to join the contingent of ponies that Dusk’s pet picked out for him.

“Once I know he’s safe,” Celestia said, “I’ll release the cloak.”

“Of course, Lady Celestia,” Dusk said.

Celestia turned to Marble. “I will be casting a scrying spell on you for—”

He ignored her and just walked away, followed by the ponies that were supposed to escort him.

Celestia said nothing but turned back to the room of ponies ahead of her before her vision narrowed on the orange pegasus.

Dusk’s face was twisted into a calculating smirk before she finally spoke up. “I suppose I owe you an explanation, don’t I, your Ladyship?”

Celestia’s face hardened, and she glared down at the pony in front of her. “Yes, I should say you do.”

The maimed pegasus nodded before she turned and began to make her deeper into the room. “Then follow me, I’m sure you’ll find my explanation reasonable.”

“I hope for your sake I do,” Celestia replied, trying to keep the venom from her voice.

The alicorn followed after the pegasus as she walked further into the temple, with the mandrill following close behind as the black-vested ponies gave them a wide berth.

Celestia followed after, keeping her head high and her back straight as she walked.

But deep inside her, the Sunny part of her wept.

They walked deeper into the room, passing the vault by, and moving into a room that seemed surprisingly small. “I took this room as something of an office, I hope you find it comfortable.”

“It will suffice,” Celestia said, trying to ignore the pain that flared in her chest.

“I am glad. Let me start at the beginning,” Dusk said. “As you can imagine, being born with one wing makes it difficult to be a pegasus. It’s hard to be promised that you can fly, only for it to be torn from you and carried on your back your entire life.”

Celestia listened with half an ear, barely paying any attention as she thought of Marble’s face. Despite that, she heard enough speeches to respond without even really thinking about it.

“So hard that you had to have the ponies killed as they worked for you?”

“Is it wrong that I wanted my own birthright? To take to the skies? Is that so wrong?”

“Of course not,” Celestia replied. “Murdering your fellow ponies to do so, however….”

“Unfortunate accidents.”

Celestia didn’t answer right away, though the reports from the handful of ponies that she questioned stuck with her. However, even that was only halfway on her mind. The Sunny part of her kept begging to check up on Marble to see how he was doing, to make sure he was safe, but Celestia shoved it down.

“Regardless,” Dusk continued, “I just want what was supposed to be mine. I want to soar the skies and move weather just like any other pegasus.”

“You seem especially focused on the weather,” Celestia pointed out before she cast a spell to peek in on Marble. He continued to storm up the stairs, obviously angry.

“Of course I do,” she replied. “My parents were some of Cloudsdale’s best weather ponies. They had to move to the ground because I only had one wing. My birth stole my parents’ chances and gave me nothing to show for it. I intend to become the best weather pony in the world to make up for it.”

Celestia nodded. “By killing other ponies.”

Dusk returned Celestia’s remark with a deadpan glare. “They volunteered.”

Again, the Sunny part of her begged, and this time she relented. Celestia dropped her scry and turned back to the pegasus. “They volunteered to die?”

Dusk raised an eyebrow. “I assume you don’t approve.”

“Of your methods? Certainly not.”

“Then I hope you will appreciate the fact that not a single more pony under my employ shall die.”

“A wonderful thing to say, after a few dozen have died.”

Dusk glanced over to the mandrill.

Sunny wanted to check one more time. Celestia cast another spell to glance at Marble as he walked and was only vaguely aware that the primate slipped out of the room.

“It seems I have angered you,” Dusk noted.

“Wantonly killing ponies I once deemed my subjects will do that, yes,” Celestia responded.

“Well, I assure you, it’s not my intent to kill ponies. As I said, most of them were workplace accidents. I hear they’re rather common in temples such as this.”

“Accidents?” Celestia asked. “Does that include when you sent your pet monkey after ponies to attack and kill those who wanted to leave?”

Dusk raised an eyebrow. “I see you’re fixated.”

“Fixated?” Celestia repeated. “That’s hardly the wrong response to finding out that somepony has been murdering ponies. As it is, I’m surprised I’ve managed to keep my composure and not teleport you directly into Canterlot’s dungeons.”

“And I’m sure your little crony, the current Princess, would let you do it as well.”

Celestia blinked. The audacity of the comment threw her for a moment before she narrowed her eyes. “How dare you.”

“How dare I?” Dusk growled. “How dare I want what was promised to me? How dare you want your throne when you have wings and a horn? How dare I want anything in life if it means someone else must suffer, hm? How could I want something so bad I would put it before someone else? But maybe you wouldn’t know anything about that? After all, you’re the perfect Celestia, how could you know selfishness?”

Celestia blinked. That last comment hit harder than it had any right to, but she wouldn’t give in now. Besides, she had to stop this pony now. No more delaying the inevitable. She needed to stop this pony.

She prepared a Control Body spell to teleport her away and spoke one more time. “We’re done here, Ms. Dusk. I will not tolerate your insolence any longer.”

She released her spell.

Nothing happened.

She blinked before she turned just in time to watch the mandrill grab her by the throat and throw her into the thronestone jail.

She slammed against the cage, her head spinning, and heard the door slam shut.

When did the cage get here? “Idiot! You should have been paying attention!”

“You may not tolerate me anymore, Lady Celestia,” Lady Dusk said, “but I’m afraid I still need you around. Zalxayl, bring the cage with you.”

“Yes, Lady Dusk,” he replied slowly.

Celestia glared at Dusk from the cage as the mandrill, which still stood taller than her even in her proper form, continued to push her forward.

Getting shorter was the worst part of retirement.

The mandrill dragged the cage back into the vault room, following Dusk as she walked around. “Now that we have the cloak,” Dusk began, “we can open up the vault. Inside of that is the Coatl’s Radiance. If you thought the feathers were powerful, then the staff will terrify you, good Lady. Of course, you won’t actually see what happens when I get it.”

Dusk glared at the ponies that were still standing in the vault room. “Someone get that steel ball open. I need that cloak.”

A handful of ponies scrambled to obey, and they gathered around the metal sphere and began working on some plan to crack it.

“You seem confident I won’t stop you,” Celestia said.

“Of course I am, Lady Celestia,” Dusk replied with an audible smirk, the only emotion beyond indignation Celestia had seen on the mare. “Because the Coatl’s Radiance is currently sleeping.”

Celestia’s brow knit in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

Dusk smiled and turned on her. “That staff has sat here for centuries, Celestia. It languished in silence, unused until it’s magic fell asleep, but the Coatl’s blessing isn’t gone. Someone just needs to prove to the staff that the ponies here are worthy to use it. And I know exactly how to prove that.”

“Oh, do you?” Celestia asked.

Dusk smiled. “You have no idea. I was concerned you see. I thought I would have to use too many of the feathers convincing one of the mighty alicorns to come, but you managed to make your way here anyway. I suppose we could call it divine providence.”

Celestia narrowed her eyes in the cage. “What are you talking about?”

Dusk smiled. “There was one thing the staff needed to keep its strength. One sacrifice necessary for this kingdom of earth ponies to claim my birthright. They needed to pay the ultimate cost in order to rule over the domain of all pegasi. Whenever their kings reached the end of their life, they would climb to the top of this very temple.”

Celestia blinked as the distant memory of an ancient king ascending the steps reached her mind.

“He would lay atop the altar, and the staff would sit beside him, and the entire Lusitanpec population would give the staff the only thing it needs.”

Celestia realized what she meant just as the mare said it.

“Royal blood.”

A handful of the ponies working on the steel ball turned to her, faces aghast.

Dusk smiled wide. “You’ve brought me everything I need, Celestia. And then I will rule nature itself as the storm to end all storms. I will be unstoppable!”

She laughed, and Celestia stared at the mad mare, realizing she just made everything worse.

---☼---

Marble kept walking up the stairs with his escort following close behind.

How dare she? How could she?

He stormed out of the very top of the pyramid and started stomping his way down the stairs.

This was ridiculous. Stupid, even! How could she do something like this?

A few of the ponies guarding the place snapped to action when they saw him, only to be waved off by the escort. It looked like they just wanted him gone for now.

“You’re over-reacting,” a part of him said. “You’re not mad that she lied.”

Of course, he was! She could have solved all of these problems with a wave of her horn. The Lady could have gotten him to safety in a second, and she didn’t need to drag him with her into the depths of the jungle on whatever crazy adventure she wanted to go on.

“She knew you were capable,” his brain argued. “She knew you could do it, and she helped you every step of the way. Maybe she could have sent you back, but you learned so much out here.”

Those were justifications that meant nothing. Celestia was sitting on so much power, and she just chose not to use it. She was playing a game with his life.

“She needed you.”

No, she didn’t! If she were taking this seriously, then she could have crushed that unicorn with a thought. She could have plucked the mandrill out of the air and sent him to the moon. Instead, she was playing around and nearly got herself killed. Twice!

“Like Vanilla used to do?”

That made him pause.

“You’re not mad that she lied. You’re mad she wasn’t taking it seriously.”

S-so? Was that not a good reason to be mad? Didn’t he have a right to be angry?

“That never stopped you from being there for Vanilla.”

But...but she died.

“She did, but it wasn’t her fault either was it?”

Marble paused at the bottom of the pyramid and stared back at the giant temple.

“You promised her.”

He sighed before looking at the ponies escorting him. “So are you going to take me all the way to civilization?”

The unicorn in the group opened her mouth to speak before pausing. “Hang on, I’m getting a message.”

This Dusk character had messenger unicorns? You didn’t see many of those since they needed some kind of line of sight to pass the spell along; most ponies just stuck with the mail or bought bottled Dragonfire for essential letters.

The messenger’s face went pale. “Understood,” she replied before turning to Marble. “I’ve been told that yes, we’re taking you to the edge of the jungle.”

Marble nodded but glanced at the mare before she sighed and unleashed a spell.

He tried to leap out of the way but felt magic grab his wings and snap them.

He yelled in pain, covering the sound of the unicorn’s order before the others closed in and began to beat him. The ponies stomped, bit, and kicked him, breaking bones and shattering his legs.

He tried to reach out of his dagger, but he couldn’t stick his foreleg back far enough without risking getting that broken as well. The blows rained on him hard and fast, and he tasted the warm copper of blood in his mouth.

The agony went on forever, but only for a few seconds before they finally stopped. “Lady Dusk wants him dead.”

“Won’t Celestia kill us?” one of the other ponies said, regret already filling his voice.

“She’s captured and in the anti-magic cage. Dusk said she’s going to kill her too.”

“What?”

“Look, it doesn’t matter right? Dusk going to try and take over the world anyway the best we can do is keep our heads down, and hope everypony forgets us. For now, we need to deal with this pony.”

“I’m not going to kill the pony Celestia wanted to keep safe.”

Marble tried pushing himself up.

“Then, just throw him in the jungle. Let it take care of him.”

Marble groaned as rough hooves picked him up and carried him deeper into the wilderness.

Chapter 35

Caramel slowly forced his eyes open and stared at the ceiling of his apartment, fully aware that he could only do so for another few weeks.

He’d prepared his resume and sent it out to a dozen or so places, but that wouldn’t fix the problem. The unicorn even managed to get an interview at a local convenience store, but without someone else helping him, he wouldn’t be able to afford the rent anyway.

A part of him said that he could go to the Sentinel and actually sell the story he made Luna cry getting, but all he could hear was the alicorn’s sobbing every time he considered it.

He sighed and rolled out of bed before wandering to his kitchen for a toaster pastry breakfast.

It’d been three days since he asked Luna where Celestia had been, three days since everything fell apart. All of this for “she’s taking some time for herself.” What was he supposed to do with that? He was sure he could still sell that to the newspaper. It was factual information from Luna’s own mouth that Celestia wasn’t in the mansion. The Sentinel could probably sell thousands of papers with a confirmation that the older sister wasn’t in the estate, even if he had nothing else.

Sure, he might not get the 10 thousand, but he’d still be paid well enough.

Still couldn’t do it without hearing Luna’s sobs.

The toaster popped up, revealing two warm, cheap pastries that Caramel swiped onto a plate he carried to the couch. He fell into the cushions and sighed as he stared up at the ceiling again, hoping that the time would pass quickly so he could just be thrown out and die with whatever dignity he had left.

Someone knocked on his door.

Caramel glanced down over at the front door of his apartment for a moment. Nothing happened for a long moment, and he turned back to the ceiling. Why bother answering? It might be someone asking for bills, and he just couldn’t afford that right now anyway.

The frantic knocking sounded again.

He glanced back at the door.

Then again, it might be the Guard. Maybe Luna was going to arrest him. Making a princess cry had to be a crime punishable by several years in jail. He’d probably deserve at least that, if not more.

The door knocked again.

This time, Caramel sighed before he stood up, setting the plate down on his coffee table. He wandered over to his front door, where the pony on the other side of the door knocked again. “Comin’,” he muttered.

The knocks came a fourth time.

“I’m coming!” he called before he opened the door.

Thistle stood on the other side.

A part of Caramel wanted to close the door on him, but the look of him shocked him to stillness. Heavy, heavy bags sat under his bloodshot eyes. His mane hung disheveled, and the tie that he always wore hung loose and crooked.

As soon as Thistle saw him, though, his eyes went wide and glinted with a manic light. “Caramel!” he said voice croaking. “Am I glad to see you!”

Caramel blinked before he began to close the door. “Can’t say the same.”

“No, wait!” Thistle said, shoving one of his hooves in the door. “Please, just give me a moment.”

Caramel started to shove Thistle’s hoof out of the way.

“Look, do you want your job back?” Thistle asked.

Caramel stopped.

“No, no, of course, you don’t. It’s a terrible job. Do you want my job?”

Caramel gaped as he glanced up at his former employer. “What?”

“It’s a nice job, not a whole lot to do. It has great benefits. You’ll love it.”

“What are you talking about?”

Thistle smiled widely, though maybe a bit too widely. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll make everything work out. I’ll get the paperwork signed. They might make you take a few months of training, but it’ll be fine, I promise. Nothing’s going to stop you from being the best boss ever.”

“Thistle, what are you talking about?”

Still smiling, Thistle leveled his eyes directly at Caramel’s. They glistened with tears. “I haven’t...I haven’t slept for the past two and a half weeks. I don’t know why, but I know it’s because I fired you. I didn’t care to start with, but it’s been…” he started laughing. The laughing got louder, more manic, and somehow more desperate.

He stopped, head drooping. “I need to sleep,” he muttered. “No matter what price, I need the sleep.”

Caramel blinked and stared at the stallion for a long moment. When did this happen? Where was the petty stallion that fired him by mail just to make a point? Why—

Why did he have such a hard time sleeping?

“Look, I need to sleep. Just take the job, please? If you do that, I might be able to sleep again.”

Caramel wasn’t paying attention anymore. Instead, the pegasus’ mind reeled with possibilities. Who else could affect the sleep of a pony? There was only one pony that he could think of, but why would Luna do that? Why would she haunt…?

His thoughts trailed off before the answer hit him like a passing freight car.

Luna knew.

Of course, she knew. Somehow that mare knew everything, but if she knew that the stallion was unemployed, then, of course, she’d know about the newspaper.

Then why tell him anything? Why not just throw him out like he deserved the moment he opened his mouth to ask such a stupid question? Why say anything at all unless—

Oh, sweet Celestia, she was trying to help.

Another thought slammed into him. What if Luna not only knew but was still trying to help? That’s why she gave him just enough to work with. Oh, Celestia strike him down for being such an idiot!

His stomach twisted at the realization that she even tried helping him as he betrayed her. Why did he have to be such a moron!

He turned to Thistle, who stumbled on his hooves and said, “I’ll think about it. Why don’t you go home and get some sleep?”

“Sleep? I can’t get sleep,” Thistle said, turning before he lost his balance and stumbled into the hallway wall. It caught him, and he slid down to the ground, muttering the entire time. “Can’t sleep. Can’t sleep. Can’t sleeeeeeezzzzzzz.”

He began to snore as he hit the ground, but Caramel didn’t care anymore. He had to make it back to the mansion.

He had to.

---☼---

Marble ground his teeth together as he lay on the jungle floor.

His body lay broken. Both wings were shattered, he couldn’t move all but one of his legs, and his ribs burned. The only part of him that burned worse was his heart, which was screaming at him to do something.

“What can I do?” he thought. “I can’t even move right now.”

They said they were going to kill Celestia. He couldn’t just let that happen.

“I can’t even stand. How am I supposed to fight my way back in there?”

You promised!

Marble groaned before he began moving his one good leg. “This is stupid. I’m actually thinking about crawling my way back there. I’m actually considering heading back to the temple to be stomped on by the first Guard that finds me. All for a mare that lied to me.”

Vanilla would want you to save her.

She would, but a part of him knew that he wanted to save her as well. He couldn’t let her die like this, even if she had lied.

He pulled himself by his one hoof before he felt his ribs light up in agony. He stopped, hissing before he shifted his barrel and tried again. He dragged himself forward across the ground, cursing himself and Celestia for this stupidity.

Then he heard the growl. He rolled onto his back and stared up into the canopy where a jaguar glared at him.

It pounced, and Marble rolled again, trying to save himself as several hundred pounds of feline muscle and claws slammed into the ground.

The pegasus didn’t have the maneuverability he usually did. He didn’t have the strength, and he could barely move, much less fly. He rolled again, using his only good leg to reach for the only weapon he had. He pulled the tooth dagger and flailed it about wildly, trying to threaten the big cat, broken bones and all.

It appeared amused.

He swung and roared, trying to scare it back, but the jaguar only circled slowly, looking for a delicious place to start.

Marble grit his teeth. He didn’t deserve to die like this. In fact, Marble was fairly certain nopony deserved to die like this. “Go away!” he yelled at the cat.

The cat circled again before it pounced.

Marble held out the knife and felt it dig deep into the cat’s side, but the beast’s teeth bit deep into his shoulder.

He nearly yelled before he pulled back the dagger and stabbed again, and again before he tried to throw the cat off.

He shoved with all his might before he reached for his wounded shoulder.

With his free hoof. The one that should be broken. He blinked as he looked down at his hoof, which came away from the shoulder clean. There hadn’t even been any blood on it, somehow.

The jaguar growled as it hunched low, staring at Marble with angry eyes. It glared at him with annoyance, as though it knew that Marble had no right to continue living.

Marble shoved his confusion to the side and focused, propping himself up with his good leg while he held the knife in the other.

The cat stared at him for another moment before it began backing away, seemingly to decide that perhaps this pony wasn’t the easy meal it thought him to be. It continued to back away into the jungle before leaving him entirely.

The pegasus sighed for a moment before he slumped his shoulders. He took a moment to glance down at his now-whole foreleg before he began dragging himself forward, using his two legs to waddle along. He kept his teeth clenched as his hindlegs ran into every branch, stone, and bump in the earth. He used the knife to dig hoofholds in the dirt dragged himself further ahead with every step.

What was happening? Why was his foreleg better now? Everything in his leg felt better now, and he could have sworn that the breaks in his leg would have taken months to get better. How did it heal?

He stabbed the knife into a tree and held onto it as he took a moment to rest. With his ribs burning like this, he’d have a hard time moving and—

His ribs weren’t burning anymore.

He looked down at his barrel and pressed at his sides, but there wasn’t any pain.

Then he noticed the falling leaves.

The tree above him shed leaves like coats. They fell in a dense curtain of vegetation as the tree above him slowly died.

As he glanced up, he suddenly heard a pop in his hind leg and stared down at it as he watched the considerable break snap back together.

He was healing, and the tree was dying.

He glanced over at the knife buried in the trunk and saw a dark spot grow around the blade edge.

The tree was dying, and he was healing.

He pulled the knife out of the tree and stabbed it into another and felt his wings slowly snap back into place, break-by-break.

He pulled the knife back out of the tree and watched as another curtain of leaves fell as the tree died. He stared down at the knife in his hoof before he glanced back up at the tree. He turned back to the dagger. “Did you always do that?”

The dagger didn’t respond.

He took a deep breath and slid the knife back into his saddlebags.

The pyramid stood in the distance, and somewhere inside, captured in a cage, sat Lady Celestia, the mare that lied to him.

The mare that he was going to save.

Either that, or he was going to die a horrible death at the hands of that giant mandrill.

He sighed again before he spread his wings and took to the skies.

“At least,” he thought to himself, “I’m not crawling anymore.”

Chapter 36

Celestia sat in her cage. She kept her back ramrod straight, she held her head high, and her eyes stared forward with the power of a ruler behind them.

But she felt empty.

Her bravado was skin deep, and inside, she couldn’t help but think about Marble. She couldn’t check up on him now. She couldn’t do anything but sit in the cage. With all of her magic locked away, she might as well have been a filly for all the good she could do. Her strength couldn’t force open the lock, and her wings couldn’t even fully extend in the cramped space. If she were still full-sized, she’d have to bend her neck at very painful angles in here.

And what’s worse, Marble hated her.

Of course, he did. Celestia lied to him, and honestly, it was her fault for allowing a relationship like this to happen. She had been here to have some fun and put her responsibilities aside, not to find a new special somepony. She shouldn’t have let this happen to begin with.

That didn’t stop her heart from aching.

She shoved that aside, only for the pain to creep back into her thoughts as she tried to focus on the far wall, where the ponies surrounding the steel sphere attempted to crack it open while flinching under her gaze.

How did she wind up here? How did she let this happen? She’d somehow let all this happen, she’d let herself fall in love with Marble, Celestia had led him around to fight a bunch of crazy ponies, and she’d let it all fall apart for nothing.

No, not for nothing. Celestia had done what she needed to. She had saved the life of her subject by revealing that she was more valuable to the enemy. She’d done what she needed to as a Princess.

“But you’re not the Princess,” Inner Sunny said.

Celestia ignored the thought.

“You spent ten years getting Twilight ready to rule. She’s the Princess now. You have to let go.”

Celestia frowned but didn’t respond. It didn’t matter if she was ruling or not, Marble was her responsibility, and she had to make the sacrifice for him.

“He’s not your responsibility. You’re just pretending he is, so you don’t get hurt, and it hurt anyway.”

That...that wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. No way at all.

Inner Sunny smiled. “Can dish it out but can’t take it, huh?”

Shut up, you. You’re not real.

“Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

Celestia didn’t respond. Instead, she sighed and broke her indomitable persona for just a moment.

One of the ponies by the cage glanced at her before looking away nervously.

That’s something I can do, she thought. If I could sway some of her ponies to my side, I might be able to work my way out of this.

“It’s also a convenient distraction, so you can ignore me,” Inner Sunny noted.

That too, but it was secondary, honestly.

The pony that glanced at her turned his head down, and Celestia took a moment to “suddenly” notice him. “Have I done wrong, my little pony? Have I made a mistake coming here?”

The stallion bit his lip and looked between her and the sphere. “I...um…”

Celestia mentally nodded. Yes, with luck, she’d be out of the cage in a few minutes.

---☼---

Marble flew high over the jungle, riding the air currents until he hovered over the pyramid before he dropped like a falcon to the top. He pulled into a dive that would have made a wonderbolt proud, hidden by the darkness of the night.

He pulled up feet above the very top of the temple, but the ruffling of his feathers altered the guards at the door. They glanced around wildly, trying to see where the sound came from, but Marble didn’t want to give them a chance.

Of course, he needed to come up with something to actually keep the guards from investigating him, but all he had was a knife that healed him. Sure he could fight them here and now, but it would only call down the rest of the guards onto him, and he didn’t like his chances in that fight, even with a magical knife.

Was there a limit to the healing? Would it make him invincible as long as there was someone to stab?

He shoved the thoughts aside. He needed to get in, not think about whatever this thing was.

“Check the roof,” one of the guards said. “It’s bad enough two ponies got through already.”

Marble leaped down to the ground behind the building and dived for the floor. He needed to be quick to make this work.

He dropped and began moving around the building. He checked the corner. One of the guards stared at the door. The other flew up to the top of the building and began to search around the edges. He needed to come up with something to do.

He reached into his saddlebag for something and found only a few coconut canteens and a rope.

He pulled one of the canteens and hefted it before he threw it over the edge.

It cracked loudly, and both guards turned to the sound. Marble used this as his chance. He doubled back, heading to the opposite side of the building, and looked over the edge as he listened to the pair of guards.

“What was that?” the earth pony of the two asked.

“I have no idea,” said the pegasus, as he dropped beside the other pony and stared over the edge of the temple. “It sounded like bone snapping.”

“It sounded like bare bone snapping,” the earth pony said. “Did someone drop a skull from the sky or something?”

Marble took his chance and slipped through, hearing the pegasus say, “I’ll check it out. You stick by the door.”

Marble didn’t even slow as he hit the long staircase down. He needed to move quickly. He needed to get Celestia and the cloak out of here before Dusk had a chance to start a hurricane that could end the world.

He dropped back down into the labyrinthine levels and began to follow the path his escort led him through before realizing that he’d have to travel through a room filled with ponies.

The pegasus paused for a moment in the hallway and then realized that he might need to go around the room, but that would take time that he might not have, and even then, it wouldn’t guarantee that he’d actually find a way around the room filled with ponies.

Then again, running in the middle of what may as well be a barracks was probably worse.

Or…

Or he could let the temple do the work for him.

None of these ponies knew how to spot the traps as he did. He could lead them through one room and probably cut the number of his pursuers in half.

There’d be a lot of dead ponies left in his wake if he did so.

Sunny once told him that he saved a life once, and there was no evil in that.

He straightened his back and ducked into a room filled with neon flags. All to save a life.

---☼---

Celestia whispered to a few of the ponies around her. “Of course you’re innocent,” she said, “after all, you’re all trapped her like I am. If you even think about leaving, Dusk has the mandrill come after you. You couldn’t possibly be expected to throw your lives away. Of course, I can’t guarantee that you’re going to be safe if you don’t show me that you’re willing to get out.”

The seven ponies around her nodded and shuffled on their hooves.

“How do we do that?” One of the ponies, Aqua Berry, the leader among them, asked.

“Well, if you can get me out of the cage, I can deal with the mandrill. After that, we can work on getting the rest of you out.”

A few of the ponies muttered between themselves while Aqua slowly nodded. “We might be able to do something, but—”

A voice called out from the hallway, and everyone’s eyes glanced over as a voice rang in the room. “Intruder!”

A flood of tougher-looking ponies began to pour into the hall, and Celestia stared at it for a long second. “Marble?” she whispered to herself. He was the only pony for miles that this group, the so-called “Sons of the Storm,” would consider an intruder. By why would he come back?

Inner Sunny felt her heart soar, and Celestia squashed that. She didn’t need to be thinking about such things right now.

Celestia turned to the others. “Quickly, use this as a distraction and—”

“You there!” Dusk yelled from across the room, and the ponies around the cage snapped to attention. “I am not paying you to talk. I want that sphere open.”

They nodded before they turned back to the steel ball that held the cloak, and Aqua whispered. “We’ll work on getting you out, but we need to appear like we’re still working for him if we’re going to live.”

Celestia slowly nodded but stayed silent. She’d have to bide her time.

Yet as she did, all she could think about was Marble.

---☼---

Marble ducked through a hallway and was followed by a herd of ponies chasing him down. His crazy plan to get everyone chasing him worked perfectly, and he ducked into a room where he cleared some of the flags.

He used his wings to fly over a set of hidden pressure plates, dived under an arcane eye, and then jumped back into the air to clear a tripwire.

The first ponies chasing after him stepped onto one of the plates and found himself filled with poison darts.

The rest of the group screeched to a halt. Most of them wound up bumping into each other as they attempted to stop right in front of the traps.

“Stay there,” Marble said, drawing the knife and hoping that he looked intimidating enough to keep them still, “and no one else needs to get hurts.”

A handful of ponies tested the edge of the trapped area, trying to find a safe passage through.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Marble warned. “Those traps will make short work of you.”

A handful still tried to poke their way forward until a pendulum swung down from the ceiling and nearly cut a pony in two.

Marble shook his head. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said before he rushed down the next hallway.

He entered another room that he cleared and then flew up and pressed himself up onto the door lintel.

This was the part of his plan that he hated the most. Forcing himself to wait as the ponies in the previous room made their way in. With luck, they’d get through the last room, begin working on this one, and he’d have a chance to double back just in time for them to be working their way through this room.

Staying on the very edge of the lintel stone, maybe half-an-inch wide was proving difficult. His legs began to burn as they held their position for a few seconds that dragged on for several long minutes.

Finally, some ponies began making their way into the room.

“Oh, Luna’s breath,” one of the ponies said. “He cleared the flags in here too.”

“Alright, we work this carefully, just like the other one.”

“Do we have to?” one of the other ponies asked. “What’s wrong with letting the pegasus go? The way down is behind us anyway.”

“And let him do whatever he wants down here?” the first pony asked. “That stallion came in with the Princess and—”

“She’s technically Her Royal Highness the Duchess of—”

“Shut up. The point is, who knows what he’s doing down here! We can’t just let him do what he wants.”

The ponies muttered and began filling the room, checking for traps, and Marble decided to make his move. He dropped, spreading his wings and landing softly on the stones, only for him to come face to face with another black-vested mare.

“He’s coming ba—!”

Marble slammed his hooves into the side of her head, dropping her like a rock before he ran back down the hallway.

“Get him!”

Marble ran, doubling back through the hallways and rushing down the barracks and down the stairs. He dived through the halls and finally burst out through the other side and entered the vault room once more.

Dusk stood in front of the doors, with Zalxayl the mandrill standing just behind her.

“You’re back,” she said. “I’m surprised.”

“I’m not going to let you kill Celestia,” he said.

Dusk sighed. “Apparently, I can not only trust my employees to fail at killing someone, but I can’t trust them to keep their mouths shut either. Zalxayl, when you’re done with him, make sure to purge the ponies that failed me.”

“Of course, Lady Dusk,” the mandrill replied. “I shall deal with them presently.”

“No, no, I don’t think you will,” another voice said, and everyone turned to see Celestia walking out of the cage, which now hung open.

“How did you get out?” Dusk demanded.

“I didn’t rule Equestria for a few thousand years without learning a few things,” she said before glancing at Marble for a moment before looking away.

Dusk growled. “Zalxayl, take care of the Princess. I’ll deal with the pegasus.”

The mandrill nodded and turned to Celestia.

The alicorn stepped forward, and her horn lit up. The mandrill charged her before Zalxayl slowed in the air. In fact, he began to spin as he slowly lifted up a foot off the ground. “If you think he’s going to be enough for me, then I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” Celestia said before she casually tossed the mandrill to the side.

He slammed into the wall hard before Celestia tossed him again.

As he flew across the room, though, the mandrill grabbed a nearby stone and adjusted his trajectory. He spun in the air, flying closer to the cage and slamming into the ground beside it.

Celestia turned, but even Marble knew that she couldn’t use her magic to get at the monkey as long as he was in the range of the thronestone.

Then mandrill stood up and grabbed some of the bars of the cage, snapped them off, and held them in his hands like a pair of makeshift daggers.

Celestia sighed.

Marble ground his teeth and pulled out the dagger before he slipped up next to the alicorn. “Do you think you’ll need help?” he asked.

Celestia waited a moment before responding. “I’d appreciate it.”

He nodded, and they stood together to deal with the monster.

Only for a body to slam into him.

“How dare you ignore me!” Dusk roared. “Do you think I can do nothing?” she asked as her wing spread, revealing a knife-edge in her feathers, along with the sky-blue of the coatl feather, which she drew and held in her teeth. “I won’t let you ignore me.”

Marble turned to face her and growled, keeping his dagger out in front of him. He’d have to help Celestia later. For now, he had to deal with a maniac.

Chapter 37

Celestia stared down the mandrill and ran through her options.

So long as the creature had those thronestone “daggers,” any magic she used would stop as soon as it got within range. This immediately cut out any offensive Energy, Mind, and Image spells. Ironically, her initial choice of Control Matter would work the best here. Any physical objects she threw at him would keep their momentum as they reached the anti-magic radius.

The only other spells she could really use were all of the Transform branch of magic that she could cast on herself. Anything that would permanently last even if she got into the range of the daggers.

Celestia and the mandrill slowly circled each other, getting ready to charge each other as they searched for an opening.

The real problem with using the Transform spells would be that Zalxayl would charge when her horn lit up. Realistically, Celestia might be able to cast one incantation before the monkey lunged for her, and then who knew what she’d be able to get away with. She needed to choose her opening spell very carefully.

Celestia smiled, and her horn began to glow.

Zalxayl charged, closing the distance and bringing down the daggers toward her back. She answered with a punch of her forehoof, and the force slammed into the mandrill hard enough to throw him back to the other side of the room.

Transform Body was an excellent spell. Being able to increase one’s physical strength in a blink could turn any fight.

What’s more, it gave her more time.

She cast Transform Body again, changing her fur into plates of bony armor, and then cast Transform Mind to rewire her sense of pain to taste like green tea, and that was all the time she had before Zalxayl recovered and charged again.

He brought both knives down onto the alicorn, who blocked the strikes with a raised forehoof. The strength in Celestia’s magically-enhanced limbs kept the blow from even moving her. Before she spun and kicked with her hind legs. Celestia felt the mandrill’s chest collapse as she knocked the wind out of him, but he managed to keep his ground this time.

Celestia answered by shooting into the air and hitting the room’s ceiling before casting two quick spells. She used Control Matter to pull a series of rocks out of her surroundings before she used Transform Matter to change them into a steel greatsword.

Now armed, she took a quick moment to glance down at Marble, who faced off with Dusk, and hoped that he’d make it out alright.

She took another moment to breathe in and shot back down to face Zalxayl.

---☼---

Dusk moved faster than Marble thought she had any right to. The mare shot across the floor, leaving a trail of lightning that arced from the feather in her teeth. Her singular wing knife cut through dangerous arcs that forced Marble to leap back to safety.

Dusk charged him again, swinging wildly before he took to the air to get out of her reach.

“No!” she roared before she pointed at him with the feather. A bolt of lightning fired from its tip and ran through the pegasus in mid-air. The electric bolt tore through him, and if he weren’t a pegasus, he’d have been rocked by the blow. His wings froze up, and he plummeted back down to the ground, landing hard before he glanced up to see Dusk charging him.

He rolled out of the way, just barely missing the one-winged pegasus’ charge before he stood up and realized that the burn from the lightning didn’t hurt as bad. He glanced back down at his dagger and noticed a thin coating of blood on its edge.

He glanced back at Dusk and noticed the thin line of blood on her leg. She must have cut herself as she passed by, but he could see that the tiny wound was making her pause. Dusk would put pressure on her leg before lifting her leg again and wincing.

He thought back to the darkened spot on the bark of the tree. Did the dagger leave a festering wound? Was that another—

Dusk leveled the feather again, and another bolt of lightning shot toward him. He dove to the side before leaping into the air to increase the electrical resistance in his body as he attempted to dodge.

The bolt of lightning arced across the room and then suddenly stopped as it got close to the cage.

The coatl feather didn’t work next to the cage either? Would his dagger? Then again, his dagger would still be a sharp edge even without magic. Maybe he could—

Dusk charged him again, not giving him a moment to gather his thoughts as she closed the distance again.

He cursed and held out his dagger, hoping that he might be able to slash at her again and possibly slow her down.

For a moment, he glanced over at Celestia and blinked.

If Sunny had been a dancer on the battlefield, then Celestia was a panther. Celestia leaped through the air, bouncing off the walls and landing blows that he could hear across the room. She swung a greatsword like it was a rapier, moving it through the air with the ease and grace of the conductor’s baton.

Dusk shot past him, missing by a hair and leaving his nose feeling numb with the electricity pouring off of her.

He shook his head and refocused. He needed to get out of this fight alive first. After that, he could talk with Celestia.

---☼---

Celestia spun her greatsword in a wall of steel and death. Zalxayl could not cross the line of her blade without being sliced by the sword. He tried to get through once with one of his daggers, but he only wound up shattering his weapon for his trouble.

He still wielded one, and while he had that in his hand, the mandrill was still immune to any magical effects that could stick to him, but at this rate, Celestia might not need it. Maybe she should stick to being more physical the next time her kingdom gets invaded. This was going far better than when the changelings invaded.

The alicorn stopped her blade in the middle of her drop before spinning it around in a wide, horizontal arc. Zalxayl leaped back, forced onto his back leg as the weapon came around.

Celestia watched as the mandrill tried to recover and quickly realized that, despite her advantages, she wouldn’t be able to get past his own defenses without distracting him somehow.

She needed something to take his attention away from the fight, and honestly, the best she had was her ability to turn anything into a speech. “You have a great deal of loyalty to Lady Dusk,” she noted. “A very noble attribute, if I must say so.”

The mandrill dropped into a crouch, still holding the blade in his hand as he bounced his body back and forth. “Isn’t she worth being loyal to?” he asked rhetorically.

The bouncing said a lot. Boxers typically bounced to stay light on their hooves, but any swordspony would say that one shouldn’t waste energy doing so if they were to move. The mandrill probably wasn’t trained for combat. He probably only fought on instinct. That was normal for brutes that were used to punching when they didn’t get their way, but it also meant she might just be able to break him.

“I just wonder why,” she said. “It’s not every day that you find a primate working for a pony. So why do you?”

The mandrill’s chest pumped as he fought to catch his breath. According to Celestia’s sergeants, this was a typical reaction. Teaching a pony to breathe through every strike was a life-long job. “I am merely repaying a debt.”

The bone-plated alicorn raised an eyebrow. “Dusk saved your life?”

“By accident, but that doesn’t lighten the debt any.”

Celestia glanced at Dusk with a quick glance of her eyes for just a fraction of a second so that the mandrill couldn’t jump her. The maimed pegasus shot across the floor, powered by some sort of magic, while poor Marble held up his lone blade in his defense.

She refocused on the mandrill just as he was gathering himself to pounce. “Debts to be paid, then? I cannot fault you for that.”

The mandrill had almost caught his breath. Celestia would need to strike soon if her gambit were to pay off. “But then,” she said with a growing smile. “I hope you cannot fault me for what I am about to do.”

The alicorn’s horn lit in a blaze of magic, and a line of stone shuddered before it began to rise in the shape of a wall just in front of Dusk. The pegasus’s eyes went wide, and she tried to stop as the rock began to rise in front of her.

The mandrill shot forward, panicked. As soon as Zalxayl got close, the thronestone stopped Celestia’s spell, and instead of crashing into the wall in a head-on collision, she just barely managed to jump over the foot-high barricade.

But that’s what Celestia wanted. Grabbing her greatsword in her hooves, she began to swing the massive weapon in wide arcs that forced the mandrill to try and dodge as she turned the space in front of her into a blender.

The mandrill took blows, deep cuts forming in his legs, arms, and chest, but now he didn’t dare retreat. He kept his single dagger of thronestone close to Celestia, lest she cast another spell to stop Dusk.

It was exactly what she needed.

---☼---

The little wall Celestia pulled up was exactly what Marble needed.

Now that he had some form of cover, he had a chance. Dusk couldn’t make her rushing charges toward him anymore. Dusk had to make arcing attack lines, avoiding the wall so she wouldn’t crash into them and nearly take herself out.

With that one move, Celestia changed his fight from a frantic defense to a more even face-off. Dusk shot by, again trailing lightning as though she were the storm itself before he managed to hold out his dagger and slice down her side.

The fact that she was running into his blade would have been funny if things weren’t so life-and-death.

“You don’t need to do this!” Marble said, trying to offer her something. “You can stop.”

“It’s mine!” she roared in response. “I get to control the storms!”

“Look,” Marble said before jumping onto the other side of the wall. “Flying and storm control isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s just like walking, except harder and in more directions.”

Dusk shot past, trailing lightning and reaching out with her bladed wing. “It’s mine!”

The blade came close before Marble suddenly thought to himself, “Why aren’t I getting onto the other side of the wall? Opposite her wing?”

He jumped back on the other side of the wall and made sure her good side would have a lot of space between him and the edge of the wall. If she wanted to reach him at all, she’d have to get on the other side and swing her wing around to her other side.

“And storms? That’s just asking for all kinds of work-related accidents. Most pegasi I know don’t even bother.”

“So they get to waste the opportunity I never had? And I am supposed to be happy about it?” she asked, fury pouring out of her voice.

“Okay, not the best line of conversation, but come on, you need to think of something!” He jumped back onto the other side of the wall and kept his distance, driving the fight to a standstill. “Look, I get it, but this isn’t the way to do this.”

“And what way should I do this? What way should I take what was mine?” She stopped charging for a long second, just long enough to stare at Marble. “Please, let me know! Unicorns with regeneration spells are nearly impossible to find, and healing small gouges in flesh takes so much energy that it could leave some of the most powerful unicorns in bed for weeks. Regrowing a limb? Impossible, they said. So tell me, how should I do what you suggest? How do I finally take what I should always have had?”

Marble didn’t answer.

“No? I didn’t think so.”

Before anyone could say something else, the figure of the mandrill soared over them and landed on the floor.

He didn’t move.

Dusk and Marble turned to see Celestia hovering on the other side of the room.

“You can stop now,” Celestia said. “You can stop, and no one else needs to get hurt.”

Dusk glared at her for a long moment. “Stop?” she asked.

“You can surrender.”

“And let all the work I did go to waste?” she asked.

Celestia narrowed her eyes. “I would have accepted many answers, but not that one.”

Dusk charged her.

Celestia merely cast a spell.

And then it was over.

Dusk was gone.

Marble blinked before looking back up at Celestia with confusion on his face.

“She’s back in Canterlot now,” Celestia explained, trying to talk about anything other than Sunny. “I have a cell that I’ve designated for teleporting criminals long distances. I’ll need to send Twilight a letter about it, though, so she doesn’t let the mare go or anything. I should probably do that very soon, but she also knows that I’m one of the few ponies with the power and knowledge to get her there.”

Marble stared up at her.

“If...If she had said something about the ponies she hurt and killed, I might have done something. Instead, she just went on about her struggles, which speaks to a pony that doesn’t care about killing someone else. So I did the only thing that felt right at the moment.”

Marble got closer to her.

Celestia scrambled to think of something to say. She needed to say something that wasn’t about Sunny and the lie she told.

“I, uh...I guess we can start sending the ponies here back to the homes, though I’ll probably have to send them back in groups, and most of them will have to be arrested. But I’m sure that—”

“Celestia,” Marble said.

She couldn’t stop the shame from reaching her face. “I’m... I’m sorry, Marble. I just...I wanted an adventure and...I didn’t mean…,” she trailed off before she gathered herself and got ready to take whatever came her way with the dignity befitting of a Princess.

Marble sighed. “You went with Sunny? Do you not have a subtle bone in your body?”

She blinked, clearly not expecting that. “A—I, um, are...are you not mad at me?”

“A little, yes,” he replied, annoyance obvious in his voice. “You could have just dropped me off somewhere safe, and instead, you decided to drag me across the entire jungle. But…,” he said, his voice softening, “I also wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

Chapter 38

Caramel ran. The unicorn ran for all he was worth as he crossed the streets of Silver Shoals and galloped for the mansion. Caramel ran across the roadways, heedless of the carts that drove across the pavement.

He found the mansion in a few minutes and saw the crowd of newsponies standing at the gate. He ran past them, heading for the secret entrance at the back of the mansion to get inside without alerting the gaggle of scavengers at Luna’s front gate.

He ran along the side of the property, passing the wrought iron fence and gaining a few glances from the mob. He ignored them and pushed past, running to a small cliff face that stood behind the manor house. Caramel climbed the cliff’s edge and wished that he had been a pegasus like his character instead of a unicorn. He pushed himself, coving himself in the dust as he took the fastest path up the cliffs to where he knew the door to the manor’s escape tunnel hid in the shadow of the rocks.

Caramel quickly found the door and opened it wide, only for shock to run through him as he found a blank wall immediately behind it.

The tunnel was closed? Did Luna shut it the other night? Oh, you idiot, Caramel!

He glanced back at the manor and the gate that surrounded it. He could try and go through the front, but that meant he’d have to get around the flock of journalists at the entrance and make sure they didn’t follow him in. He felt that would only make things worse.

He’d have to jump the fence out of their view.

Now, if only it weren’t nearly three times as tall as he was.

The fence offered no hoofholds to use to climb, and while the cliff did offer him a place to stand where he could try to jump over it, the distance between the two made him uneasy. If he could even make that jump and not wind up impaled on the fence, then the fall would probably break a bone or two.

He judged the distance.

There was no way he could make that jump. It would be crazy to even try.

Yet, it was his only way in.

He ground his teeth, backed up, and hoped that he’d make it.

---☼---

Luna lay slumped on a couch, staring at the wall and eating a tub of ice cream.

The nocturnal alicorn read somewhere that ice cream made situations like this better, and while she did find it delicious, she decided that frozen cream with chunks of frozen cookie dough was perhaps a little too sweet for her.

That was another problem she had. With the modern-day industry, luxuries like sugar became commonplace, and ponies these days just put it everywhere. Natural sweeteners were typically more than enough, but when they shoved more sugar into her drinks, she wound up trying to drown in coffee. Truly a unique complication for her life, that nopony but Celestia might understand.

Caramel might understand, at least conceptually.

Luna crushed the treacherous thought in a second before picking up a discarded tub of ice cream. She used her spoon to scoop out the very last bits of the cream out before shoving the spoon in her mouth.

Yes, he might understand with his remarkable understanding of history, but he also traded all of her friendship and time for a quick buck.

He needed the money.

Luna muttered. “Well, I could have bought the whole apartment building, but he didn’t come to me, did he?” She licked the spoon clean before throwing the spoon and carton aside and slid further into the couch.

Still too sweet. She might need to try and find some salted carrots to balance everything out.

Her ear flicked.

“What’s that sound?”

Luna rolled out of the couch and peeked out of her windows to the front gate.

The mob was gone.

Luna blinked as she stared, mouth agape at her suddenly uninhabited front door. “How?” she asked herself aloud. “What happened?”

She blinked again before the thought that something terrible must have happened struck her. Panic began to rise before her years as royalty took over. Luna forced herself to remain calm before she teleported herself into her front yard.

Surprisingly, she didn’t hear the cries of ponies in panic. No riots or laser beams being fired by a giant monster. Luna glanced around, trying to figure out what happened before her ear twitched again, and she could now recognize the definitive sound of a cry for help and the clicking of camera shutters coming from behind the manor.

Spreading her wings, she took to the air and flew over the manor and saw a pony hanging by his hindleg from her fence, with a crowd of ponies taking pictures of him.

She blinked before she rocketed forward toward the pony hanging by the fence.

“What is wrong with you all?” She bellowed. “Are you all so desperate for a story that—”

The pony hanging by his leg was Caramel. The fence tore through his leg and left a massive gash that bled all over the place.

Her Princess instincts kicked in again, and she finished yelling at the journalists. “Did none of you call an ambulance? Are you all insane?”

A journalist called out. “Lady Luna, are you aware that this pony was trying to—”

“Go. Get. A doctor!” Luna roared before she picked Caramel off the fence and then teleported herself and Caramel into the manor.

The alicorn dropped Caramel onto the floor of her kitchen, rather roughly she’d admit before she made her around the counter toward the first-aid kit. “And why, pray tell art thou trying to climb my fence Caramel?”

Caramel didn’t answer, and Luna glanced over at him before realizing he was unconscious.

Luna bit her lip before she lifted Caramel back onto the counter and looked at the leg. The gash was deep, but more importantly, he lost a lot of blood.

Luna reached into the fridge with her magic and pulled out a half-gallon jug of milk. Taking a tiny smear of his blood, she used Perceive Body to identify his blood down on the cellular level before using Transform Body to change the milk into a perfect copy. “And Celestia said whole milk will only make me fat,” she muttered before she used Transform Body again to begin sealing wounds.

She worked quickly before making sure that almost all of his veins and arteries were closed except for a single hole in one of his veins. She reached into a drawer and pulled out a straw before she pierced a hole into the jug of milk and then slipped the straw into the hole before she started closing it around the straw.

She began manually pulling the blood through the straw and into his system with magic while simultaneously working carefully to ensure that air didn’t get stuck inside.

Within a few minutes, she had put back enough blood that Caramel began to stir.

She pulled out the jug, transformed it back into milk, and then poured it down the drain. “So, now that you’re awake, what are you doing here?” she asked, using her formal voice to punctuate her words.

“Lu-Luna?” he asked hazily. “Luna, where am I?”

“On my kitchen table. Though I have to wonder why you decided to jump over my fence.”

“Had-had to talk to you, Luna.”

“I’m sure you did,” she replied.

“I didn’t...I didn’t say anything to them. I didn’t tell them anything about Celestia.”

Luna turned from him and stared out the window.

“I swear I didn’t tell anyone, Luna. I swear by everything that exists, I didn’t say anything.”

Luna didn’t reply.

“I am so sorry, Luna. This wasn’t worth it, it was never worth it, and I knew that. I knew it was a terrible decision, but I tried to do it anyway, and I am a terrible pony for doing it, I know. I broke your trust, and I couldn’t possibly make it up to you, I know. But I need to try, please.”

Luna continued to stare out the window.

He betrayed her trust. Caramel had asked her the question she could not answer for the sake of her sister. That alone was bad enough.

But he’d been so desperate.

That didn’t give him a right to destroy her trust.

“You broke my trust when I tried to help you.”

“I know,” Caramel said. “You did, and I threw it all away so I could take care of it myself like an idiot. And I am an idiot. I’m the biggest idiot on this side of Equestria. I know that. You deserve better than this. I know. I’m so sorry.”

Luna stared out the window for another long second.

“Luna, I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. I’m a desperate idiot that tried to do something I shouldn’t have. I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I had to let you know that I didn’t tell anyone.”

“So you didn’t think I that I told you the truth? You think I lied?”

“No! No, I think you told me something that I could use,” Caramel said. “I’m just a coward and moron. I could have used it, but I would also have to live with it, and I learned that night I asked you that I simply couldn’t live with it. I just can’t. I’m sorry.”

Luna sighed. “You know I’m not known for my forgiveness?” she asked.

“I know. But I had to apologize. I had to.”

Luna sighed. “Even if it meant jumping over my fence and tearing thine leg open?”

He chuckled. “Yeah, I should probably go to a doctor’s.”

“Thou should be fine. It has been a while since I performed surgery, but it is far easier to do with magic than without it.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better or worse about not going to the doctor?”

She turned to face him. “I had a plan. I will have thee know,” Luna said. “As soon as Celestia returned, I would have revealed my solution for the entire group.”

“For everypony?” Caramel asked. “I thought they were doing well?”

“They are doing adequately,” she replied. “I hope to improve that.”

Caramel nodded and set his head down on the countertop. A moment of silence sat between them. “I didn’t fix anything, did I?”

Luna glanced over at him. “What dost thou mean?”

`“I still made us lose something. We’re worse than when we started.”

Luna nodded. “Broken trust takes a long time to heal,” she said before giving a sardonic laugh. “It’s been a thousand years, and I barely still trust myself. But thou hast opened the door again. We can try again from here.”

Caramel nodded.

It would have to do.

---☼---

Marble and Celestia could barely talk to each other for the flurry of activity that followed. The ponies that called themselves the Sons of the Storm, the Warband that Dusk managed to collect for herself, either needed to be subdued or scattered. Some of the ponies continued to make questionable decisions, such as attacking an alicorn. According to Celestia’s whim, those few were teleported to another cell in Canterlot or scattered across the jungle.

Marble tried to figure out what her standards were on that, and while she did typically send them to prison, he couldn’t quite figure out what the line was. Strangely, he wanted to know what that particular line was more than he probably should, considering she used to be the ruler of the country.

Then again, it was also kind of hard to see her that way when he had watched her slurp down a mango. He’d still swear that she’d make less of a mess if she stuck her face in the fruit and rubbed it around.

The others, the ponies that already learned that they were in over their heads, and continuing to work this way, would only get them in more trouble, were told to make their way to the palace. Once there, they were to report to the Princess for judgment and explain what they found before they were teleported to Canterlot city.

At least the first few were. After that, Celestia teleported them as close as possible, with the last few groups being thrown either into the hydra’s swamp if guilty or close to the jungle’s border if they were at least thinking about it.

When they finished, the sun started rising in the east, and the alicorn was panting.

“Are you alright?”

“Teleporting that many ponies will take it out of you,” Celestia replied. “Even if you had the power to casually lift the sun in the morning.”

“Do you want to rest before heading back?” Marble asked.

She gave a weary smile. “That sounds like a wonderful idea.”

Marble gave her a soft smile. “Where did they drop your saddlebags?”

“Not too far from the vault. Do you want to head back there and rest?”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t really want to spend more time in this temple than we need to. Not to mention the fact that it’d be hard to set up a hammock down here.”

She smirked.

Marble began leading the way back to the vault and recovered Celestia’s saddlebags while she picked up the steel sphere that still contained the cloak of feathers.

With their effects gathered, they made their way outside and found a pair of trees to set their hammock up for the night. Once that was done, Celestia dropped the massive sphere to the ground, where very little could move it, and flopped into their shelter.

Marble joined her a moment later and sighed. “How did this whole thing happen?”

“I wanted a vacation,” Celestia said.

“Vacation?” he repeated.

“Yeah.”

“And you decided to go to the jungle?”

“I don’t get the chance to do reckless, questionably-dangerous actions while also being the highly respectable and responsible Princess. Or, Duchess, I suppose. The point is, it’s hard to let your mane down where you’re royalty.”

“And so you decided to brave a jungle instead?”

“It mostly worked out,” she said in her defense. “I just had two problems, and you were there for both of them.”

Marble shook his head. “That doesn’t make that better.”

“Maybe not,” she admitted. “But I had a chance to let loose and pretend to be normal.”

“You have a bizarre definition of ‘normal,’ Lady Celestia.”

She grimaced. “Don’t call me that. I’m not ready to go back to that life just yet.”

Marble glanced at her. “You don’t want to go back to a life of being retired?”

“It’s not that I’m retired, Marble,” she said with a sigh. “It’s that I’m Celestia. Perfect, untouchable, all-powerful Celestia. Ever since I abdicated, I’ve been hounded by the press asking what my opinion is on every single thing Twilight does. As though I haven’t been training her to take the throne for a decade or so, mind you. Sky above, the only time I haven’t been chased down to ask for my opinion was when I started this little trip. I had to disguise myself and then walk into a jungle just so I wouldn’t have somepony asking me for my opinion.”

She sighed again and closed her eyes as she leaned back in the hammock. “I just want to not be important anymore.”

Marble shook his head. “I don’t think that’s going to happen, Celestia. You’ll always be important to someone,” he smirked before muttering, “even if it’s just to me.”

Celestia opened one of her eyes to stare at him.

“Sorry, that was pretty forward, and I—”

Celestia’s leg hooked around his neck and pulled him down into a hug. When he didn’t pull away, Celestia held him close and brought her muzzle up to his, slowly getting closer and closer until their lips would brush against each other if they moved.

Marble blinked and stared into Celestia’s deep, brilliant, magenta eyes.

Sunny’s eyes.

They stared at each other for a brief moment that stretched on forever.

Celestia smiled. She made her intentions clear, and now she closed her eyes.

Marble took a breath, inhaling the scent of a mare that spent the past five or six weeks running through a jungle.

He leaned forward and kissed her.

And the day passed by without a single problem in the world.

Chapter 39

When morning came, Marble only had questions. “Is this a good idea? I mean, nothing against you, Celestia, but you are an immortal alicorn. I don’t know if I can take living with a mare that won’t die.”

“I’ve only been immortal so far,” she replied. “I don’t know how long alicorns are supposed to live. Nopony really does. Personally, I think it’s tied to several factors. But as I was telling Twilight a month ago, there’s a very good chance I can die of natural causes tomorrow.”

“I don’t know if that helps?” he said.

Celestia smirked. “Life’s an adventure, and you never know what tomorrow will hold, even if it’s death waiting for you after leaving you alone for three thousand years.”

“No, this is definitely not helping,” Marble replied.

Celestia smiled. “It’s no different than with anypony else. Not really. We can only live one day at a time.”

They hovered down to the ground, drifting on the currents of the evening sun. “Though I need to ask which way you want to get back to Equestria,” Celestia asked. “I can try teleporting us to Canterlot if you want, but that’s a long way to go after all that teleporting I did yesterday.”

“Would we not arrive?” Marble asked.

“No, we’d get there,” Celestia said. “The question is, where in Canterlot? At this range, with the energy and control I still have, we might arrive at the palace or appear in the middle of Canterlot Train Station. On the tracks.”

“Great, what are the other options?”

“We could take a walk and then make a jump to Silver Shoals. That’s where I live.”

“Okay, why are we going to take a walk?” Marble asked as Celestia picked up the steel ball with the cloak inside.

“I figured you had more questions,” she said with a smile. “I promise you I’ll answer every question as best as I can.”

Marble sighed but followed. “Okay, I guess I can start with if you plan to keep going on your vacation or not?”

“I don’t think I will,” she replied. “I’ve saved the world again. I can give it a rest for a bit. Besides, Sunny’s been outed. That takes most of the fun out of it.”

“Alright, and what are you going to do with Dusk?”

“I’ll talk to Twilight about it, but she’s the Princess, so she’s in charge.”

“Was anything about Sunny true?”

This gave Celestia a pause. “In a way. The stories I told were true, but I wasn’t involved like I said I was. The old archeologist wasn't my mentor but he was a friend, and I let him know that his theories were correct. He was a brilliant stallion. I couldn’t let him die thinking he spent his life being wrong.”

“So you told him?”

“I did,” she said softly. “I told Professor Bristle the truth.”

“And you don’t tell everypony?”

“It kills curiosity. Ponies don’t try to learn on their own when we give them the answers. I stopped telling ponies what happened years ago, but every now and then, I try to tell somepony something and plant a seed.”

“Like the fact that the giant totem of skulls is a monument?”

Celestia smiled. “Now, where did you get an idea like that?” she said. “It’d certainly be fascinating if that were true.”

Marble shook his head and sighed.

Celestia smiled. “You looked like you could use the information and take it somewhere, but then you decided to be incredibly rude about it.”

“In my defense,” he replied. “You were a random pony that just showed up and said something crazy. You know that, right?”

“That didn’t mean you needed to be so rude.”

Marble rolled his eyes as they walked a little further. “Alright, one last question.”

“Only one?”

“The rest we can answer as we go.”

“Okay, what’s your question?”

“Were you always this short? You looked taller in the newspaper.”

Celestia paused before she took a breath through her nose. “I think that’s enough walking,” she said. “Come here.”

---☼---

Celestia appeared in the middle of her Library. She figured it’d be the room Luna was spending the most time in. It’d make introductions easy and—

There were six ponies in this room.

Celestia blinked.

“Tia!” Luna called, standing up and leaving a table of dice, plastic, and paper. “Thou art back! Thou hast even brought someone with thee, I see.”

“Luna,” Celestia greeted. “Who are all these ponies?”

“My new friends,” Luna said with a smile. “And thine new employees!”

“My what?”

“Thou were the one who said that thou were bored. I have decided that—thou specifically—shall hire them for items around the house.”

“And you decided this when?”

“Several weeks ago.”

“And I’m the one hiring them because—?”

“It means that I can maintain a friendly relationship with them as peers,” the younger replied with a smile.

Celestia sighed. “At least you thought this out well enough. How am I hiring them?”

“Entertainment specialists,” Luna said. “Though Sundance is a masterful cook as well, and Caramel makes wonderful coffee.”

Celestia glanced over at the table, where one unicorn looked especially shocked by the idea. “Entertainment specialists?”

“My entertainment, yes.”

“Are you telling me I’m hiring these ponies to be your friends?”

Luna started. “That is not fair! They were my friends first. I’m having thee hire them so they won’t leave!”

Celestia gave Luna a very smug smile.

“I’m not having thee hold them hostage either!” Luna cried.

“No, of course, you’re not Luna,” Celestia began before Luna interrupted her, changing the subject.

“What of this pony you brought in? Tell me, good stallion, what brings thee to our household?”

“Um,” Marble began, “I guess I’m Celestia’s new coltfriend?”

Celestia winced.

“Oh, art thou?” Luna said with a smile that Celestia could hear. “Well, it has been a while, Tia.”

“Luna, please,” she replied.

“Did she tell thee about the last one? Gold Jackpot?” She turned to the solar sister, “I will say, Celestia, that at least you managed to keep this one long enough to bring him home.”

“Luna, I swear.”

“Swear as thou would wish, but I have been waiting for two thousand years for thou to bring a stallion home that I might embarrass thee utterly.”

“Wait,” Marble said. “I’m the first pony she brought home in two thousand years?”

“Oh, Celestia has terrible luck when it comes to love. How many times have thee tried now, Tia?”

“I’m ignoring that comment,” she replied before heading back to the table with the other ponies. “So let’s get some proper introductions. Who are all of you?”

“Um, we’re Luna’s Ogres and Oubliettes group,” an earth pony said. “I’m Sundance. I’m the cook that Luna was talking about, a pleasure to meet you, Lady Celestia.”

“Just Celestia will be fine.”

“I’m Ivory Sunlight,” the unicorn mare said, introducing herself. “I’m actually an accountant, but I do love to garden if you’re willing to pay a living age.”

“There are a few things I can do,” Celestia replied with a smirk.

“I’m Platinum Dare, I’m a weather pony, but I will clean your toilets if you’re offering. The weather team here sucks.”

“I’m Caramel,” the unicorn said. “I do make a good coffee, but—Yeah, I’m good at coffee.”

“And I’m Rolling Ivory,” the last said. “I’m the Game Master and leader of this little pack of crazed ponies. I’m sure you can find something for me to do, but I’m not going to make you worry about it right now.”

“I'd appreciate that very much,” Celestia said.

“Now tell me, Mr. Marble,” Luna said behind them. “What did thou do to get dear Tia to look thine way? Did thou happen to rush to her rescue as though she were a defenseless maiden? She does love that. Falls for it every time.”

Someone coughed loud enough to clear their throat, and all eyes went to a figure standing in the corner.

“Did he come with you two?” Sundance asked, pointing at him.

“No, no, I did not,” the shadowy unicorn replied. “Congratulations are in order, I suppose, Lady Celestia.”

Celestia smiled. “Night Silk. I’m glad to find you alive. Last I heard, Twilight was still trying to dredge up the entire river trying to find you.”

“Too bad I can swim,” he replied with a smirk as he stepped out of the corner. “Now, I hate to interrupt your game night, but I have a question for the both of you. Have either of you heard of an Intellect Crystal?”

Chapter 3

Sunny Smiles huffed. That idiot pegasus from earlier really got under her skin. For some reason beyond her, that pegasus had first blown her off and then assaulted her not a few seconds later. Who in their right mind would do that?

Luckily the rest of the trip to Canterlot was quiet, with no significant issues or problems popping up until they got to the capital. She considered heading up the palace to speak with Twilight, but she already had a letter that explained everything.

She already sent it up ahead, anyway. The Princess would be informed of her plans without anypony needing to go out of their way. Besides, she really didn’t have the time to deliver it herself. She had another train to catch.

Her next ride would take her down to Las Pegasus. From there, she’d catch the boat the University chartered and head West to the jungle frontier. Once she hit the shore at the ruin they were going to, she’d stick around long enough to see if anything interesting was happening before she went off on her own.

Overall, the plan was solid, but she reminded herself to keep her options open. The last time she did something like this, she had planned to go to Everfree forest but wound up traveling up and around to the Unicorn range that they, well, named after her disguise that time around. The point was that sometimes the plan fell apart, so she needed to stay flexible.

The more critical problem on her docket was what spells to actually use. Sunny definitely had Control Matter, and she definitely was good at it. She threw the stallion from the last train ride off of her, which meant that Sunny had to be somewhat skilled to get that much force behind her telekinesis.

Typically speaking, the effort needed to accomplish whatever the spell was doing needed to come from somewhere. The caster typically provided it from a spiritual ‘muscle’ that all ponies had. Unicorns were more aware of it, with their natural inclination toward magic and—

“All aboard! Next stop Ponyville, with connections to Las Pegasus, Appeloosa, and the Abyssinian border!” the conductor yelled, and Sunny quickly moved onto her car.

Time already? The minutes just ran past her sometimes.

Regardless, if Sunny managed to be efficient enough with the Control Matter spell, then she could undoubtedly throw her weight around with it. Now the big question was if she knew any other words.

An argument could be made that she knew all of them except for Transform and Destroy and just wasn’t good with any of them, but she’d played too many jack-of-all-trades types before. She wanted something a little more specialized. Create, and Energy again made their case, but typically using those spells got her into a habit of shooting magic lasers all over the place. “Which, well, let’s face it, just isn’t as fun.”

She interrupted her own thoughts as she began walking down the car, passing the large open carriages, to the closed-off, closed cabin car that had her seat. Hopefully, she’d have someone to talk to in her cabin. The last one was empty, and she spent most of the trip trying to decide if Sunny was the journaling type or not.

No, despite its utility, she wasn’t going to use either of those components. She needed something else. So no Energy, at the very least. Maybe Image? Making illusions had promise, but that meant she was stuck to slinking around and hiding.

There was Body.

Body spells would be interesting.

Keeping with the Control theme meant Sunny would be able to manipulate living things. Moving plants out of the way, dissuading animal attacks, or even making her own body act the way she wanted. She could, in theory, force it to increase her healing rate—always a valuable skill to have—or even push her muscles beyond their natural limits.

That...that sounded like a good skill for an adventuring unicorn.

Of course, then the question was, did she want to take any more techniques? Control was fine, Destroy and Transform were not well known enough to be used, so maybe a—

Sunny Smiles reached her cabin door and blinked.

Inside sat another pony, a pegasus—the same cream-colored pegasus from the last train.

Sunny narrowed her eyes and shut the cabin door.

Well, that was...unlucky. Here Sunny was, hoping that she could share the trip with somepony, and it had to be this jerk. Could this get any worse?

“Maybe we can get our seat reassigned?” she thought to herself. Celestia certainly could have, but would Sunny bother? A part of her said that yes, she would do something to avoid being in the room with the jerk, but another part argued that Sunny wouldn’t want to fuss with the train staff and instead take care of herself.

Before she could think about it any further, the door slid open. “Ah, Miss, if I may….”

She stared at him.

“I wanted to apologize. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was legitimately trying to keep you from being hurt. I’m sorry.”

Would Sunny forgive him?

That was the first thought Celestia had, and she immediately sighed when she had it. The deep part of her, the part that used to rule over them, wanted to let this pony have his second chance, even though Sunny really didn’t want to like this stallion.

Not even a day into the trip, and she already had to settle.

She strode into the cabin, pushing past the pegasus, and moved to sit down on the bench opposite him. “Apology accepted,” she muttered darkly.

The pegasus blinked before slowly sitting back on his bench.

The silence between them sat thick enough that Sunny could cut it with her machete.

Sunny let the silence sit there and chose to stare out the window with her time. Besides, it forced the stallion to stew a little, which suited her just fine. The pegasus fidgeted for a bit. “Uh...well...what a coincidence, huh?”

Sunny continued to stare out the window.

“I’m Marble, by the way.”

Sunny hummed. A response she gave explicitly to let the pegasus know that she didn’t really care. Her inner Celestia frowned disapprovingly. All ponies were important, and all ponies had their reasons. They may not be good reasons, and this Marble definitely didn’t have any, but that didn’t give her the right to not care.

Meanwhile, the inner Sunny argued that she did not have the few thousand years of experience of ruling to discover that and made her mistake happily, mainly with an even deeper part of Celestia siding with her.

Marble stood for a second before climbing back into his seat and pulling out his book again. He sat back down to read, though Sunny noticed his eyes flashing up to look at her now and then. Sunny ignored him, though, and she took a tiny amount of pleasure watching him squirm.

Celestia couldn’t get away with this. She’d never be able to get away with this. She had to be proper and polite and act as a mother to every pony in the country. But this was the whole point of these vacations. This was her chance to ignore protocol, to live without having to worry about stepping on another pony’s hooves. She could let that tiny little voice in her finally say, “treat them like they deserve.”

Before, you know, going to see if they can save the world.

Luna always did so well for these. That mare plotted character arcs for her vacations. She morphed herself to be the worst fit possible and then let her character change until they meshed wonderfully together.

No, Celestia reminded herself that this was her chance of getting to not care, if only for a little bit.

She slumped a little further in her chair and let the train rattle on until Marble stopped fidgeting and accepted the silence.

Perceive, Celestia decided. She’d take the Perceive Technique. Sunny could use it with Body to find plants to eat or even lost ponies if needed. With Matter, she could locate powerful or missing artifacts, which she could very well use in the depths of the jungle.

Yes, that sounded like a good idea. That was it, then. Those were going to be the spells that Sunny was going to use. She could work with those.

---☼---

Marble stuck his nose in his book and hoped the unicorn wouldn’t say anything else. He finally felt that he started recovering from her strange...acceptance of his apology?

He still wasn’t sure what exactly happened there. The unicorn simply said yes, pushed past him, and then proceeded to give him the cold shoulder for the rest of the train ride. He still wasn’t sure why.

The conductor came by a few minutes later. “Tickets please?”

Marble presented his.

“Mr. Marble Venture?” the conductor read.

“Yes, sir.”

“Be careful now,” the mare said from the opposite bench. “He gets a little testy around paper.”

Marble didn’t rise to the bait. Besides, he did deserve a little bit of it. He had overreacted fairly severely, though he couldn’t really be blamed for that. His reactions needed to be sharp. After all, he had to jump into all sorts of dangerous ruins, most trapped to Tartarus and back. That was the one thing those Daring Do books got right. The creativity and density of the traps in ruins turned out to be the most accurate part of the book.

His ticket stamped, the conductor returned it and then turned to the mare. “Ticket?”

She handed hers over.

“Sunny Smiles?”

“Yes, sir.”

Sunny Smiles, huh? That was the name of the she-devil that cursed him, now? The irony in such an optimistic name being a source of misery probably gave someone a laugh.

The conductor handed her the ticket back, and she took it with a nod.

“We hope you have a pleasant trip. Mr. Venture, Ms. Smiles.”

“I will,” Sunny said. “So long as nopony tackles me.”

Marble said nothing and turned the page.

---☼---

The train finally pulled into the station, and the trip to Ponyville came to an end. Sunny smiled as she stepped off the train. She only had two more legs to her journey now and an afternoon to spend in town before her next train left.

Marble took the abuse without a word. In fact, he soldiered on without even glancing up at her. Sunny almost started feeling bad for treating him before she remembered the phantom soreness in her back and shoulders.

At the end of the day, no matter what solidarity he had, he still was a jerk. Perhaps a jerk with a hero complex if he actually believed that he was saving her from the bag that one time, but a jerk nonetheless.

More importantly, she had a town to explore. The ever-important yet still backwater town of Ponyville. How so many ponies refused to see how vital this tiny spit of land was baffled her. Sure, the city itself was the home to farmers and hard-working ponies. But considering the rail ran through from Canterlot to Las Pegasus and to the southern border, it should be one of the most important towns in the south of Equestria.

In fact, three hundred years ago, Ponyville would have been the most significant settlement around just because it sat at the crossroads. Not to mention its proximity to their old ruling palace that still sat in the Everfree. Yet despite that, no one in the modern age saw the town as anything other than a bathroom stop they could use as they traveled to the entertainment capital of the world.

Of course, that meant that nopony built anything in Ponyville, which said there was very little to do. Because there was nearly nothing to do, most ponies didn’t think of putting any business there, and the cycle continued and spiraled down into uselessness.

Still, Celestia was sure she could find something to do to pass the time.

Sunny wouldn’t find the Library, simply because they still hadn’t rebuilt it since Tirek’s attack. When Celestia still ruled, she’d received a letter from the Mayor of Ponyville, turning down the funds for a new one.

“I’m not sure Princess Twilight would appreciate having a new one built so quickly after losing her home of four years,” she said. And apparently, Twilight never got back to her about it.

“Let’s see,” Celestia said under her breath. “We have Quills and Sofas, Sugarcube Corner, and Carousel Boutique.” She ran down her mental list of stores she knew about off the top of her head as she continued to walk down the main street. “I don’t need any sofas, but I might want to pick up a quill or two if I want to write back home. Sugarcube corner had some delicious cakes, if I remember right. I could pick up a few before I leave. As for Rarity’s shop…” she said, glancing over at the two-story, round building. “I might pick up something rugged to wear. Maybe a good belt or something similar.”

She nodded. That sounded like a fine idea.

---☼---

Caramel Swirl prepared another venti cookie mocha frappuccino and sighed. Another day working in the corporate machine, and another day making basically nothing. Sure, he could try to get a job somewhere else, but the competition in Silver Shoals was fierce with the influx of tourists coming into the town.

So here he was, making cheap coffee sold for too-high a price and acting like everything was fine.

He hated that he wanted this at one point.

He wanted to serve warm drinks, to own his own coffee store, maybe with some books on the walls and some tables in the back for someone to play O&O. He’d serve coffees and teas, shape the foam into art, and choose only the finest coffee beans to grind down, so the aroma filled the entire room.

Instead, he opened a bag of pre-ground beans, strained through the espresso machine, and used a can of pressurized whipped cream to cover the cup. Once finished, he handed it to a mare that thought the over-sweet, brightly-colored breezie frappuccino was a good idea and slowly hoped that someone would put him out of his misery.

He sighed again as his storefront cleared.

He needed to get a better job. No matter what it took, he needed to get a better job.

A flash of light and pop reminiscent of muted thunder shocked Caramel from a stupor he didn’t know he was in and blinked.

Lady Luna stood right in front of his counter, beaming with a smile that stretched from ear to ear. “Caramel Swirl, yes?”

Caramel shrunk beneath her gaze. “Uh...yes, your majesty.”

“Ladyship is the correct term, but now is not the time,” Luna said. “When I was here last, thou said that thee needed a player, correct?”

“What?”

“Ogres and Oubliettes,” she explained. “Thou said that thee had finished a campaign and needed a tank, correct?”

“I...uh...I guess I did.”

“I would like to play.”

Caramel blinked. “You…”

“I would like to play.”

Caramel blinked again.

This...he was not ready for this today.

“I...I mean, I’m not the one who you really need to ask. Who you really need to talk to is Rolling Ivory. She’s our game master and—”

“Where is she, that I may speak to her?” the alicorn asked.

“I...uh...I think she’s at her job right now, but now that I think about it, are you sure you want to join us? I mean, I know I gave an invitation to your sister but—”

“Art thou saying I’m not invited while my sister is?”

Caramel’s eyes went wide. “No, no, no, no, no!” Caramel said. “I...uh...I honestly didn’t expect either of you to take me up on it, is all. The...the truth is that we don’t really have a lot of room for either of you. The dining room table is almost too small for us, and the room’s almost too small for the table.”

“How big should it be?” Luna asked. “I certainly can accommodate.”

Caramel felt his eyes grow wider. “Are you volunteering to host us?”

“I’m sure ye know where to find us,” Luna said. “There are few other manors in Silver Shoals.”

“Your Majes—er, Ladyship, I...uh... I’d have to talk with everyone about it. But...uh...are you sure? We’re just a bunch of normal ponies trying to play a game and—”

“And I would play with thee,” Luna replied. “After all, that’s what I’m asking, is it not?”

“I...uh...suppose, your Ladyship.”

Luna nodded. “Then go speak with Ms. Rolling. I would invite both of you to speak with me at my manor. So that we can better plan this out and make any decisions we need. Does that sound agreeable to thee?”

“I, uh, suppose, Your Ladyship.”

“Wonderful, I shall prepare and see thee later tonight,” Luna said before she popped out of sight and away.

Caramel blinked and glanced around. One of Caramel’s coworkers glanced at him from inside the door of the “back” of the store. A few customers stared at him with wide eyes from the store proper before they slowly turned back to what they were doing.

Caramel sighed and turned to his coworker. “I need you to watch the counter. I need to take a break.”

She nodded before slipping up to the counter.

He didn’t get a lot of time to gather himself up again, but he only had two more hours on his shift. He worked till the end before leaving the counter behind to try and find Rolling, who he managed to catch during her lunch break.

“Caramel, is that you?” she asked as he approached her in the Hay Burger.

“Hey, Rolling.”

“What’s going on?”

“I might have jokingly invited Lady Celestia to our game, and Lady Luna took me up on it before offering to host.”

Rolling, to her credit, only blinked in response.

“I’m sorry.”

Chapter 15

When Marble returned to the campsite, he couldn’t believe Sunny managed to get so much done. As he walked over to the bench, he glanced down at a set of surprisingly good-looking saddlebags, an actual waterskin made of some leaves, a decent length of rope, and an actual bedroll.

All of it seemed to be made out of leaves, bark, and vines.

“Ah! Marble!” Sunny said without looking up. “There you are. Do you still have the woven bag I made you?”

“I...I do,” he replied, wearing the bags she was talking about.

“Can I see them?” she asked, holding out a hoof.

“Sure,” he said, sliding off the bags, which Sunny took before snapping the middle strap in half before she slipped woven bags into the leaf bags she made.

“There you go, that should make it a little more comfortable to wear without losing any of the woven bag’s strength. Where are the canteens I made you?”

“The other pouch,” he replied.

She nodded before pulling out the three coconuts. “We can still use these, but they don’t really carry enough for us to rely on them. So I’ve done my best to try and make an actual water skin for you,” she said, uncorking one of the makeshift canteens and pouring it into the waterskin. A small leak formed, but Sunny moved quickly and plugged it with a bit of pitch she had warmed up by the fire. She used magic to press the pitch down and sealed the hole before checking it one more time. “There you go,” she said before handing it over. “There’s a layer of leaves, then pitch, then more leaves, which should make this a little durable.”

He nodded before inspecting the strap, which had been made with woven vines.

“It seems you’re a mare of many talents, Mrs. Smiles.”

“I like to work with my hooves,” she replied.

Marble nodded. “How did you get the vine woven like this?”

“The lost art of rope making,” she replied. “You need to spin it and weave it together before you can make it nice and strong.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Please do. It’s all I have,” she replied with a smirk.

“What about the bedroll?” he asked.

“More banana leaves stuck together with more pitch with a layer of softer material stuffed in the middle for some padding. You should probably give it a night before trying it out, so the pitch doesn’t stick to your fur when you lay down on it.”

He nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”

“Hopefully, that will make the rest of the trip easier on you. Not to mention how we can turn these coconuts into something more useful.”

“What do you have in mind?” Marble asked.

“That depends on what we can find out here,” she replied. “But they can be used as backup canteens until then.”

The gleam in her eye made Marble worry a little, but he decided that he wouldn’t press her on it just yet.

“Did you find anything in all your books?” Sunny asked. “By the way, you missed lunch.”

Marble glanced at a small pouch made with leaves. “A couple of them might be promising,” he replied as he opened the small package to reveal some more sliced fruit. “I won’t know for sure until I get them translated.”

“Any maps?” Sunny asked.

“No.”

Sunny nodded. “That’s a shame. Did you check behind the books?”

“What?”

“It’s a classic hiding spot for important documents,” she replied. “You always need to check behind the books just to make sure you don’t miss any secret compartments or anything.”

Marble sighed. “Look, I’m sure this will break your heart, but this isn’t a Daring Do novel. We need to actually follow the rules of sanity and the universe. Pretending to be an adventurer in a world where every ruin has some kind of intrigue doesn’t help anypony.”

Sunny smiled knowingly. “I’ll tell you what then, Marble. How about I check, that way, I shatter my own expectations, and you won’t have to hear how insane of an idea it is.”

Marble glanced at her. The way she said that made him immediately suspicious. The mare was counting on the secret compartment being there, and the confidence rolling off her made him doubt himself for a long second. He blinked before he shook his head. “You can go ahead and try, but I’m telling you, this is a ridiculous idea.”

Sunny smiled. “Alright, thank you! I’ll be back soon, I’m sure.”

Marble watched her leave and sat down on his bench before he began to eat the food Sunny left for him.

She’d be back in a little bit. After all, there was no way she’d actually find a map.

No way at all.

---☼---

Sunny wasn’t necessarily counting on finding a secret compartment or anything. Honestly, it didn’t make much sense for there to be a secret compartment, just because no one was allowed in the Windtowers anyway. There’d be no real need to hide anything further.

Though, what she did have was a spell to help her find a map. Perceive Matter spells could be used to find objects, either as specific as an emerald ring worn by a relative engraved with images of various alchemical symbols to something as general as a table.

As she entered the room, she cast a spell and began searching for a map. One of the books lit up to her sight but flipping through it revealed that the pages might have once been a map burned into illegibility.

She glanced around again before she realized that her spell still recognized a map in the room. Sunny glanced around before her attention fell on a bookshelf.

Wait...had been right?

Was there actually a secret compartment behind the bookshelves that had a map in it.

“Oh, he’s going to hate you for this,” Inner Celestia said.

“It’s not my fault!” Sunny whispered to herself as she pushed the book aside. “I didn’t put this here.”

“He’s going to be so mad.”

“I was expecting to be wrong!” she hissed. “I didn’t want this!”

Inner Celestia laughed while Sunny opened the wall to reveal a small alcove with a small folded piece of bark with a painted map.

She sighed.

Great, now she needed to actually present this to him.

She bit her lip. She needed an excellent way to spin this.

---☼---

Marble blinked when Sunny returned with folded bark and a smile as wide as could be. “Told you,” she said.

“What?”

“I’ll be honest,” Sunny replied, “I wasn’t actually expecting to find a map, but I did have a spell that helped out.”

“What?” Marble asked again.

Sunny rattled something off, but Marble wasn’t listening to her anymore. He just stared down on the map she produced that she somehow got from somewhere.

Somehow, beyond all reason, Sunny went up there and found a secret compartment with an actual map in it. Why? Why did this mare have an incredible skill for making lucky guesses? Why was Mrs. Sunny Smiles breaking every known rule about archeology as though they were her pastime? Just...just how?

He glanced back up at Sunny, who held out the map to him. “Do you want to read it?” she asked.

He sighed before opening up the folded pieces of bark.

Inside was a beautiful piece of ancient artwork that had been perfectly preserved by whatever hidden chest that Sunny found. It marked five towers and two temples, all painted with careful hooves and carefully chosen pigments. Jaguars and other monsters decorated its edge, and a simple symbol that marked north sat in the bottom left-hand corner of the map, off in the sea they just left behind.

And as Marble stared down at the piece of bark in his hooves, he realized a great and terrible truth. This one map was probably worth more than all the books he had in his bag. This one item that Sunny found in less than half an hour would be of more use than all of the books he spent the day scouring through.

He pushed the thought aside. “Okay, so we have a map. How does that help us?”

“Well,” Sunny said. “For one thing, we’ll now have a general idea of how to get through the jungle better. It might very well keep us from getting lost.”

“Good,” Marble muttered.

“But that’s only half of it,” she continued. “We can now move from tower to tower and to the various ruins along the way. This should help us by giving us some extra shelter, and it’ll help you figure out if there’s anything else you can salvage from the trip.”

Marble glanced up at her. “Didn’t you say that you were the one that wanted to explore?”

“I might have.”

“Doesn’t this fall exactly into what you want to do?”

“It does,” she admitted. “While it also helps you and gives you the chance to make wonderful discoveries about the Lusitanpec ponies, while also giving you a map so you can lead the university back here.”

Marble shook his head. “How convenient.”

She nodded. “Look, it’ll work out, I promise. Besides, you can’t tell me you don’t want a tour of these temples and Windtowers.”

Marble sighed.

This was a bad idea. Jumping into the trap-filled ruins were dangerous all on their own. Never mind the dangers of actually crossing the jungle. The ruins would probably kill them both the moment they got inside. Not to mention the fact that they could only carry so much with them. They’d laden themselves down quickly, and then they’d have too much to worry about, and it might just slow them down, which would be a terrible idea in a survival situation, which they were in.

The worst about it, though, was that Sunny was right. He did want to go into all those temples.

“Fine,” Marble muttered. “We can make our way to this temple here,” he said, pointing to a pyramid marked with an image of the Coatl flying above it.

“That’s a ways away,” she remarked. “Don’t you want to try the closer ones first?”

“Yes, but it’s the one most directly on our path.”

“Sure, but this temple is closer to us,” Sunny said, pointing to another pyramid.

“It’s out of the way, though, isn’t it?” Marble asked. “We’d have to travel more northeast to get to this one.”

“Sure, but we can make up the time by traveling longer now that we know where we’re going.”

Marble nodded. “I suppose.”

“Great! Then that’s where we’ll go next. In the meantime, I’m going to get dinner, get ready to take the first watch again.”

Marble sighed as Sunny disappeared back down the stairway and back into the jungle to find more food for the night.

She would give him the first watch again.

---☼---

The morning was cool today, though Marble knew that wouldn’t last long. Within the hour, they’d be sweating again until they were soaked all over again. Still, it seemed that everything else in the wilderness was trying to make use of the cool morning as well. Animals and insects screeched and buzzed loud enough to wake the dead in the morning air and left an annoying ringing in Marble’s ears.

“If I read the map right, we should be at the temple in five more days,” Sunny said. “Provided nothing throws us off the trail.”

“And the likeliness of that happening?” Marble asked, hovering above the mare.

“More likely every time we talk about it,” she responded.

“What?”

“Hasn’t that ever happened to you?” Sunny asked. “You mention a thing that you hope doesn’t happen, and then the universe act like it heard you, and then the thing you mentioned actually happens all of a sudden.”

“I mean, sure, I think everyone has, but that doesn’t actually mean anything, does it?”

“You’d be surprised,” she said with a smirk, but Marble just shook his head.

“I don’t know why you’re surprised. We knew she was crazy.”

Sunny crept forward through the underbrush below him, hacking away at the vines and in front of her before she suddenly lurched.

“Are you alright down there?”

“Yeah, I just...I think I found a road.”

“What?” Marble asked before he descended down to her.

Sunny pulled herself up onto an unseen surface and carefully reached out with her hooves. “Yeah, I think this is a road.”

Marble dropped down next to her, and his hooves passed through the foliage before they landed on hard stone. He reached out with his own hooves, feeling out how far the stones went. “I...I think you’re right.”

Sunny’s horn lit up, and the foliage around her began to move. They cleared the area around her, revealing cut stones beneath them. The road seemed to surface beneath their hooves, and Marble blinked as he watched as it very clearly led toward the northwest.

“Well, well, it looks like we found the road,” Sunny said.

“Could you do that the whole time?”

“What?”

“With the plants?” he asked, motioning to the clear stone that surrounded them in a radius. “Because if you could, I have no idea why you decided to clear the stuff in front of you with a machete.”

She shrugged. “Would you believe me if I told you that it takes more work to do this than to chop through them?”

Marble raised an eyebrow.

“So the road runs this way,” Sunny said, pointing down the road.

“So it does,” he replied.

“What do you think, good sign or bad sign?” she asked.

“Wha—? Why would that ever be a bad thing to know where the road is?”

“Because it could be leading us to a village that isn’t anywhere on the map.”

“Even if it does, that’s still a chance for us to find a place to rest. Sure it might not take us to the temple, but it’s still better than nothing, isn’t it?”

“Okay,” she replied. “Then let’s follow the road.”

“What? That’s it?” Marble asked.

Sunny glanced back at him, a questioning look on her face.

“You’re not going to tell me why I’m an idiot for choosing to go down the road? No argument back and forth that wastes hours?”

Sunny smiled. “It sounds like you’ve done the thinking for the both of us, and I’d rather not tread on that ground if I don’t have to.”

Marble glared at her as she began to pick her way down the road. “You make no sense, you know that?”

“As a...old acquaintance of mine once said: What fun is there in making sense? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to spit those words out of my mouth.”

Marble smirked as Sunny opened up her water skin to get a little water into her mouth before spitting it out. “If that’s the kind of reaction he gets out of you, then I might actually like him.”

“You wouldn’t,” she replied. “There are lots of ponies that think they might enjoy his company, but as far as I know, there’s only been one pony that actually became his friend. Poor thing was so socially starved he’s thinking about marrying the poor mare.”

Marble glanced at her as she maneuvered around the thinner underbrush on the road. He wasn’t sure what to do with that information, so he simply let the conversation putter out before he took to the air and began following behind her in the air.

“What about you?” she asked suddenly. “Do you have any friends that would also hate me?”

Vanilla would love you.

The thought made Marble freeze for a moment before his body lurched to keep him airborne. His sister would have loved to meet this mare, who was so crazy as to actually leap hooves-first into the jungle with little-to-no thought for her own safety. Vanilla would have loved to dive down into the mud with her and wrestle a crocodile or two.

It shocked him slightly to realize it, but Vanilla and Sunny would have made a team that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep up with.

It took him a few minutes before he realized that he hadn’t answered the unicorn as she continued to make her way through the jungle. It took him a moment more to realize that Sunny didn’t press him.

“So, uh,” he began, trying to think of something to fill the gap that Sunny left him. “What do we do if we run into a village? Can we just sleep in a broken-down house?”

“That depends on if it’s well built enough that it doesn’t have any holes in the ceiling,” she replied. “And if it isn’t the home of a nasty little creature that wants to eat us both.”

“And what’s the chance of a creature like that being able to fit into a broken-down house?”

“Not as unlikely as you think. Thessalhydras are surprisingly compact.”

“You keep talking about those, but you haven’t actually told me what those are.”

“Terrible,” she answered.

“Wonderful. Trying to get on the Manehatten Times Bestsellers list with that description.”

“Okay, look,” she said, chopping a vine out of the way as she looked back up at him. “Imagine a hydra.”

“Okay.”

“Now, make it from your nightmares. That’s a Thessalhydra.”

“You keep using words, but they’re not doing anything. You know that, right?”

“Look,” she said, “I’ll be honest, the only way to really describe how terrifying those things are is to see one, and if I have my way, we won’t see one.”

“Sure,” Marble grumbled as he nodded.

“The good news,” she said, continuing forward, “is that we haven’t heard anything yet. Typically Thessalhydras make a lot of noise when—”

A deep, throating noise that reverberated through the jungle cut her off. Birds squawked in alarm and took flight while vermin of all types pushed their way toward the ponies.

Sunny sighed. “You know how I was talking about the universe listening earlier?”

Marble just sighed.