With an insane amount of reluctance, Twilight, Celestia, and yet another contingent of guards descended the mountains to the valley far below to follow the river to whatever body of water DQ spoke of. Sparkles was charge by Twilight to keep her 'trophies' in good shape for when she returned. The unicorn had much to do with them when she came back, and much of it involved the guards of 'Imposter'. The river they were following passed through a natural half-pipe shaped canal filled with moss that had been dug thousands of years ago when water first arrived in the area.
Everything around the river was a blinding green with but a few trees, bushes, and flowers growing around because of the nearby mountains preventing any proper growth in the area. The rocky colossi lifted the verdant green plains up, preventing anything from rooting itself properly, and this could be seen by the large plethora of dried saplings littering the ground.
One of the guards waddled up to his ruler to ask her a question. "Are you sure everypony will be alright without you?"
Celestia flicked her hoof down. "Yes. The Council was there to make sure that everything went smoothly before my sister and I reached of age, and it's already a good sign of the new members over the years as you ponies have yet to notice my absence."
"You've left before?"
"Of course! I need my rest as well. Just because I'm immortal does not mean my health and mind are immortal as well. I need vacations as much as the next pony."
The guard nodded in agreement and rushed forward to rejoin the other guards. Twenty guards had been tasked with guarding their monarch and formed a semi-circle in front of her. Twelve unicorns and earth ponies watched the lands, six pegasi floated in the air and rushed to whatever area they perceived a potential threat from, and two more guards stood behind the princess. As for Twilight, she was aggravated at the sight of so many ponies risking their own lives to protect one of them. She never saw this kind of display in her own time. In fact, when there were extreme threats around, the most important pony in the area, be it a general or the supervisor of a mining operation, would put themselves in front of the threat to let the others escape or prepare for battle. She simply didn't understand the fixation the ponies of this era had over a single entity whose title was not earned but, rather, offered by the general populace. In fact, she didn't even understand why a title caused such a reaction.
"Ponies are supposed to earn their title and live up to it, not have it thrown onto them and revel in the 'glories' that entails. A title without acknowledge and worth is a meaningless jumble of sounds," Twilight angrily whispered under her breath."
The first night, the guards set their tents up in the river canal. They were capable of doing this due to the river having somehow dug itself a natural pipeline beneath the riverbed. Several feet away, the water leaked through a wall of moss and continued its progress unhindered but filled with many more minerals than it previously had. Celestia's tent, unlike the squarish and enclosed red tents of the guardsponies, was a grand and enormous construct of pure white with floral borders of pink. The size difference was understandable, but the 'divinity' of it disgusted the lavender unicorn. Twilight went further ahead to separate herself from the 'blind' ponies and keep watch of any potential threat and to gather river water from the natural filters through the ground.
On the second day, nothing else happened aside from some bizarre, shadowy creatures jumping out from the shadows of the extremely few trees surrounding them river. They, surprisingly, numbered in the hundreds, and they were creatures that Twilight had never seen before. With some careful teamwork and magic spells, the shadows were destroyed before any casualties were incurred. Some hours later, a small dragon flew above everypony and threw a rock at the lavender unicorn. It wasn't any threat and was immediately cut in half, but that was the purpose of such a benign attack. There was a letter attached to it that had been almost spared from the attack, save for a corner and some letters.
"If you meet living shadows, it means that it is getting closer. I didn't mention it (on purpose), but the King Dragon and Royal Ejge were awoken at the same time, rather unintentionally, by a gigantic abomination that roams the world with no purpose. The shadows it leaves behind are extremely aggressive and will stay around for about ten days before dissolving into nothing.
love,
Your future Queen."
There was a little image of the queen winking and blowing a kiss at the recipient. The lavender unicorn stuck her tongue out in disgust, crumpled the letter, then tossed it in the air to incinerate it. It felt too convenient and rushed that such information and events would suddenly coincide. Twilight started digging through her memories while she walked. She needed to remember all the tales she had heard up until now.
"The stories and books we recovered all mentioned that the King Dragon and Royal Ejge both awakened at the same time, like many times before, but we were completely wiped out by the them. On occasion, the two would wake up at separate intervals before disappearing again." Twilight stabbed a timberwolf in the chest and obliterated it. Her air of ignorance to the creature surprised the guards, but what hadn't shocked them about Twilight at this point? "They woke up at the same time, but I wasn't here for that, and neither was she, and that dragoness is a crafty one." Upon understanding what the dragon queen had been doing, Twilight cracked her jaw and kept a massive frown on her face. "Well," she whispered to herself. "Now I know why the Royal Ejge is already awake. She's been doing something in the wild that's been agitating the ejge and dragons. Still, she knows I wouldn't be able to say 'no' since we need to fight the dragons as far from civilization as possible." Twilight growled angrily.
As the dragon queen said, it did indeed take four days to reach what was a massive sea, something that surprised Celestia as she had never received any word about a sea being this far into the lands of Equestria.
"Princess Celestia, this is uncharted territory," one of the guards noted. "If we can chart the area and take it back we can expand the cartographic knowledge of your lands."
"You mean 'our' lands," Celestia smiled.
The guard blushed and averted her yes. "You humble me, but these are your lands, not mine."
Twilight sighed. "Stupid ponies. Learn to stick up for yourself. Stop blushing at her just because she has a blindingly and unnaturally white coat. You're not feeling embarrassed. You're feeling all the sunlight cooking your brain."
"Then do so, my little pony. Take those you think would be best for this task."
The pony saluted her and rushed off. Celestia took the time to look around and study the landscape. The sea was quit enormous and wide, filling her view when she was still several meters away from it. Flanking the lake was a very thick forest with ivy somehow growing from it and going into the water. Far across the 'pond' were several more mountains, albeit very young and small ones. The sky was cloudy with only a few rays of sunlight coming through, but not enough to make the chilly air any warmer.
"I hate the cold," Celestia complained as she shivered. Next to the lake was a slab of flat, grey stones sitting atop each other where Twilight had perched. Celestia walked up to the lavender unicorn to see the mare looking down in the water and occasionally hit it with her spear. "So...how DO we call these 'ejge'?" the alicorn asked.
"I..." Twilight sighed. "I don't know. We never talked with them before, preferring to kill them just as much as we tried to kill the dragons."
"What? But the Royal Ejge from before?"
"That was a fluke. I gambled and won. There's no way we can kill it because of its size and bizarre powers."
A grin formed on Celestia's face. To compliment this, she sat on her hind legs and put her hooves on her haunches. "You care about us, don't you?"
"No," Twilight answered with a cold demeanor. "It would've killed me as well. You're just secondary objectives."
"Whatever you say. You're the expert at this," Celestia answered calmly. The two waited a while, watching the guards take measurements and write down everything they learned about the area. "How are we going to do this?"
"I don't know. I'm assuming this sea is very deep." Twilight leaned over and gazed into the darkness deep below the surface. "They must be all the way down there."
Celestia tapped her chin and nodded to herself. The alicorn flew above the sea and started focusing magic into her horn.
"You can't force them out with magic, Imposter," Twilight sighed.
A full halo of light appeared behind Celestia and beamed sunlight directly into the sea, illuminating the sunken lands deep below. Everypony leaned in closer to the sea and braced themselves. They all expected something to occur, but for the longest, most stress inducing time, nothing did occur. That is, nothing occurred until Celestia upped the ante and created a stronger ray of light, exhausting herself, and moved it around the seabed. It got the attention of the inhabitants who angrily swam to the surface of the water and stayed there for a while as they sped back and forth to see who it was that was annoying them.
"Huh. It worked. I didn't think what you did was possible." Twilight was quite impressed, but she still hated Celestia.
Now all that was left was to speak to the inhabitants of this sea, and hope they weren't in too bad a mood.