Daring grit her teeth as the summoning circle abruptly stopped spraying bolts of arcane byproduct about the antechamber. Unless she was much less familiar with evil arcane rituals than she believed she was,
"IT WORKED!"
Maniacal cackling followed Raymond's proclamation. Or, that's how Daring was going to describe it later. Frankly, the truth of the laughter was rather underwhelming: an almost wheezing giggle that was far too rapid, shallow, and high-pitched to be remotely menacing. Indeed, she was astounded he didn't seem to be asthmatic. Sadly, Raymond Thornhoof the Fourth was as unintimidating as he was dangerous. She had been sure she hadn't been underestimating him when she had followed his caravan to the Ancient Vault of the Dragon King. She had pretended to fail to pay off two of his hires so he could believe they would lead her into a trap at his orders. She had three stashes of rune-detecting powders about her person she could use in order to detect his enchantments. She had nearly been eaten alive because she had chosen to face down some sort of weapon-proof lion instead of risk being noticed alive by his scouts.
She had been certain she'd known exactly how dangerous he was. Then she had found the desiccated corpses of his underlings guarding the vault's entrance.
Apparently he only needed them sentient to get him through the jungle; and apparently, he wasn't concerned with the return trip. Which meant he was planning to unlock some absurd power inside, and probably use it to blah blah blah, show them all, yada yada, rule the world, not that that was terribly surprising. Actually, she should get him talking, and memorize the monologue. Readers always loved a good monologue. Yeah, that's it Daring, think about the story, not the victims of horrific necromancy that tried to eat you earlier. Or maybe think about the summoning. The laughter and the smoke seemed to be dying down anyway.
"Witness, Miss Do, the most evil creature in all existence! Statistically chosen to be more cunning, more vile, more heretical, more dangerous than any other possible species the summoning circle could reach! And its reach is phenomenal! Witness, this, er. Are you just a unicorn?"
"What? No I'm not," responded the perfectly normal unicorn in the center of the summoning circle. "One thing, though. When you say the most evil creature in all existence, do you mean that I'm a member of the most evil species in existence, or that I, personally, am literally the pinnacle of evil?"
"Er, the first one. I suppose."
"Oh, good, good. Good to know." The unicorn looked straight down. "Hold on, am I a unicorn?"
"That's what I sai-- Oh! Of course! You've been transformed into a form more suitable for this realm! The local Harmonic field must have caged your true form! Join me in unleashing the true power of the Crown of Doom, and all fate and harmony will be undone! Then you can unleash your true horror upon this world!"
"Hm." The unicorn--light gray, with a darker gray mane, looked around. "So, the zombies are under your control then?"
"Yes!"
"And that mare chained to the stake in the ground. She the only one with a chance of stopping you, until you overpowered her?"
"Indeed!"
"Okay. What did you summon me for?"
"In the short term? To kill her. I could just have the zombies do it, but they aren't intelligent enough to do anything other than eat her alive very slowly. I wanted something truly fitting for one who attempted to stop me, so I summoned you! The most cruel, vile thing alive!"
"You sure know how to flatter a guy."
"In the long term though, I just want to see what you'll do! I want to bring low the powers that be, to send the realm into anarchy! For too long, fate and harmony have ensured that the heroes win. But no longer! Today, I shall unmake the imbalance of the world! Suffering, cruelty, and despair shall see a resurgence the likes of which have never been seen before!"
The unicorn almost seemed to squint at him. "Okay, that's the second time you've mentioned fate. Is fate a thing that exists here?"
"They called me crazy! Bad things happen all the time, they said! Why would I want them to happen more, and for even less reason? Blind. They're all blind! Do you have any idea how many times the fate of an entire nation, or even more, hangs in the balance every year? Nine! On average! It jumps to almost fifteen every 25 year increment! And yet, how many times has anarchy prevailed throughout history? How many times has even a single empire fallen to ruin? I can only count 238, throughout millennia! Disaster comes so close to striking, every time, but the bigger the disaster, the less likely it is befall the world! Do you have any idea how infuriatingly improbable it all is? But no more. Today, that all ends! Today, disaster wins! Today, Fate DIES!"
"Tough luck," Daring said, as she used her wing to tuck a lock pick into her vest, the chains that had held her only moments ago clattering to the ground around her. "I'm taking you down, both of you!"
"GET HER!"
"Hey, what did I do?" The unicorn seemed defensive.
"You got summoned by him!" Daring snapped, as she took off, the zombies at her sides coming inches from tearing their teeth through her wings.
"Fair."
Raymond snarled, and drew a carved stone out of one of his many pockets. Despite being a donkey, Raymond was considered an expert enchanter, needing only a gem infused with power and a chisel to turn a boulder into a fruit tree. And he had far more than enough money to get his hooves on more than enough gems to accomplish almost anything.
He threw the stone over-hoof at Daring, who used her newfound height to dive to the side, letting it sail past her--into the wall behind her, where it exploded.
Of course, Daring thought, as even the air she suspended herself upon shuddered. Of course this one is going to come down around us too. She sighed. The fans always love that part, she tried to console herself.
"I don't suppose you'd use some of your magic to take her down?" Raymond asked the unicorn.
"Well." The unicorn seemed to be eyeing the ceiling warily. "I've never used magic, so don't expect much."
Raymond paused halfway through fishing another stone out of his pockets. "How could a species be one of the most dangerous in existence without magic?"
"I don't think I know enough about magic to speculate."
Daring, having finished retrieving her whip from where it had fallen and been ignored by the zombies (after getting the dumb things to walk after her and off of it), decided to try to whip the stone out of Raymond's hoof, because getting close would probably give him a better shot than she'd want to provide.
"Damn." The stone hit the ground in front of Raymond, and with a pulse, sucked the air out of the surrounding atmosphere.
"Say," the unicorn strained himself to say as the vacuum died out, "you don't have any magic rocks to stop the ceiling from caving in and killing us all, do you?"
"Oh, no! I wasn't planning to walk out of this at all, actually." Raymond seemed positively jovial. "Let's proceed. You two zombies! Stay by the door! She'll have to get low enough to kill her if she tries to follow us! The rest of you, keep advancing menacingly, just like that, yes!" He then haphazardly threw a stone into the ceiling behind him, from which a black mist started spreading. "Good luck with that, Miss Do!"
Daring glared at the unicorn when he gave her a look she couldn't identify before following Raymond downwards through the door.
Great. Now she had to defeat two zombies, on a time limit. Zombies that weren't going to be terribly hindered by being slow-moving, what with how they were guarding a stationary doorway.
After about a minute of being forced closer and closer to the zombies surrounding her, it occurred to her that she was pretty sure zombies still needed eyes to see. She ripped open a packet of rune-attracted dust, hoped that the zombies didn't have runes carved into their backs or something, and used her wings to blast the guards' eyes full of the dust, before lunging between them.
Of course, she had done so so quickly that it hadn't occurred to her that even if they lost their sight, they probably didn't have the wherewithal to reel, and one managed to grab her tail after she brushed it on her way through.
As the zombie bit her tail, and then started blinking through the dust, Daring had just enough time to unsheathe her machete and cut off most of her tail before the zombie pulled her close enough to grab something she'd find it more painful to cut off.
Then the descending mist curled over the upper lip of the doorframe. Daring turned away from the zombies and glided down the staircase leading deeper into the vault, her wingspan just accommodated by the width of the passage. She squinted to improve her sight as Raymond's torchlight approached; he probably had two more zombies at the next door. Yeah, that shape seemed like two zombies at a door. She only had two packets of dust left. Damn. She barely slowed to blast the zombies in the face with the contents of packet number two before sweeping upwards and into the vault, where she found Raymond laughing at the Crown of Doom, the unicorn squinting at Raymond's torch, hoards of riches, several fewer zombies than she believed Raymond had sent ahead of him, and an unmoving zombie, full of arrows, atop the mostly-melted work of art that used to be the vault's final door.
Daring would have appreciated not being the one to deal with all the old traps if Raymond hadn't managed to beat her here so handily. Actually, she somewhat appreciated it anyway, until it occurred to her that Raymond had probably just strolled through at least three death-traps she would only have gotten through by the skin of her teeth; she growled as she used her whip to grab the Crown off of the plinth and launch it towards herself.
"What? Damn you, Daring Do!" Raymond followed up with and under-hoof stone throw.
"Ha!" Daring gloated as she handily dodged, before the stone hit the ceiling and exploded into a mess of chains. "Agh!" The net constricted around her as she collapsed to the ground, the crown rolling away from her towards Raymond's hooves.
"Kill her." The remaining zombies advanced upon Daring's writhing form.
"Wait! I mean, wait. Didn't you want me to kill her?"
"Oh, yes! Zombies, don't kill her. You go ahead!"
"Right. Uh." The unicorn walked over to Daring, before standing over her.
She glared at him.
He looked vaguely constipated, while looking in her direction.
"What are you doing?"
"Oh, I'm getting in her head. You know torture, the best torture includes psychological torture."
"That it does! That it does. Anyway." Raymond unceremoniously plopped the crown onto his head. "Let's ruin everything!"
Daring thrashed against the chains, as power filled the room and Raymond tried to laugh, again. Until the unicorn dropped in front of her and hissed "How do I get you out of that?"
"What?" she hissed back.
"I'm useless! I can't stop him, but you might! How do I get you out of there?"
"My knife! Screw with the carvings on the stone!"
The unicorn started fumbling at the handle of her machete and managed to fail to remove it from the sheathe.
"Are you serious?"
"I'm not used to having this many legs!"
"What does that have to do with having the grip of a-"
Raymond started screaming. Daring and the unicorn turned to see him hovering in the air, his eyes glowing blood-red.
"Use your teeth!"
"Seriously?"
"You can talk fine, that means you can use your mouth! Hurry, dammit!"
The unicorn bit the handle of the machete, drew the blade, pressed the tip against the glowing stone, and nearly stabbed Daring when he tried to scrape out one of the runes.
"Oh, fuck me."
"Sr-ry!"
The unicorn pressed the tip against the stone again, before a wave of power exploded from Raymond, knocking the machete forwards with enough force to scratch the stone and sending the unicorn sprawling.
Raymond attempted to cackle maniacally, for approximately two seconds, before stopping with a frown. "Is that seriously the best this body can do?"
"Yes," Daring sighed as she shrugged off the decorporealizing chains. "Yes it is." She attempted to uppercut the crown off of Raymond's body, but found herself held in a magical grip like iron, inches from connecting.
"You dare? I am Doom!" 'Doom' sneered. "And I will bring doom to you all! My host had one thing right. Fate will die!" Arcs of red lighting burst from the crown, surrounding Doom and pushing him further into the air, as he rose his eyes and fore hooves upwards. "And once fate dies, you will be next."
Daring struggled against immobilization for the third time in, damn, had it even been five minutes? That might be a new record. Also, the instinct that something was terribly, fundamentally wrong with the world seemed to be growing as the red light deepened. That was probably bad.
"Hey, ugly! Your phylactery is obvious and dumb." Doom startled, and looked down at the unicorn approaching him from beneath Daring. "Yeah, I know it's a phylactery, because you were that fucking obvious about it. A crown? Named after you? Or your fucking stage name, anyway. You have the originality of a toddler with developmental issues."
Doom's eyes snapped downwards. He then took a moment to blink. "What did you just say?"
Daring's eyes widened as the black mist from before began to pool on the ceiling.
"Are you too stupid to remember? Aw, is somebody angwy? Does baby wanna thwow a tantwum?"
Daring fell as the iron grip suspending her vanished.
"I will unmake you."
"You know throwing a tantrum just proves me right, right?"
"No it--you have disrespected me!"
"Actually, that was an ancient test of character that my species uses to test our overlords. If you don't destroy me impulsively, you pass the test and I serve you forever."
"That's--how stupid do you think I am?"
"I don't know. Hard to gauge! Remember that black mist your host threw earlier?"
"What black--" Doom looked up just as the descending mist consumed the crown and started to draw itself over his eyes, and began to scream. Then, the magic holding him aloft cut out, and he collapsed bonelessly to the floor, his eyes glazed over and leaking tears of blood. The crown rolled itself back over to Daring's hooves.
"Okay, that was pretty good," Daring admitted. "Got any ideas on how we survive this mist?"
"Find a secret extra passage?"
"This is a vault."
"Fuck." The unicorn paused. "Loot his corpse!"
"Of course! He said he wasn't walking out of here, he must have a stone to escape with!"
"Oh. I thought he was just suicidal."
Daring flipped Raymond over and started ruffling through his pockets, throwing his rune-stones in a pile.
"Hey, these look like Ancient Greek!"
"Can you read whatever that is?"
"Not even a little. Well, I know what the letters sound like. Like this! This is "P", then "ee", then "r". "Peer".
"Peer?"
"Yeah, actually, that might be the word for fire."
"Pyre?"
"Yeah."
"So you can read them a little."
"I guess? I mean,"
"We are running out of time."
"Right. Nekro--no. Klaoo? I don't know what that is. Probably not claw. Eoos? Uh. Topos. Topos! Uh. Shape, I think?"
"Etymologically, place." Daring absentmindedly scooped up a hoof-full of gold along with the crown into her saddlebag.
"The word in front of topos is, uh, nostos? Any idea what that is, etymologically?"
"Nope. Let's hope it's good; we're out of time. Give it here and grab on." When he slid the rune-stone over, Daring lifted it and slammed it into the ground; just as the unicorn touched her side, the stone flashed, and everything changed.
Daring found herself at the center of a summoning circle at the end of what seemed to somehow be an ostentatious workroom. The summoning circle itself seemed to be woven from fine thread into a rug more expensive than the average house, the lighting was provided by tastelessly extravagant chandeliers and massive windows looking out over a massive estate, and the work tables (covered in rocks, carving tools, gems, and specialized machinery she couldn't guess exact purpose of) were mahogany, with not runes but beautiful spiraling carved into the legs. Sadly, she had little time to appreciate the tacky misuse of wealth.
At five of the eight tables, hulking stone and metal golems paused their work and turned to the two pony interlopers. No, there was a sixth golem; a spindly, spider-inspired work that seemed to have been using its legs to scratch stone.
Daring spun on her hooves to see the door, because bodily defenestrating oneself hurt, dammit, and found two donkey guards pointing spears at her and the unicorn. "Brilliant," she bit out.
With a crack of her whip and a wing-assisted jump, she sent both guards reeling and positioned herself to lift the unicorn. She shot off towards the windows just in time to dodge the terrifyingly fast spider-golem's jump, ignored the unicorn's short yell, braced herself and tucked her wings in as she bodily defenestrated herself, and waited a second for the glass shards to hopefully spread out far enough before she started beating her wings again. The unicorn, no longer bracing himself for defenestration, resumed panicking, choosing to swear repetitively and thrash instead of scream this time.
"Hey! Don't make me drop you!"
"Fuck, sorry!" He stopped moving. "Please don't drop me!"
As Daring flew into the forest surrounding the mansion's lawn and the unicorn continued his cursing (more quietly and with slightly more variety), she noticed the bite of several shards of glass about her upper body that would probably start to really suck when the adrenaline died down, alarms beginning to blare from the mansion, and the fact that the Sun's position confirmed that she had probably just teleported quite a distance. Like to the Asinial Republic, where the Thornhooves were once nobility, and had an ancestral estate.
Daring was pretty sure Raymond had murdered every one of his relatives closely related to him to discourage thoughts of inheritance, and idly wondered how things would shake out now as she changed directions once inside the cover of the forest. Maybe with his death, evidence would finally come forward of one of his myriad deeds, and the Republic would seize everything? He'd probably used intimidation to keep someone quiet. But maybe she was being too hopeful, and all his wealth would end up in the hands of a criminal accomplice, or something. At least they'd be hard-pressed to be worse than Raymond.
The unicorn had stopped swearing, the alarms had faded into the distance, and the adrenaline was wearing off. Daring landed.
"Okay. What kind of monster are you?"
"Monster?" The unicorn was quiet for a moment. "That's racist."
Daring considered this. "Apparently your species is the most evil one in existence. If that doesn't count as monstrous, what does?"
"Well. A race being monstrous implies that every member of the race is a monster, whereas a race being evil merely implies that many members of that race are monstrous. If every member of a race is monstrous, it means they have no other choice, and so it's not evil."
"Are you trying to philosophize your way out of this?"
"What, do you not have a philosophy? No worldview of your own at all? And you want to talk about the meaning of evil?"
Daring realized she was scowling. "I'm asking the questions here! Because you're the one who got summoned by a ritual based on how evil you were!"
The unicorn scowled back. "Based on how evil my species was, not how evil I am. And surely you realize judging an individual by what species they're from is, like, the definition of racism."
"Oh, Celestia, that is the definition of speciesism." Daring paused. "Wait! That doesn't mean you're not evil though."
"I helped stop Mister 'Fate will die'!"
"Yeah, being a better pony than Raymond is not a high bar."
"Okay. Uh. Why should I have to prove I'm not evil? What are you going to do, lock me up until I don't do anything nasty for a long enough time? What happened to--uh. Does this world have 'innocent until proven guilty'?"
Daring face-hooved. "Yeah. Yes we do." She sighed. "Fine! You win. You're right. I'm sorry I assumed you were evil."
"And for launching me out a window with no warning?"
"Would you prefer I left you to the metal spider with legs made for cutting stone?"
The unicorn processed this. "Legs made for cutting stone."
"Yeah. It jumped at our faces."
"It jumped at our faces legs first."
"Yes."
"Oh God, we almost died like five times."
"Somewhere around there, yeah."
The unicorn laughed for a moment, before abruptly clutching a hoof to his heart. "Uh. Are we about to almost die again?"
"Well. I don't want to know what Raymond's lackeys are going to do to us if they catch up."
"Oh, goddammit."
After bandaging their (luckily superficial) wounds well enough to avoid leaving a trail of blood, Daring had decided to start heading North towards the nearest city.
"So," the unicorn started. "Magic. How's that work?"
"How should I know? I'm a pegasus."
"What, and you expect me to believe you have a sufficient wingspan to fly like that without the aid of some sort of magic?"
"Well, yes, I need magic to fly, but pegasus magic is instinctual. I don't actually need to know how it works to make it work."
"And you were never curious about it?"
"I mean, sure, but it's super weird and complicated. There's math and metaphysics and poetry or something involved. Most unicorns don't even learn that stuff."
"Surely you can tell me some basic, general stuff. Like, in Physics there's the conservation of energy, right? Even if you don't know how to determine the potential and kinetic energy of something, you know that the total energy of any system is constant."
"Well, yeah, I know that kind of thing."
"Oh, good. I don't."
"What? Why not?"
"We don't have magic where I'm from. Not even a little bit."
Daring stared at him for a while. "How?"
"I don't know. I don't even know what magic is."
"I--you know the word magic, how can you not know what it means?"
"Its a word primarily used to describe fictional things."
"And secondarily?"
"Magical is a synonym for wondrous."
"That's unbelievable."
"Yeah, how do you think I feel? I got summoned. Summoned! How do I get unsummoned? Do I even want to get unsummoned? I have to at least tell my family I'm not dead."
"Oh." Daring looked down at her hooves for the next several steps. "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking about that."
"Yeah. I kind of need to know literally anything about magic. Please?"
"Okay. Right. So, magic potential is also conserved, like energy, or whatever. You take mana and convert it into magic, and when the effect of that magic fades, the magic goes back to being mana, in the world, where stuff can soak it up and use it again. And magic works off of intent. Does that make sense?"
"What, does it do what you want it to?"
"It tries. Depending on what you want to do and how you want to do it, it might fail, or work wrong."
"In what ways can it and can it not be used to how much effect?"
"I think that's an open question, and even if it weren't, I wouldn't know."
"Great. Well, there must be ways that magic is known to be able to work."
"I, would assume so?"
"And if I asked how exactly pegasus magic allowed flight, would you have an answer?"
"Um. I know that it's really complicated."
"Well, that's something, I guess."
They continued walking.
"So most unicorns just don't learn magic?"
"Well, no. Every unicorn learns levitation."
He gave her another look.
"Sorry, yes, I can explain. Okay. So, unicorns can instinctually levitate things." She paused. "Okay, that was a short explanation. Uh. Most unicorns can cast one spell, related to their cutie mark, and also learn levitation." She paused. "That's the gist of it?"
"I'm sorry, did you say cooties mark."
"Right, different species. Cutie mark. It's the symbol on a pony's flank. It symbolizes their purpose in life."
"Their purpose in life."
"Yes."
"So fate is really a thing here?"
"What, is fate another fictional word where you're from?"
"I mean, depends on your worldview, I guess. I always thought so."
"Huh."
"So, you have a compass?"
"Yep! It's for exploration and adventure!"
"What, you like almost being killed?"
"I mostly like everything else about the job, thanks." She looked at him. "I suppose yours is pretty recent?"
He craned his head around to look at his flank. "Oh, God, I have a butt tattoo."
"That's a good thing, you know."
"Oh, good. Any idea what it means?"
"Shouldn't you know?"
"Okay, I guess that'd make sense." He squinted. "It kind of looks like headlights through fog. Three, weirdly offset headlights."
"Headlights? I thought they were stars."
"Through fog?"
"Or around fog. Or mist, or something. I think it might be a cutie mark for magic, actually."
"A cutie mark for magic."
"Yeah, they're not too uncommon."
"If most unicorns know one spell related to their cutie mark, what does having a cutie mark for magic mean?"
"Probably that you can cast a bunch of magic."
"I've been trying."
"Really? You haven't even gotten your horn to glow. Oh, is that what you were doing when you were staring really hard at the first aid kit earlier?"
He groaned. "Any advice?"
"I'm a pegasus. I don't know, think really hard about levitating something?"
"That is literally exactly what I've been doing."
"Uh, feel emotions really hard about levitating something?"
"That too. I've been thinking and feeling and imagining and hoping, all at the same time."
"Do it even harder? Like, do it as hard as you can, and then some."
"That's probably how you get aneurysms."
"Hey, maybe it has to be a last-ditch effort or something! Like, if you don't levitate something, you'll die, so you instinctively do it at the last second!"
"You're crazy if you think you're putting me in a death-trap or something."
"What, you got any better ideas?" she teased.
"Get help from someone who isn't you?"
She laughed. "Yeah, okay. Just don't complain to me when you figure it out in a moment of peril."
"If you insist, I will happily stick to complaining about the peril itself."
"You know, you're alright, uh, you. I never got your name. I've been calling you 'the unicorn' in my head this whole time, and you're not even actually a unicorn. I'm Daring! Daring Do."
"You're who?"
"Daring Do, and although I'd be surprised if you'd heard of me, I'm kind of famous."
"Your name is Derring-Do."
"No, it's spelled Daring with an 'a'. Because I'm daring. It's a pun."
He considered this. "Why is your name a pun?"
"Pony names are usually significant in some way, often relating to their personality or cutie mark. Mine does both. I guess you probably have a nonsense-word for a name?"
"I mean, it used to mean something, etymologically, but yeah, it's just a name nowadays."
"We should figure you out a pony name! Unless you want to go around explaining how you're an alien who got summoned for the purposes of evil."
"I'm pretty sure I could come up with some sort of backstory, but sure. How do you pick a pony name?"
"Uh, I don't know. The only pony I ever met with a cutie mark for magic had a name that pretty much just described her mark. How about Misty Stars?"
"Oh, hell no. My name is not going to be Misty."
"Yeah, okay, that's a little girly. Uh, Foggy Night?"
"Hm. Uh, kind of sounds like headlights then, instead of stars."
"I thought you thought they were headlights?"
"I was kind of joking."
"Starry Night?"
"That's a lullaby phrase."
"So it is. Um. Silver, uh, Beam? No, that's terrible."
"How about Gray Sky?"
"Hm. Seems kind of, dour, almost. Why bad weather?"
"I kind of like bad weather. Within reason, I suppose. And I don't think I want anything cheery or cutesy. It almost sounds like a normal name too; Skye is definitely a real surname. Besides. I am gray."
"That you are. It's not bad. And also your decision."
"Gray Sky, then."
"Nice to meet you."
"You too."
"So. What's your real name?"
"What's in a name? A rose, by any other name, would smell so sweet."
"Oh, come on. I helped you figure out your pony name! Don't quote Shake Spear at me!"
"Wait. How do you know Shakespeare?"
Author's Note
No proofreader, so tell me about any typos you see.
I can't promise an upload schedule, but I've enjoyed this fandom long enough that I don't expect I'll be abandoning this work forever anytime soon. (Not like nobody's ever said that before, huh?)
