Every Prince Deserves a Princess

"...so a cleric, a blacksmith, and a noblepony walk into a bar..."

"And the noblepony didn't give a shit, and kept his mind on the task at hoof."

"You suck, ya know that?"

"Not as much as I suspect you do, you filthy hedonist."

"Got that right."

The sounds of howling wind ricocheting against the rocks at the entrance of the cave behind us broke up the conversation as we made our way inside, looking every bit the odd sort of pair to be up to no good at all. Bar the accompaniment of dripping water from the ceiling overhead and the occasional scrape of a pebble being kicked out of the way, no other sounds met my ears as we cautiously made our way forward. Moss elected to take the lead, dancing- sometimes quite literally, to my eternal annoyance- at the edge of the light cast forward by my horn.

"If we've really got a shot in hell at findin' these gems, they'll be pretty deep inside. The stuff's notorious for being far underground, and in scattered patches. No easy victory for us."

"No, of course not. Fate seems keen on making me tolerate the grating sound of your voice for as long as possible, after all." I let out a derisive snort as I advanced, tripping slightly over a fairly large stone. The resulting stumble did just enough to cause a twinge of pain in my hoof, and I let out a hiss along with a curse.

"Alright over there?" Moss inquired from his position a small distance away, not bothering to turn around. His eyes were cast downward, seemingly to the floor as he leaned forward.

"Yes, yes, I'm fine. Small bruise, nothing more. Worry about yourself," I quipped as I rubbed the reddening tip. Clearly, a post-adventure hooficure would be required.

"I try not to, especially in the mental department. I'd go nuts." The smaller stallion tapped his hoof upon the floor of the cave, letting the rough edge of his foreleg echo against the supple stone. "Yo boss, there's a drop off here. Gimme some light?"

"Boss? You never cease to slightly unsettle and confuse me." For once, I acquiesced to his request, and took my sweet time in walking to the edge, my hooves nearly carrying me downward and into the gaping abyss. The magical light spread out, revealing a steep, but potentially manageable slope. Unfortunately, the cast illumination did little to reveal what was at the bottom, or just how far down the incline reached. Without a second thought, I leaned my head forward to mirror Moss' own, squinting hard to make out any sort of form down below us.

"...long, dark, and seemingly never-ending."

"Sounds a lot like my c-"

"If you finish that sentence, I will toss you over the edge and head home."

We continued to stare in silence, neither of us quite sure what to make of the situation.

"...mine is bigger anyway."

Moss let out a bark of a laugh before nudging my shoulder with his knee. "Been lookin' Big Blue?"

I rolled my eyes and returned the nudge, only to momentarily forget just how much bigger I was than the company I'd chosen. At the rather uncouth shove from my knee, the little stallion stumbled to the side, and subsequently, over and onto the slope, where he quickly slid into the darkness with a yelp.

"Shit! SHITSHITSHITSHITSHIIIIIIIIIIIII-!"

"MOSS!" I watched his frame slip into the darkness almost immediately, and my joints locked all at once. To follow him would have potentially been suicide, all for monetary gain. However, I had already proven that he meant something more to me than most, as I had kept up my part of the bargain thus far, which was indeed a rarity. A final thought crossed my mind before I made my decision- he had been the only one in the past week who had, even if snidely, given me the time of day, and more than a few sentences. He tolerated me, as I tolerated him... and it was always good to have somepony who owed you their life.

I leaped into action, quite literally, and landed hard upon the uneven ground. My swift and hazardous descent began immediately, and I scrabbled my hooves upon the rocks as I desperately searched for a surface to cling to on the way down. The light from the cave entrance quickly disappeared as I slid ten, twenty, an unguessable number of feet downward, only the shaking and jittering light from my horn serving to grant me sight. After a long, fearful slide of what seemed like minutes, the ground rose up to catch me rather unexpectedly, and I rolled into a puddle upon losing control of my hooves. A wet, squelching noise filled the air as I finally slowed to a stop, face-down in a dirty collection of water.

"You are such a douche, you know that?"

I aimed for the source of the noise and spit forth my mouthful of filthy liquid, hoping to at least graze him with the putrid stream. "So I've been told. That answers my question of 'are you alive?' Now, my second would be 'where the hell are we'?"

"Deeper underground, obviously." Moss stepped forward into my light, revealing himself to be covered in dust, soot, and dirt once again. It was strangely fitting for him... though I shuddered to think what I looked like at that moment.

Slowly, I managed to get to my hooves before standing in the quietude, both of us shivering due to the chilled air and our soaked coats. I had lost my traveling cloak on the way down, and with it, both of the maps. Fortunately, my rapier remained at my side, and Moss' own cloak, though tattered and frayed, was still around his neck and back.

"So noted. Let's move forward with haste, find what we need, and... figure out a way back up. It won't be an easy climb."

"Like you said, we should've known this wouldn't be a cakewalk. C'mon, old man." Moss turned and walked deeper into the cave, following the narrow tunnel before us as I trotted to catch up. Some insults simply weren't worth retorting against.

"Keep your eyes peeled. We may soon f-"

I was stopped cold by a taut foreleg pressed into my chest, holding me back from a patch of some sort of red, spongy-looking mass upon the cave floor.

"Bloodlet Moss. All it takes is contact to the skin, and the shit will eat right through it, like an acid. If this is down here, then we're close. Be careful." The slightly less deadly, though equally as troublesome Moss before me let his hoof drop before walking around the mass, and inviting me to do the same. "Be more careful. I need you in one piece."

"This... thing grows near corundum, is what you're implying?" I squinted downward, looking at the frothy lump. It almost seemed to move on its own, the slightest bit. The sight was just a tad unsettling.

"Tends to, yeah. I know a lot about caves and such, and that pattern seems to hold up. Keep your guard up, and we'll move slower from now on."

Moss leaned down and gently used the blade of his knife to scoop a clump of the deadly substance into one of the vials he'd brought before securing the cap and tucking it away, safe inside his cloak. I didn't question the action, and instead walked ahead, intensifying the light before us as best I could.

"There seems to be a chamber of sorts up ahead. The tunnel gets narrower, and then..." I stopped cold in my tracks, holding up a hoof to signal silence. Moss, amazingly, caught on and obeyed, taking his spot beside me as he pressed up against the wall within the tunnel, his brow furrowed as his ears flicked.

"Sounds simple enough. Getting close shouldn't be an issue, after all."

"Not for us, it won't be. We just gotta keep the wife out of it, an' do it before the foal pops. At least have some consideration, so the kid don't grow up thinkin' it's got a father."

I scrunched up my nose and leaned forward, toward the entrance to the larger space within the cave network. The voices rang a bit clearer, and two silhouettes became barely visible against the dark rock, along with what appeared to be a wooden gate at the far side of the room.

"Yeah, yeah. As for who gets to be captain... we can work that out after the deed's done, yeah?"

"Don't see why not. S'long as it ain't someone what supports dipping into our pay for some filthy orphans or whatever he's doin', I don't much care. Shouldn't be one of us, jus' to keep suspicions low."

"I agree. We'll need a figurehead for the guard, and a scapegoat..."

A light tap upon my shoulder broke my concentration, and I found Moss' hoof resting upon me as he pointed with the other to a spot on one of the walls of the chamber before us. There lied a small outcropping of what was clearly corundum, just past the two conspiring ponies. I took a deep breath and ran a hoof over the hilt of my rapier, gripping it tightly as I motioned for Moss to stay put while I walked forward.

"Cease your treacherous talk, and come silently. The crown will not abide such scheming, and that is discounting the fact that you are both within a restricted area to begin with. Come quietly, and I may resist the urge to carve out your tongues." I thrust my rapier forward at the duo, keeping my chest puffed out and putting on as convincing a display as I could manage. The two ponies merely froze in place, the low light hiding their forms well from my accusing steel.

"Shit, we gotta get out of here!"

"Grab on!"

The ponies moved in tandem, and I gave chase right after. One leaped into the air and spread his wings, revealing himself to be a pegasus as the other gripped his partner's legs, a glow forming at the tip of his forehead. A mirrored wisp of magic rushed along a wooden wheel near to the gate I had noticed, and the device began to turn with several harsh cracks as the fleeing ponies rose ever higher.

"Stop! The pair of you are under arrest by royal decree!"

My words were soon followed by a butterfly knife, the small device living up it its name as it soared through the air. The blade merely grazed the wing of the first fugitive, sending feathers fluttering to the ground while the magic-encased wheel began to shudder and splinter, turned well past its limit as the wooden gate beside it slowly began to rise. A small rush of water seeped out from beneath the gate, quickly beginning to flood the cave floor as the pair of fleeing ponies landed safely upon a high ledge and broke into a sprint, leaving me on the rapidly-flooding ground below.

"Shit! I missed!" Moss ran up beside me and glowered at the silhouettes of the mysterious ponies before looking to the turning wheel. "Blue, we gotta move! That gate's gonna b-"

No sooner than he had begun to speak, the makeshift portal swelled and burst forth, a torrent of water rushing out and soaking the ground as the entire chamber began to fill with water. Moss frantically looked around at the burgeoning waves below, searching desperately for his knife before giving up and running for the tunnel mere seconds later, looking panicked as the water continued to rise.

"Get moving! This whole tunnel's fucked!"

I spun and sheathed my rapier at his words, running hard and fast as another surge of water roared forward, adding to the liquid that was already reaching up to my knees. The sloshing substance made it difficult to run, and I was barely able to keep track of my companion running up ahead as he yelled something out, the words muffled by the sound of crashing waves all around me. A clump of Bloodlet moss floated up and toward my chest as I ran, and I had only the time and space to dodge to the side as the mass floated by, its brush-like tendrils scraping against my left foreleg.

Pain unlike anything I had ever felt shot through the entire limb as the skin began to peel away, and the reason for the name became evident. Fur and skin alike sloughed off and into the water, leaving a large, freely-bleeding network of scratches all along the area just above my knee. I let out a wail and fought back tears, trying my best to focus on escaping the cursed tunnel alive as I reached the base of the slope we had tumbled down before.

Moss was hopping his way up the slope in the darkness, clinging to errant rocks that protruded from the uneven ground as he went. The stallion seemed to be an expert climber, moving almost effortlessly upward as he breathed hard, putting all of his energy into escaping the rush of deadly water that was showing no signs of slowing down as it reached the middle of my chest.

I began to hyperventilate in a panic as I reached out for the first jutting rock that I saw and began to heave myself upwards, only to find the next in sequence much too far out of my ability to jump up to. I closed my eyes and let tears begin to fall, the stinging in my leg pulsing ever harder compounding the problem before me as I watched Moss climb up to safety. Without realizing what I was doing, I looked back over my shoulder, only to find the rushing tide just below me. As the water began to swirl and pool, climbing steadily toward my hooves once again, only one thought crossed my mind.

I didn't know how to swim.