//------------------------------// // 25 - Back in the Saddle // Story: The Other Side of the Horizon // by Rambling Writer //------------------------------// Just as Applejack had thought it would, Twilight’s appearance in the bar had cleared up everything like that, and it was barely a minute before she was questioning the zebras. She’d taken the time to cast a translation spell on Applejack, though. As Applejack gave Twilight her space, she looked at one of her hooves. She didn’t feel different. She’d had a spell cast on her, shouldn’t she feel different? That was always something that’d bugged her about magic. Bhiza was staring at Twilight with something resembling awe. “Twilight is full of power very,” she whispered to Applejack. “Yeah,” said Applejack, “and this ain-” Bhiza gasped and started staring at Applejack. “You…” she whispered, “you are speaking Zebran.” “Twilight cast a translation spell on me,” Applejack said. She shrugged. “Guess y’all can understand me better, now.” Bhiza gaped, then frowned. “Wait… you say…” Her voice abruptly shifted, going from slow, stilted, and jerky to fast, smooth, and flowing. “You can comprehend the eloquences emanating from my mouth when I speak thusly in my native language?” “Well… yes, but…” Applejack cocked her head. “I ain’t the greatest with words, but I don’t think you’re usin’ ‘eloquence’ right. And that whole thing just sounds real awkward.” Bhiza squealed with glee. “You can! Omigosh this is so great!” She jumped on Applejack in a bear hug. “Now we can actually talk properly, without an-” Then she stopped and let go so abruptly Applejack almost fell to the floor. She coughed. “Sorry,” she said quietly. “Is… is that too per-” “Nah, you’re fine with that,” Applejack said. She rolled her shoulders. “Just warn me next time, ‘kay?” “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” Bhiza grinned. “I’m sorry, but you just have no idea how flipping annoying it is to try and hold a decent conversation in a language you can barely speak. You’ve been great about keeping it easy for me,” she added quickly, “but I didn’t even know the word for ‘breathe’. And now…” She laughed. “Ooo, boy, that’s just gone.” “For a few minutes, anyway.” “It’s enough. And besides, we’ll-” Bhiza’s gaze snapped to Twilight’s guard — Stormwalker, wasn’t it? — who was standing behind her, trying to look intimidating while Twilight asked the attackers questions. And actually doing a decent job of it, or so Applejack thought. After a second, Bhiza whispered, “She’s a pegasus? She’s a pegasus.” “Well, yeah, she’s a pegasus, but wh-” Bhiza zipped right up next to Stormwalker and lightly poked her in the side. “Hey.” Stormwalker ignored her. “Bhiza,” Applejack said with a sigh, “do-” Poke. “Hey.” Stormwalker ignored her. “Seriously, you sh-” Poke poke. “Hey.” Stormwalker ignored her. “Are you lis-” Bhiza moved her poke to Stormwalker’s wing. “Hey.” Stormwalker’s mouth narrowed and she flared her wing, clouting Bhiza in the face. Bhiza was up again in an instant, but rather than poking Stormwalker again, she started examining Stormwalker’s wing closely, reaching out like she wanted to touch the feathers. Stormwalker glared at Bhiza and sidestepped away from her, but Bhiza just took a step forward without taking her gaze from the wing. Applejack sighed and dragged Bhiza away from Stormwalker. “Y’all really have a personal space issue we need to do somethin’ about.” “But… but she’s got wings!” Bhiza protested, pointing at said wings. “Wings! I want wings!” Stormwalker glared at Bhiza. “Yes. I have wings. What of it?” “Zebras don’t have wings,” said Bhiza. She broke out of Applejack’s grasp and went right up next to Stormwalker again. “This is really weird and really cool.” She started prodding at the joint between Stormwaker’s wing and trunk. “Whoa hey hey hey!” snapped Stormwalker. She danced away from Bhiza, flaring her wing at the same time. “Hooves off the wing! Don’t- don’t touch me like that!” “But I wanna look!” protested Bhiza. “I’ve never seen this before, and-” Stormwalker gritted her teeth and rolled her eyes. “Uffh. Fine. Look, but don’t. Touch.” She opened her wing to let Bhiza get a better look at it. Bhiza immediately started stroking the feathers, prompting Stormwalker to clout her in the face again. “I said don’t touch.” “Your wings are soft,” Bhiza said, rubbing her nose as she got back up. “How do you stand on clouds?” Applejack groaned and tried pulling Bhiza away again. “Bhiza, c’mon. I don’t think she wants you buggin’ her.” “By standing on them,” said Stormwalker. “But… but they’re clouds!” said Bhiza. “What do you do to stand on them?” “Plant our hooves and keep our legs straight.” “…That’s just plain standing.” “So it is.” Stormwalker was beginning to smirk. “And besides that?” grumbled Bhiza. “We also breathe to be sure we don’t run out of air.” Bhiza planted her face in her hoof. “No, I mean- Applejack, help me out here.” “Bhiza, there- there really ain’t anythin’ else they do.” “But what about the magic?” Bhiza said, wiggling her hooves. “What do you do with that?” Stormwalker shrugged. “Clouds are just more solid to pegasi. We can stand on them, build with them, use them as beds without actually doing anything. I guess that kind of magic’s just passive.” “…That’s disappointing.” “You’re just jealous that you can’t fly or stand on clouds.” Stormwalker flashed Bhiza a smirk. “Maybe I am,” Bhiza pouted. “It’s still disappointing.” Applejack sighed. “Can the two of y’all just shut your traps? It’s gettin’ real annoyin’ listenin’ to you two go at it.” “Hey, it’s not my fault,” said Bhiza. She pointed at Stormwalker. “She’s leading me on.” “Lead- leading you on?” Stormwalker snorted. “I was telling you the truth, you just weren’t listening.” “You weren’t being very clear,” Bhiza snapped, “and-” This went on for quite some time. Applejack had never been happier for cops to burst into the room. Bhiza broke off from her argument with Stormwalker the moment the cops were in the room. “Listen,” she said to Applejack, “I don’t know where we’ll be staying right now, but I’ll be a part of the group that gets your carts to the palace, and I’ll tell you then, okay? Then you can visit me if you can and you want.” “Sounds like a plan,” said Applejack. “Don’t know if I’ll be able to see you, but if I can, I will.” “Great. And…” Bhiza dug the earring and the glass sphere out of her saddlebags and shoved them on Applejack. The sphere, Applejack noticed, had a lot more lights pointing out. “Show these to Twilight and tell me what’s going on with them, will you? I wanna know.” “Sure thing.” Applejack dropped them into her own saddlebags. As she did, she noticed Twilight walking over. “I think we’re leavin’ now. Be seein’ you, Bhiza.” “See you later,” Bhiza said with a nod. The moment they were outside the bar, Twilight pounced on Applejack and Zecora. “Thank goodness you girls’re okay!” she said, hugging Applejack almost tight enough for it to qualify as a chokehold. “I was worried sick about you!” “It’s- nice- t’see- you too- sugarcube,” gasped Applejack, grappling to no avail at Twilight’s forelegs, “but why- the- worry? We- had- a good- guide.” “It’s not just that,” Twilight said as she released Applejack. “It’s…” She looked furtively around the empty street, then whispered loudly, “Someone’s trying to kill me.” Applejack gasped. “Really?” She’d heard it before, but hadn’t really processed it just yet. It was a lot to take in. Zecora’s eyes narrowed. “That problem is quite unexpected. You think our conflicts are connected?” “Yes, but…” Twilight looked around again. “Well… hang on a sec.” A quick burst of magic, and the ponies’ coats were replaced with zebra coats, and the extraneous bits on Twilight and Stormwalker vanished. Applejack blinked and stared at her legs; after a few seconds, she decided that, no matter how nice stripes looked, she preferred straight orange to black and white. “Come on,” Twilight said, nodding up the street. “I’ll explain on the way.” “You think all this is really necessary?” Applejack asked as they started walking. “It’s a bit much, ain’t it?” Twilight sighed. “I wish. See…” And then Twilight explained everything. How she’d managed to get into a political dinner. How she got poisoned and almost died. How she went to a theatre and nearly got shot. How she’d decided to check up on Applejack just in case. “…and then I entered the bar to see… well, that,” said Twilight. “So, I’m not sure, but…” She looked up at the buildings around them. “There might be someone out there, looking for us. Hence…” She held up her zebrafied leg. “Better safe than sorry.” “Ah. Y’know, while we’re thinkin’ ‘bout it… while we were out on the Serembarti, some bandit on an impen- an impundulu tried to attack us.” “What?!” “Yeah. Lightnin’s real powerful, and it almost got us.” “But you’re both okay,” Twilight said. She said it quietly, as if to reassure herself. “You’re okay.” “They missed us as they ran amok,” said Zecora, “if only, I think, due to luck.” “Okay, but why mention it? Hypothetically, it could’ve just been some roaming bandit.” “I don’t think so,” said Applejack. “They had some magic stuff with ‘em.” She pulled the sphere out of her saddlebag, which now had more lines than she could count. “There was this…” “That tracks magic,” Twilight immediately said. “Basically, it points to anybody who can use magic within its range. The zebras who attacked you had the same thing.” She pulled an identical sphere from the empty space hidden by her invisible wing. “Considering you’re one of the only magic-users in Zebrabwe, it’d be easy for them to find you with these.” “That’s what I thought. And there was also…” Applejack showed Twilight the earring. Twilight’s eyes widened. “Ooo. What’s it do?” “We don’t know. You fit it ‘round your ear, like this-” Applejack demonstrated, quickly taking it back out before the white noise could start blaring. “-but it ain’t long ‘fore it just starts screamin’ somethin’ fierce.” “Hmm.” Twilight plucked the earring from Applejack, her unseen horn glowing, and stared at it for a moment, probably examining it with magic. “From what I can tell, this is some kind of two-way communication device, probably so whoever was trying to kill you could let their employer know when the job was done. I’m pretty sure it’s audio-only, and…” A spark popped from where her horn should’ve been and traveled down the earring. Twilight flinched and clapped a hoof to her ear. “Yep, it’s counterspelled up the wazoo.” “Counterwhatnow?” “It’s got a bunch of spells on it to keep someone else from misusing it. Basically, you put it on, you say a password, and then you can talk to whoever’s at the other end. You don’t say the password, and it just spits a bunch of white noise into your ear to force you to take it off.” “Oh.” “And it does something similar if you try to trace its magic and find the other end,” continued Twilight. “Follow its signature, and it gives you a massive headache via magic feedback unless you know the right tracing spell. Which…” She turned the earpiece over in her telekinesis. “I could find in a few days, it’s not that complicated, but I don’t want to spend all my free time trying to find this thing’s partner when I’ve got more important things to do.” She turned her attention to Applejack. “We’re meeting with Inkosi tomorrow.” Applejack gulped. “Tomorrow? Already?” That was really soon. After several days’ worth of travel, she just wanted a day or so where she could kick back and rest. Work was nice, but it was a pain to do it all the time. And now she was going to meet with a king with almost no preparation. “Tomorrow evening, yeah.” (Which made Applejack slightly happier; she could at least relax for a little bit, if a lot less than she’d been hoping.) “So, as much as I’d like to examine this a bit more-” Twilight wiggled the earpiece back and forth. “-it really wouldn’t be worth it just yet unless I have a brainwave and can solve it in seconds.” “A most unfortunate turn of events,” said Zecora. “And it might be me, but you sound tense.” “It’s not you.” Twilight kicked at a a bit of litter on the side of the road. “I get here, I’m helpless against assassinations, and then I’m not helpless, but there isn’t enough time to do much about it.” She huffed. “These last few days have been… just a whirlwind for me, and I really haven’t had much time to get my hooves on the ground before I’m whisked away again with lots of sand in my eye.” “Well, we’re here now,” said Applejack, “so that’s one load off your back.” Twilight smiled. “Yeah. It is.” Her ears drooped a little. “Still, I don’t think I’ll really feel calm until we find out who’s behind this. I’ve got some ideas, and they’re pretty good ones at that, but… I don’t know.” “Hnng.” Applejack could relate. One of the lesser reasons she hadn’t stayed with the Oranges way back when she was a filly was because she liked to do stuff; with the Oranges, she only had to sit and look pretty, while back at Sweet Apple Acres, she’d be plowing the fields, or feeding the chickens, or learning to buck apples, or any one of a large number of things. She knew what Twilight was feeling; she was downbeat not because someone was trying to kill her (not entirely, anyway), but because her role prevented her from doing anything about it. So, first way to get Twilight’s mind off this: ask her what she’d done to get those ideas. It’d make her think about what she had done. “So, uh, who do y’all think it is?” “That abada CEO I told you about. Mtendaji.” Great. It just had to be the one with the hardest name to pronounce. “Uh… Mendaji… Muhten- Men-” “Mte. Mtendaji.” “Twi, it’s kinda hard to say.” “I know. You’ll get used to it.” Applejack flicked her ears and cleared her throat. “So you think it’s her. Why her?” “Oh, small things, mostly,” Twilight said, waving a hoof. “This and that. There hasn’t been any one big clue or anything like that, just a lot of little stuff that all slowly points her way.” “Ah.” Applejack nudged a rock out of the road. “So if it is her, why d’you think she’s doin’ it?” “From what I’ve heard? Money. Apparently, abadas don’t believe in diplomacy for diplomacy’s sake. They’re more focused on making money.” Applejack blinked. “Wha- Really? What about friendships between countries? Don’t they believe in that?” “To them, it’s nothing more than another step in the Search for More Money. They probably think Equestria’s here to try and muscle in on their territory.” “That’s crazy.” Applejack flicked her tail. “Bits ain’t that great.” Zecora nodded. “Though having money’s very sound, it does not make the world go ‘round.” “That’s the way they see it,” Twilight said with a shrug. “Maybe there’s something else involved, but I don’t know.” “That strange,” muttered Applejack. “That’s real, real strange.” “Believe me, I know.” The four of them walked in silence for another few seconds when Applejack realized something. Everyone was a pony or zebra. And that meant someone was missing. “Hey, uh, where’s Spike at?” “He’s up the palace.” Twilight pointed up at the large fortress-like building on the far side of Kulikulu. It was closer than it’d been when they started, but still a ways off. “I told him to stay in the embassy, just in case something happened to me, so he could contact Celestia.” “You ain’t worried that with you gone, he might be in-” “Nah, I laid down plenty of spells to protect him and he’s got like three guards protecting him. He’ll be okay.” Spike was most definitely not okay. “This is mine!” he yelled, waving a glowing gem in Twilight’s face the moment she entered the embassy. “Spike, I just ne-” “Mine! You can’t just take my gems whenever you want!” “Spike-” “Miiiiine!” “Spike,” said Applejack, “I think y’all need to cool your britches a little. I’m sure she mea-” “Quiet, Applejack,” said Spike, “I’m tr- Applejack!” He sprang forward and hugged her around the neck. “And Zecora!” Another hug. “Man, am I glad to see you guys! I was really worried you weren’t gonna make it!” “There were times when I thought that, too,” Applejack said as she rubbed Spike’s spines, “but here we are, and we’re fine. Everything okay here?” “Yep! I’m learning my Zebran letters, and it’s coming along great. Livingstone’s a great teacher.” Livingstone called out from a room over. “Back in Equestria, languages were my specialty, yes. And it is a great help that Spike seems to have a talent for languages as well.” “And no crazy assassins tried to break in and murder us, either. So that’s a plus.” Applejack hid her snort by looking around the embassy. It wasn’t at all what she expected. Hardly like a diplomatic building at all, it looked more like someone’s house. “Y’know, Twi, this place ain’t real official.” “Like I said, it’s temporary, and they had to find it on really short notice,” said Twilight. “Imayini’s got a permanent consulate, and it’s a lot easier to see that it is permanent. More official. Still, take a look around! It’s a great place, and you’ll be staying here a while.” The embassy was interesting enough (she had her own bedroom!), but it was larger than Sweet Apple Acres’ farmhouse, and Applejack kept getting lost, even though it wasn’t that big. She started by looking for the most important thing, the bathroom. She didn’t need to go right then, but who knew when nature would call? Applejack kept blundering down the halls, opening doors and not finding the bathroom, and slowly began to get cranky. That vanished when one of the doors she shoved open happened to be Twilight’s room. Twilight was staring down at the earpiece and the trackers, looking mildly despondent and occasionally rustling her wings. She didn’t look great; she looked lost in her own world, as if she needed someone to yank her out of it. Applejack cleared her throat. Twilight didn’t respond. “Hey, Twilight, where’s the bathroom?” Twilight looked up, and Applejack could tell she really wasn’t looking at her. “Hmm? Oh, uh, end of the hall on the right.” She gestured vaguely and went back to staring at the tracker. Applejack sighed, walked into the room, and sat down opposite Twilight. “What’s wrong, sugarcube?” “Nothing, really,” said Twilight. “I’m just being obsessive.” “No. You? That ain’t never happened before.” Twilight rolled her eyes. “Ha ha. No, I’m actually being obsessive this time, not making sure I’m doing things correctly. Whenever I look at this-” She wiggled the earpiece. “-I keep thinking, yeah, decounterspelling that would be a good project, but then I remember we’ve got Important Things to do tomorrow and I wouldn’t be able to make much headway on decounterspelling it before we had to do those Important Things.” “Oh.” This was something Applejack couldn’t really relate to, at least not on the same level as Twilight. Farm work was simple; you started it, and then you finished it. It might take a while, but you could never go away and leave it half-done, to be completed later. Maybe she could remove what causing Twilight the issue, though. She reached out with a foreleg and cautiously pulled the objects away from Twilight. “Why don’t I just take these to my room, so you don’t have to look at ‘em?” After a few seconds of lip-biting, Twilight reluctantly nodded. “That’d probably be for the best. I could barely think with that mental feedback, anyway.” Then her eyes slowly widened. Twilight broke out into a wide grin. “Buuuuuut…” She snatched both the earpiece and one of the trackers from Applejack. Sparks of magic began jumping between the two. “If we link the earpiece with something that automatically tracks magic and tune it to the earpiece’s frequency,” she said quickly as she squinted at the two objects, “then we should have something that can track magic while ignoring the feedback, bec- Ah-ha!” The lights in the tracker started jumping around, then vanished altogether. After a moment, a single solitary line lit up, pointing off towards one of the wall. It was constantly wiggling back and forth, but only by a few degrees. Grinning, Twilight proudly presented it to Applejack. “Because,” she said triumphantly, “the feedback is primarily mental, and has no effect on a mindless object like this! We can now track the receiving end at no risk to us.” The tracker suddenly and violently exploded, throwing chunks of glass everywhere. Pieces pounded Applejack’s body before she could do anything to protect herself, one bouncing right off her nose. She was lucky, and nothing managed to cut her or break anything. In fact, it was so abrupt she didn’t even have time to move; she was just left in the exact position she’d been in before, sitting in shock and staring at the space where the tracker had been. Twilight blinked and shook several large glass shards off of her. “…So long as we remember to not let the little bit of non-mental feedback build up and overload the tracker,” she said sheepishly. “Whoops.” She cautiously rolled the other tracker over to herself. “Hang on,” said Applejack. “You sure that’s a good idea? I mean…” “Trust me, AJ,” Twilight said as magic bounced back and forth between the tracker and the earpiece, “my special talent is magic, I know what I’m doing.” Applejack took her hat off to examine a hole where a grape-sized chunk had blown right through it without slowing down. She raised an eyebrow at Twilight as she put it back on. “I do now! There were just some variables I forgot to account for, that’s all!” Applejack wasn’t reassured until the new and improved tracker lasted a whole minute without exploding. Instead, the whole sphere flashed once every five seconds or so. “It’s so we can bleed off the magic easily,” Twilight explained. “Once the feedback reaches a critical energy state, it triggers an interlocking series of automatic failsafes to use the excess magic for simple light production, thereby keeping the spell matrix as a whole low-energy, stable, and not-explodey.” The arcanobabble made a slight whistling noise as it flew over Applejack’s head. She just smiled, nodded, and went, “Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” All that mattered was that the thing wouldn’t explode any more. The two of them stared at the tracker for a moment, with its slightly wobbling line. “Well?” said Twilight. “Do you want to follow it?” “What, really?” said Applejack. “Just… follow that wherever it leads, probably someplace real dangerous?” “It won’t be that dangerous. From the strength of it and its direction…” Twilight tilted her head at the tracker. “It looks like the destination is right inside the palace.” “And go straight to whoever’s comin’ after you? Twi, I ain’t scared for you, I’m just wonderin’ what you’ll do. Scold ‘em?” “Maybe. Confront them about it, convince them to turn themselves in. If they don’t, find Inkosi’s people and tell them what I’ve found. Something like that. Applejack, I don’t want to have to lay shields on you whenever you want to leave the embassy and keep maintaining the wards around this place. I want to find whoever’s doing this and stop them, just so I don’t have to look over my shoulder every minute.” She paused. “Plus, I’m… kinda bored right now, I’m all fired up, and I’ve got nothing better to do.” She stood up. “You wanna come? You wanna find out who sent the impundulu after you?” Applejack hesitated. Common sense screamed, Are you serious? No. This is stupid. No. Don’t do it. No no no no no no no no no. She’d be walking right up to someone who’d tried to kill Twilight and almost succeeded. Someone who’d sent a zebra out on an impundulu to kill her. There was really no way to put it that didn’t sound incredibly idiotic. But on the other hoof, she’d be lying if she said her curiosity hadn’t been piqued. Yes, she could hear later about who’d done it and why, but that just didn’t have the same zing as simply being there when it happened. And she’d be with Twilight. That alone pretty much guaranteed her survival, one way or another. Not to mention that one of the guards would probably insist on going with Twilight, so that was another bit of protection. And, well, her blood was running hot, too. She’d be restless if she stayed here. “What the hay,” she muttered, “I’ll come with you.” “Great! I was hoping you would.” When Twilight notified everyone else of her plans, no one took her up on the offer, not even Spike (“It sounds interesting, but I’m done running around for the next few days. Just stay safe, alright? And keep Applejack safe, too.”) or Zecora (She flexed her leg, winced a little, and said, “I’m not yet feeling at my best and think I am in need of rest.”). The only exception was Stormwalker, and even she grumbled a bit (“At this point, Your Highness, I’m only doing it because it’s my duty, not because you need it, but I still can’t let you trot into wherever alone.”). And so the three ponies stood in the hallway, staring at the tracker. “Well,” Twilight said eventually, “it’s definitely pointing in the general direction of the Imayini consulate. It could be pointing somewhere else, but we won’t find out until we get there. Come on!” She trotted off, keeping an eye on the tracker. Stormwalker huffed as she and Applejack followed after Twilight. “You know her personally. Is she always like this?” she whispered to Applejack. “Always jumping on small threads and following them to the end, no matter what?” “If anythin’,” Applejack whispered back, “she’s usually worse.” “…Oh…”