Lethal magic setting the very air ablaze? An airborne duel accompanied by a thunderous soundscape? The end of the world?
A simple argument?
Of all the things Bee dreaded stepping into once past the blue disc, the very last thing he could possibly have expected was there to greet him: nothing.
After the brilliance of the disc, he was completely blind in the sudden dark. He turned around to check it was still there; a pallid circle was inscribed on the wall, its faint glow barely illuminating his surroundings.
Fearful of walking any further into the silent gloom, Bee waited for his eyes to adjust. He carefully set his sister down to ease the toothache caused by carrying her sling. After a few minutes he could make out that he was in some sort of cave, the ceiling shrouded in stalactites, the ground criss-crossed by tiny rivulets of icy water. He only now noticed that the air was hardly balmy either. His cloak suddenly seemed a very attractive prospect, but he couldn't bring himself to tug it out from under Sky.
A few moments of chilly silence later, Bee felt sure the sprawl of cave to his left was ever so slightly brighter than that to his right. After gathering the loose corners of her sling in his mouth again, he carried Sky along the damp passageway, hoping to find nothing hazardous in the dim light. It didn't take long to reach the cave entrance, which revealed the ponies' new location to be a mountainside. Bee grimaced as a strong wind suddenly whipped around the assembled peaks. It was unlike any range of mountains he'd ever heard of: apart from the one his cave was sheltered in, Bee saw only five mountains. Depending on how you viewed the scene, the peaks either described the rim of a circle or the corners of a hexagon. Far, far below the cave, Bee could just about see the grass hugging the base of the mountain. Indeed, it looked as if the entire plain enclosed by the six mountains was covered in long grass.
"Bee?" His sister's unannounced stirring almost made him drop her sling. "Where are we? Why is it so cold?" She squirmed in the fabric, gently scraping away at her closed eyes. Bee set her down next to him, but back from the lip of the cave's mouth.
"I'm not sure where we are," he said, straining to be heard above the wind without resorting to shouting, "actually I have absolutely no idea where we are. All I know is we're on a mountain."
"Why?"
"Your spell, Sky, it led me here." Hearing this immediately roused her curiosity and she was fully awake. She squinted in the harsh breeze, unequipped with the vague protection afforded Bee by his glasses. The Moon, despite having seemed to be on its way down to make way for morning back in Canterlot, was high in the sky here, hovering directly above the centre of the grassy mountain-rimmed plateau. Its light seemed a bit more intense there than everywhere else, so much so that Bee could have sworn a veritable column of moonlight was hanging from above. "I'm guessing whatever made your spell bring us here is down there."
"Wait, I know this place..." Sky mumbled to herself, too quietly for Bee to hear. She didn't want to say anything loudly until she was sure of herself.
"So, feel awake enough to have a quick fly in this weather?" The wind punctuated his words by picking up speed as his question ended. "I don't think there's a way down from this cave by hoof."
Sky nodded slowly, then more vigorously as she remembered why they were here. She hesitantly extended her wings, testing the wind's speed and direction, both of which proved too unstable to judge accurately.
Bee quickly separated his cloak from hers, dismantling the sling; they would need all the protection from this wind they could get. After helping her to adorn her cloak without it blowing away and swinging on his own, Bee started sliding down the mountainside, using his wings to brake and steer. Sky opted to be fully airborne, jerkily dropping in altitude to keep level with her brother. He soon decided to go fully airborne too, so he could catch her quickly if the wind gusted violently.
It took more than ten minutes of heart-stopping airtime to reach the grassy plain. They were both out of breath and suffering from cramp where their wings sprouted from their backs, but they didn't pause before trotting towards the shaft of light.
When they were only about a furlong from where the shaft met the ground, they could see a slight rise in the grass. The small hillock presumably marked the exact centre of the plain, and it sported a little stone building. Every few seconds a dome of pale gold light flashed into existence around the outcrop, before fading away again. Sky gasped.
"That looked like Celestia's magic!"
"Let's go," Bee replied as the wind speed crept up another notch.
They hadn't gone much further when the humble wooden door which had faithfully guarded the building's face for however many generations was abruptly relieved of duty. A sizeable explosion from within the building removed it from its post. Having been annihilated, rather than simply knocked off its hinges, the door's demise made Bee and Sky pause their approach. Another blast with a bit more power behind it rocked the building, sending out a concussion wave that flattened the grass of the plateau and whipped Sky's mane into a frenzy. Bee's more modest mane lost all of its usual tidiness too.
They saw a figure back out of the ruined doorway, bolts of pale gold blasting from their long horn every few seconds to coincide with the dome's regular appearance.
"Princess Celestia!" the approaching ponies called out together. She seemed to hear them because she flared her wings in response, but she didn't break concentration for one second. She continued firing regular bolts of magic into the building, causing the dome to flash into existence every time.
Bee motioned to Sky that he was going to go on ahead to see what was happening, and that she should wait here. Talking was now too much work in the howling gale. Shivering, Sky hunkered down in the grass and nuzzled her face between her forelegs. Her wings stretched forward to cover her flattened ears for good measure.
Celestia noticed Bee's slow crouching advance, and after a few more blasts of dome-inducing magic, more powerful than before, she extended her wings and fought her way through the storm towards him. He started a similar effort to meet her halfway but she shook her head at him.
He tried to block as much of the wind as possible with his substantial wings, but the cold seemed to magically bite straight through to his bones. Celestia landed in front of him with markedly less than her customary level of grace.
"Bee!" she said loudly, just shy of having to shout despite being right by him. "I trust you two made use of a certain spell!"
"She pulled it off amazingly, although it dumped us in a cave up on that mountain!" Bee bellowed back while pointing over his shoulder. Celestia smiled.
"It's in the nature of the spell to safeguard the caster, it would never have led you directly here!" Bee nodded in response. He peered around the alicorn at the little stone building, which still emitted small explosions very frequently.
"So what exactly is here? What's making all that noise?"
"My brother." Bee froze.
"What, right there, in that building?" Bee jumped as another, larger explosion rocked the alleged prison. "With all due respect it doesn't look capable of containing a corrupted alicorn!"
"The physical building extends deep underground; there are numerous doors and labyrinths, impenetrable and inescapable for the most part," Celestia called back, forced to raise her voice, "but it was always the magic shielding my sister and I put in place which formed the true impasse to our brother's escape!" Dust now billowed out of the building after every explosion, only to be wrenched into the sky by the ever-strengthening tempest. The dust created a thickening wall, swirling around the column of moonlight focused on the prison.
"Were you giving that magic shielding a boost just now?"
Celestia nodded as the largest explosion yet distended all four walls of the little building, which now seemed on the verge of total collapse. The concussion wave raced across the plateau, buffeting all three ponies who were struggling to keep their hooves on the ground anyway. Sky peeked out from between her hooves and saw her brother standing dangerously close to the building with Celestia. She was on the verge of tears, not knowing what would happen next or if any of them would ever even get to see home again.
"It will not hold him back much longer," Celestia struggled to confess over the din, "it was designed to make use of Luna's power too! For as long as we were both present in Equestria, this prison was maintained by passively drawing on our power! Now that it's been deprived of Luna for a thousand years, it has weakened enough for him to escape!" The roar of the wind was now joined by a constant stream of cracking, shattering and creaking from the building, which became more visually stressed with every passing explosion. "Bee, we have to move back! The only thing that can stop him is my sister returning to us, but until that happens we can only stay out of the way!"
Right on cue, the valiant little building gave up its centuries-long battle with its lone inhabitant. A final bone-rattling blast disintegrated the structure and swept Bee clean off his hooves. Celestia managed to get airborne just in time to ride the shockwave, rather than suffer its full force, and guided her clumsy flight towards the terrified filly hunkered down in the grass.
"Brightsky!" The young pony looked up at the sound of her name. "You aren't safe here! You need to head back to the cave and use your portal! Once you're back in Canterlot, destroy it so my brother doesn't have..." The wind whisked away the rest of her words.
"But Princess, there must be something I can do!" Now the filly really was crying. "There must be a reason we're here! Bee's big and strong and I can do magic, even though it's not very good yet, there has to be something we can do!"
"I had hoped so," Celestia shouted back. "You must have released some deeper power when you cast that portal spell, no ordinary magic could have done it! Do you remember feeling anything unusual? If so, now's the time to call on it again!" Her sudden high expectations made Sky feel even worse.
"I'm sorry Princess, I don't remember, I really don't remember even doing that spell, but I know I must have because we're here..." She totally broke down at this point and buried her head in the grass again. To round off her distress, her mind was suddenly racing.
There were dozens of thoughts and feelings streaming around her brain, too many to come from one pony simultaneously.
Despite her frustration at having failed to finally reveal whatever secrets her student had concealed inside her, Celestia couldn't be upset with the filly. She was terrified out of her mind and in terrible danger. Perhaps she should never have come at all.
"Celestia!" came a sudden bellow from near to the building, barely audible over the storm. She looked back towards the dense dust wall swirling around the moonlight shaft to see Bee, crawling away from the ruins of the prison. His body and wings were pressed as flat against the ground as he could manage. "He's here, he's out! We need to move now!" Sure enough, a dark silhouette could be seen striding slowly around the edge of the destroyed building. Upon closer examination however, it did not seem to be alone. Celestia gasped as she saw a second figure, notably smaller than the first, curled up and unflinching in the eye of the storm, surrounded by stony fragments that once incarcerated the Prince.
Entrusting Sky to do as she was told, Celestia struggled back towards Bee through the wind and dust, which was starting to become painful as it grazed away at her eyes and wings. She began building up a bolt of magic in her horn to project at her brother but the power seemed to leave her horn as soon as she gathered it there. Looking along its length, she was devastated to see that the dust appeared to be siphoning her magic away. Grains of dust glowed gold as they struck her horn, carrying off any magical energy she summoned as soon as it was ready for use. A rolling, thunderous laugh echoed around the ring of mountains as the standing silhouette stopped studying its comatose counterpart, and instead turned to face Celestia.
"Bee, I'm going to need your help to hold him off as long as possible! My magic is being drained by this dust!" Bee stood up from his crouch slowly, to avoid being caught off-guard by any sudden extra-violent gusts. "I'm not sure, but I think I know why the dust is stopping my spells! The prison was enchanted to absorb and retain the magic my sister and I put into it, to keep it strong for longer should we be unable to maintain it for a while! The prison is now in countless specks of dust, flying all around us! It hits my horn and deprives me of my magic before I can use it!" She lowered her head and shielded her face with her wings, but she found that in order to properly protect her horn she had to enclose it so much that it became impossible to project magic without her wings being in the way.
The shadowy figure began to advance out of the dust vortex. The moonlight shaft emphasised his fierce red-on-black coat.
"I can't do this alone! Do you think you can help me?"
Determined to prove himself useful, Bee staggered a few feet upwind of Celestia and dug his hooves deep into the grass. Drawing himself up to his full height, he tenderly unfurled his wings to form a protective screen for the Princess' face.
He only lasted a few seconds before the pain set in. Being sheets of tough hide supported on bony ribs, rather than being feathery and soft, his large wings were incredibly effective at stopping the dust. However with the wind blowing this fast the dust was more like a cloud of rocks striking his wing membranes. He'd sensibly kept them close to his body and as streamlined as possible; flared out as they now were, they experienced the full abrasive force of the storm. Hot tears pricked at his eyes while a faint redness coloured the dust streaming off his wings. With an angry cry Bee admitted defeat and clasped his wings to his shoulders. The pain didn't let up though, because the damage had already been done. Dust continued pummelling his half-shredded wings, no matter which way he turned to face.
"I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do! I can't help you!"
Celestia winced at the sight of Bee's wings and the undeniable redness, however faint it was, that tainted the air around him before streaming away in the wind.
Suddenly a voice rang out across the plateau from somewhere behind them. Bee recognised it as being a bizarre amalgamation of the multiple voices he'd heard when Sky had cast the tear tracking spell back in Canterlot.
"But we can."