"...All right," Starlight said after a lengthy wait. "My horn doesn't hurt as much. Should we open the crates now?"
Maple yawned. "If you think you're able. But please don't push yourself, okay?"
Starlight's horn lit, providing the first illumination either pony had seen in over an hour. As it brightened in intensity, she winced, a single errant spark flying off into the distance, but she held solid. Her aura filled the inside of the first box, pressing up against the top from within, the same as she had opened the crates in Sosa the explorer's camp in the mountains. There was a dry creaking, accompanied by the bending of nails... and the lid cracked. With the tension in the air as Starlight slid it off, it would have been entirely appropriate for the box to give off a shower of dust as the contents were revealed, as if it was an ancient relic unearthed by an archaeology dig.
She hopped up on the rim and peered in, and her face scrunched. "What is this?"
Maple trotted closer, craned her neck, and joined her. "I don't have any idea..."
The contents of the box did resemble machine parts, true to Starlight's earlier prediction. But rather than any sort of metal she had ever seen, large areas of them were hewn from what appeared to be black glass. As her hoof passed over them, they briefly lit up with faint, complex blue runes that seemed to be shining from within the substance. She reached in and pulled one out.
"These are strange," Maple whispered, examining the object in Starlight's grasp. "They look kind of like... mirrors? Magical ones... I wonder if they reflect magic."
"This one's curved," Starlight commented, holding another out. "And this one looks like a lens..."
Maple leaned over the edge, rummaging further. "There are some normal-looking things in here too, but not many. It's mostly these weird black things, and packing to keep them from breaking in- oh!"
She straightened up, clutching an orb roughly the size of a newborn foal's head. It had a vaguely geometric surface, and was clear all the way through, save for a teal prism at the very core. Suspended throughout the outer shell were flakes of gold leaf, oriented as if the sphere was constructed of infinitely many layers and they were sandwiched between, large enough to have more tiny runes burnt into their surfaces but not so large as to obscure the view of the center. "This looks important, don't you think?" Maple asked, beaming.
"Yeah..." Starlight slowly nodded, mouth suddenly filled with an unpleasant taste. No matter what angle she tilted her head at, it felt as if there was something important about the ball she couldn't quite see, as if the shininess was merely a distraction, or that it was lying to her and enjoying it. "It looks important."
The orb disappeared. "Well, it's what we're taking with us, then," Maple said, straightening her shoulders and giving a satisfied sigh. "Now, should we try to make it look like we haven't been in these?"
Two pulses of magic were all it took, one to float the removed parts back in, and one to hammer the lid carefully back in place. Starlight snorted and turned around, the door to the chamber standing temptingly on the other side. "Are you ready?"
"Ready?" Maple asked with a grin that was half nervous, half eager. "To escape from this awful fortress and do something normal with my life? You bet I'm ready."
In an abandoned fortress corridor, blowing with ventilated wind and lit brightly should the night shift deem it worth a visit, a teal aura flickered. It stretched, expanding, feeling for signs of traps or ponies... and, finding none, homed in on an inconspicuous lever on the wall. Flick! Swishhh! A door slid open.
Maple stepped out, Starlight tensely astride her back. The duo carried no crates, immediately looking both ways to ensure the magical scan hadn't missed anything. Eventually, they silently selected a direction, and Maple took off, moving at a swift walk with silent hooffalls.
Ceiling lights occasionally strobed, due to age, faulty wiring or something else. They blended with the flickering of Starlight's horn, the filly constantly recasting her detection spell, a single bead of sweat running down her brow. No ponies ahead. Don't turn right. Keep going. She wordlessly guided her steed with nudges and tugs, focus taut and unwavering.
They pulled to a halt at a T-junction, Maple pressing herself upright into the cover of a wall pipe as two guards lazily wandered past. Undetected. Success.
Starlight steered them right; the direction from which the guards had come. Momentarily, the passage widened and they entered what seemed to be an empty break room, furnished with several posters, a bean bag chair, a refrigerator and a table holding an unfinished game of cards. The filly sniffed, pointing to a used coat rack. "There's money in the pockets of the green one," she whispered.
Maple adamantly shook her head. "We are not criminals," she whispered back. "Actually robbing them will just make it harder to get our names cleared if we ever get the chance. Opening those crates was bad enough! Now which way do we go?"
Scanning again, Starlight pointed to an empty doorway. "That one. The other's a bathroom."
Rushing onward, they rounded a bend and immediately encountered an incline. "Good," Maple whispered, beginning her ascent. "The guards went down a lot taking us there. This is the right way."
"Be careful," Starlight warned as they charged upwards, "the next room's big. I can't feel it all."
The next room was, as she had predicted, very big. Fortunately, it was another storage room, and the mess of crates covering the floor provided almost constant cover, if Starlight kept her scanning active. It had such a low ceiling, though, that it was impossible to see how far it truly stretched, or to pinpoint exits. A crystalline column that might have been an elevator shaft stretched some distance away, and numerous support pillars in uniform arrangement kept the metal ceiling from falling in.
Slowly, one at a time, they darted between crates, keeping the wall constantly at their backs so as not to be flanked. After ten or so jumps, by the time their entrance had faded from sight, Starlight called a halt. "I need to stop," she whimpered. "My horn hurts again."
"Okay..." Maple bit her lip. "Let's just find a place to hide, then, and we can rest. Hmmm..."
Her eyes scanned the room manually, quickly spotting a large crate placed at an angle against the wall. Perfect. The crevice it provided would cover their sides and back, leaving them only one direction to keep watch in, and nobody could see them without nearly touching the wall. Eagerly, she trotted toward it, pausing just long enough to ensure that it was empty... and it was. With a sigh of relief, she trotted in and lowered herself to let Starlight down.
The filly slipped off. "Okay," Maple whispered, "okay... I think we're good to rest here for-"
"Who's there!?"
Maple froze, pressing herself as far against the wall as she could while still staying in front of Starlight. But Starlight slipped in front of her regardless, horn lit violently even as the action made her eyes water.
"Who's there?" the voice repeated, closer to pure alarm than aggression. "I-I-I mean it..."
Hesitation. A newer guard, perhaps? Maple crouched as well, readying to produce her remaining ingot as a weapon at an instant's notice if need be.
"Dry, if you're trying to bust me again for slacking off, I swear I will-" The guard trotted into sight, well out of ingot range, confusion suddenly spreading on his face. "What the...? Hey, you girls aren't Defense Force..."
Before Maple could even move, Starlight's horn went out, and the filly gasped. "A guard!" she squeaked, voice sounding uncharacteristically helpless. "Mister, w-we've been... we were invited on a tour, but we got separated and lost, a-and..." She darted forward, wrapping her forelimbs around his armored leg, much to his surprise. "Please help us! The last two ponies we saw just ignored us, and I'm tired and hungry and we might never get out!"
Maple watched Starlight's uncharacteristic display in silence, nodding along, the shock from seeing her filly acting like that the only thing strong enough to keep her from accidentally breaking the charade. Starlight was staring up at the big pegasus with wide, teary eyes, still freshly wet from focusing her horn the instant before, though in the moment they looked anything but.
"I, uhhh..." The guard hesitated, taking a step back and freeing himself from Starlight. "You guys sure about that? You're not spies or anything, trying to catch me doing... uhh... what I wasn't just doing?"
"We're lost," Maple added, working up the confidence that she wouldn't say something ruinous to Starlight's act. "Please, at this point we're just desperate to get outside. Can you help us?"
The guard wasn't arresting them on the spot, and his suspicion of them had nothing at all to do with why they were actually there. Maple seized onto the kernel of hope that came with it, refusing to let it die.
"Uhhh..." the guard repeated, scanning them up and down with his eyes, a pair of wingblades hanging folded at his sides. "So you two were on a tour... and you got left behind... but I don't remember anything about us giving tours, especially to unicorns." He pointed a wing at Starlight. "Might be Sosans, trying to sneak in for an attack. That's what they say, at least. No Sosan would actually be that dumb. They're smart little rats, they are..." Suddenly, his eyes lit up. "Hey, this tour of yours didn't have anything to do with a pony called Valey, did it?"
Maple glanced at Starlight, and was barely able to stop herself from cringing. The guard saw it anyway... and smiled gently. "Oh, well, that explains everything, then! She probably brought you in off the record and ditched you as a prank. Don't feel bad, she's like that to everyone." He reached out and patted Starlight's head. "Sure, I'll help you out. Dunno why we even keep someone like that around in the first place, let alone let her do whatever she wants. That menace is even worse than the Sosans. Oh well. Keeps us on our hooves, at least..." He sighed heavily. "Closest exit's this way. Follow me, hope she's not haunting you now, and you'll be just fine in no time."
Gratefully, Maple fell into step behind the guard, ever so slightly in awe of Starlight's emergency acting. That was the kind of thing she should be doing to keep the filly safe, not the other way around. Making a mental note that once her shock and adrenaline wore off, she would almost definitely have a panic attack, she let herself draw away from the wall, entering back into the maze of crates and boxes.