Active Quest - Saving Private Ryan: Rescue ALL the captives in the changeling hive.

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  • 0/2 Ponies
  • 0/1 Minotaur
  • 0/3 Griffons

“I see you two are in much brighter spirits! I’m glad the both of you were able to come to an agreement, and don’t worry Ignis the negotiation to get our guards back is the top of my priority list once we return. We should expect them back within a week or two.” Celestia beams at Luna and I when we enter the tent.

“No, they’ll be free within the next 72 hours. We did come to an agreement though, you are right about that.” You can hear a certain level of smugness in my voice as I respond to her.

She looks like she just bit into a lemon as she looks at me. “Excuse me?”

“It’s as he says, Tia. I will be accompanying him until we’re a thousand or so feet away from the colosseum. At that point he will infiltrate by himself and alert me once he has our guards, from there I will teleport them to my location and we will quietly withdraw before anypony notices we were there.” Luna's mood is a complete 180 from earlier, I didn’t realize how much it’d mean to her just to be included in the operation.

Celestia tries to pinch the bridge of her nose, but since it’s a hoof it just looks a bit silly. Interesting that they have a similar motion to convey annoyance though. “I knew this was a possibility, but the chances of both of you agreeing to it seemed so small I hadn’t even seriously considered it. At this rate you two will kill me with high blood pressure well before I have a successor.”

Ignoring her complaints I turn to Luna. “By the way, I need to confess something. I haven’t been intentionally holding back this information, but it’s more like I just hadn’t even thought about it until now.”

“Go on.” She replies with her head tilted in thought.

“The strange power I possess with the dice and what not will sometimes give me Quests or Tasks to complete. When I complete those tasks it’ll reward me with a negligible increase in strength or with some magic items. I bring this up because once we decided on the new plan for the infiltration I was given a quest to rescue all of the captives currently held in the changeling hive. The quest specifies that I need to save two ponies, one minotaur, and three griffons. Is there any way we can alter the plan and have you teleport out the captives as I free them? They could all be in the same location and we can all come out in one sweep, but if they’re located in different areas I won’t be able to navigate around the hive with all of them in tow. However, I also don’t want to get teleported out with one batch just to go all the way back in and start over.”

“Mmmm, that is considerably more difficult. I’m using your mana signature as the anchor and then pulling along whatever other mana signatures you’re in contact with. I’m not sure if there’s a way for me to teleport them through you, but without actually pulling you. There’s also no way for me to get their mana signatures to teleport them directly. Sister, do you have any ideas?”

“You can gather up our guards and anypony else that’s close enough to safely extract and have one of the guards use something similar to the teleportation crystal I gave you. That one in particular couldn’t be used in such a way but I can try to modify it and have it target any creature in contact with the user. That’ll require much more mana though, depending on the number of extra creatures the gem might not have enough mana to properly function. It’s quite a tricky situation.”

Okay this is turning into quite the conundrum. “Okay. New plan. First I locate every prisoner, then route out the shortest path between all of them. Get all of us in one place and we just all teleport out.” I decided to make up something on the spot.

“Ignis, I feel as though I’m obligated to remind you that the minotaurs and griffons are allied with the dragons. I respect that you’re trying to do the right thing regardless of this fact, but we aren’t obligated to save them. Especially after that stunt they pulled on the first day of the summit.” Celestia does bring up a pretty valid point.

“You’re right. If it seems too risky to go after the other species then I’ll just grab our ponies and get out.” I can still get partial rewards, and honestly I forgot about that whole Luna trial thing they tried to pull. Fuck ‘em honestly.

Wait, I have the Moonblade! “Hang on, I’ve got it! I can store spells in my sword! I can only make 3 people including myself invisible, but if I store another cast of the invisibility spell in the sword I can make 5 other people invisible. I can have one of the ponies use the teleportation crystal and then I’ll make the other 5 invisible and we can just walk out. We still have to figure out the whole emotions thing, but I think this is our best shot.”

Luna perks up at the revelation and gives a brilliant suggestion. “Do you think the sword can store Equestrian magic?”

“Honestly I’m not sure. I know it can only store up to 5 levels of spell. So, one 5th level or five 1st level or some other combination to add up to 5. So, your spell would need to be equivalent to a 5th level or lower. For some perspective I can teleport myself and one other creature up to 500ft in any direction with a 4th level spell. I’m not sure if you have something like this but my polymorph spell can transform a creature into a frog or a sheep or a bear, that’s also 4th level. I’m currently unable to perform 5th level spells. Theoretically this means any spell that you think is less complicated or powerful than anything you’ve ever seen me perform, should be able to work in this sword.”

“Well let’s just test it then! If you are able to cast the spell yourself then I have something much simpler for this, can you hold out your Moonblade for me?” Luna stands and eyes the sword.

I grab the scabbard and remove the entire piece from my waist, pointing the hilt towards Luna. She ignites her horn and places it directly against the hilt, and once she does her horn and the hilt begin to glow brightly. After a few seconds the alicorn pulls away with a pensive look on her face. “I didn’t get any recoil as if the spell failed and the spell definitely didn’t activate so by all means it should be in there, but it felt very strange.”

“Ah, I bet you are the only pony that could store spells in this sword. This sword actually recognizes you as Eilistraee, so there’s no way it would reject a gift from you.” In response I feel a tingle shoot up my arm which makes me smile down at the sword. “Clever little sword. Now Luna, if I were to cast this now to test it, how many more times can you perform the spell to store it into the sword again?”

“Over 100, easily. Not to sound full of myself, but an alicorn's mana well is effectively infinite. Feel free to cast it right now and I’ll happily store another copy. All you need to do is point it towards a flat surface, usually the ground, and activate it.”

Following her simple advice I point the hilt towards a large empty space on the ground and activate the Moonblade. After a few seconds there’s a bright flash that blinds me for a second and when I blink away the spots in my vision I see a 10ft wide white circle with a star in the middle and runes placed randomly inside the circle. “Is this a teleportation circle?!”

“Indeed it is! Now when I store the spell in there again I’ll encode it with the runic signature for this circle. If everything works correctly you should be able to just activate the spell and the two will be linked!”

We repeat the process and after walking outside the tent and 100ft or so away I channel the Moonblade again. Another circle appears and I watch in awe as the star in the center begins to shrink and twist as the lines making up the star form into a circle-esque polygon. That polygon then begins to glow white and expand until it’s about the same size as the circle it’s being held within. Once the polygon finishes expanding the white light dims and I can see the tent and the cot I was sitting on through the circle. I’m so excited at witnessing this cool magic that I don’t notice when the portal brightens up and then the entire teleportation circle disappears in a flash. “Huh? Where did it go?”

Celestia decides to give me the explanation, “The teleportation circle is only good for around 10 seconds unless it’s a permanent circle. We used to have one at the castle in the Everfree but once we moved to Canterlot I abandoned the idea. If the runic signature was ever found the security risk was too large. So, you’ll only get 1 shot at this. If that fails then whoever is left behind is on their own. Although if somepony at both ends of the portal are supplying the connection with a stream of mana you should be able to extend the duration. It’ll be quite draining for mortals though. With your expansive mana well you should be able to double the duration, maybe a bit more. It’s hard to say exactly.”

Finally finding a glimmer of hope after taking a streak of losses is almost enough to make my eyes well up. “This is enough. I can feel it in my gut now, with this new strategy I know I can do this.” I look down at the ground where the circle was just a few seconds ago and can’t help but give a big smile.

It seems Luna was even more elated than me because after I smiled at the ground she suddenly hopped up a few inches and wrapped her forelegs around my neck, pulling me into a hug. After a few seconds of both of us just letting out happy celebratory noises Celestia clears her throat and quietly says, “We are not inside the tent, sister.”

Luna quickly drops back down to all 4’s and gives her sister a sheepish grin. “Forgive me, I was just happy that I could be useful!”

Oh. Well that saps my mood a bit. She seemed to be doing fine before we came out here for the summit. Sure, night court was extremely slow most nights, but it never appeared to me that it was getting to her. “You aren’t useless, Luna. You raise and lower the moon, align the constellations and make every starry night unique. Without you I would’ve been unable to even attune to this sword! You protect every single pony in the entire nation from nightmares. I know it must be a thankless job, and you might wonder why you even bother doing it every day. I promise you though, you positively affect the lives of thousands of ponies daily. Hell, if you were useless then I would be dead right now. A useless Luna would’ve fled from that room as soon as she was freed from the pod. Your assistance during the fight and efforts after the fight are the only reason I’m alive.”

Celestia has a soft smile on her face as I start lecturing the lunar alicorn, and she even offers an occasional nod of her head. Somehow I’m able to see the slightest hint of a blush under Luna's blue coat as she receives the mountain of praise. “Aye, we get it thou needest not continue. Thank ye.” Oh she’s really flustered she even went back into ye olden speak.

“Now I just have to decide what I want to do for the rest of the night since I ended up getting a full rest during the day.” Right as I say that Luna lets out a big yawn.

“Good luck figuring that out, unlike the two of you I was unable to get even the slightest bit of sleep during the ride today. I haven’t slept since I got out of the pod and I intend to rectify that right now.” Luna looks at Celestia then at me before continuing, “This is the perfect opportunity for you two to get to know each other better! Please don’t kill each other.”

Luna heads into the tent and as I look around I realize she’s right. Most of the guards turned in already, so it’s just me, Celestia, and two or three guards I haven't interacted with before.

I look at Celestia and sigh as I walk past her and sit down next to one of the camp fires, “So Celly, you got any hobbies?”

“Celly?”

“Yeah you know, short for Celestia!”

“I know what it means, why are you addressing me that way?”

“Oh, I don’t know, it just felt right. Are you avoiding the question? Does that mean you don’t have any hobbies? Because that would be quite sad.”

She assumes the loaf position across from me and gives her own sigh. “It’s not like I’ve never had hobbies, but once you live long enough you mostly get to try everything you think you’d enjoy. On top of that I became so busy once Luna was banished I just didn’t have time. I’ve been going on like that for a 1000 years, so I guess I’m just used to working non-stop now. Taking on personal students to test them and prepare them to be my successor is probably the closest thing I’ve had to a hobby in 1000 years.”

“Does that mean you had one before Twilight?”

“Yes…. that story did not end well though, I’m afraid.” I wait several seconds to see if she’s going to expand on that, but eventually she just looks at me questioningly.

“Ok I guess you don’t wanna talk about it, so that means Twilight is in the process of becoming your successor right? Is she doing well? Also how does that even work, you’re ageless and she’s mortal. How could she even succeed you?”

“She’s surpassed her predecessor, that’s for sure. As for the 2nd half of your question…. you’re effectively going to be the head of the Lunar Guard so I guess it’s fine to tell you, but this is Top Secret information. You must never spread this information, okay?”

“I swear I will not reveal or expose the information you’re about to give me, Princess Celestia.”

“Alicorns are almost never born as alicorns. Luna and I were both originally born as unicorns. You haven’t met her yet, but I imagine she’ll be at the castle by the time we return, Princess Cadence. She was born a pegasus. We all ascended into alicorns through one way or another. Twilight will be the same, assuming she does not get led astray from the path she’s on.” She drops an absolute bombshell on me.

“That sounds crazy to me. You can just become a demigod,” I snap my fingers, “like that?”

“That is why it’s Top Secret. How were you able to reliably tell who was changelings and who was not? It’s written in the report that you had 100% accuracy in detecting them, but it’s not explained.”

“I have a spell that lets you detect poison as long as it’s not behind 3ft of stone and it’s within a certain radius. Once I got bit by one of the small insects I realized they were poisonous creatures so I used that spell and any creature that moved while allegedly being poisoned was attacked on sight. In cases like yours once I cured the poison, if my detect poison spell had kept marking you as poisoned then you’d have been attacked on sight as well.”

“That is extremely useful! We used to have a spell meant for changeling detection, but the changelings have been our allies for so long the composition of the spell seems to have been lost to time. Can you give me a demonstration of the spell, please?”

“Yeah sure.” I reach into my component pouch and pull out a yew leaf. Mimicking the actions I used in the past I activate my Detect Poison spell. As soon as it activates my blood runs cold. “Celestia, don’t freak out, but there’s at least two changelings in this camp right now.”

Author's Note

I'm sleepy. I think with this chapter we've officially hit 100k? That's so insane to me I never thought I'd continue this story this far. I'm so happy it regularly hits the Featured box whenever I upload a new chapter AND we were able to get 100 thumbs up. FeelsStrongMan.

Potential future sister-in-law Celestia and Ignis got to know each other a little bit, so that's cool. We should be completely done with this arc by the end of the next 2 chapters.

In response to the 100 thumbs up and 100k words I want to thank everyone who's commented or favorited. All the grammar corrections and feedback has been hugely helpful and I try to comment on the profile of everyone who adds the story to their favorites. It really does give a me a smile when I see those notifications.

Thanks for everything homies!