The orange glow of the morning sun shining through the tent’s canvas woke Sunset up. She groaned and turned around onto her other side. She’d never been much of a morning pony. She adjusted her position a bit and felt somepony stir next to her. It was only then that she fully realized where she was…and what had happened. She’d slept through the night. Her nightmare…her nightmare had ended well and faded out! Sunset opened her eyes and sat up. She didn’t feel tired anymore. Her magic wasn’t drained from exploding out.
She noticed that Twilight was staring at her with wide eyes. “Are you…okay?” she asked hesitantly.
“The nightmare…you showed up and saved me from my own magic. I could feel your magic as clearly as I do when we’re casting spells together. That feeling of a huge, roaring fire, that is somehow not painful but protective,” Twilight said disbelievingly.
Sunset blinked a couple of times. A roaring fire? That was how Twilight felt her magic?
Twilight cocked her head. “Is…something wrong?” she asked. Now it was her turn to sound hesitant.
Sunset shook her head. “No, it’s just…in my dream, I felt your magic too. It told me what to do, what spell to cast. But when I feel your magic, it isn’t like a fire. It’s…” Sunset trailed off as she tried to think of a description that would fit the feeling of Twilight’s magic. “It’s more like a blanket, I guess? It feels warm, and soothing, and somehow it has this sense of safety that is really hard to define beyond the fact you’re absolutely certain it’s there,” she eventually said.
Twilight considered that for a moment. “I guess that makes sense. Our approaches to magic are different, so it would make sense that our magic itself is different as well. Although I don’t think I’ve ever felt somepony’s magic as clearly as I tend to feel yours.”
A blush shot across her face as Twilight realized what that implied. “Anyway,” she said hastily, “I’m really glad that, somehow, we were able to help each other with our magic instead of blowing up another tent.”
Sunset nodded fervently, trying to get rid of the blush that she, too, had on her face. “So…do you think the others finished breakfast yet? I have a feeling we might be up later than usual,” she said in an attempt to change the subject.
Twilight got up and unzipped the tent. “Let’s find out,” she said, and stepped outside.
Sunset followed her and almost immediately ran into her friends. All of them were standing around her and Twilight’s tent, staring at it as if it had caught fire. Sunset found it kind of funny that the sight of an intact tent had her friends’ jaws nearly on the still-cool desert sand.
“What’s wrong?” Twilight asked Spike. “Well…I don’t really know what happened, but it was like a light show was going on in your tent. It wasn’t noisy or anything, just really bright. Did something happen? Was the nightmare different?” he asked.
Twilight and Sunset exchanged a glance, and then Twilight answered. “It was. Somehow, Sunset’s magic and mine mixed, and we seem to have canceled each other’s nightmare out. So…we’ve had a good night’s sleep for the first time in days.”
“Oh! And that made you so happy you set off magical silent fireworks so we could have a light show?!” Pinkie Pie asked, bouncing up and down with excitement.
“Uh...I don’t think that’s quite what happened, darling,” Rarity said.
“Honestly, we’re not really sure what happened,” Sunset said. “All we know is that we could feel each other’s magic in our dreams, and that changed their ending.”
“So what do you think that means?” Rainbow Dash asked.
Sunset shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, I’m happy it worked the way it did, but I have no idea if it’s significant or if it will happen again,” she said.
At that moment, the conversation was interrupted by a blast of green fire from Spike. “You know, it’s kind of eerie how well the timing of these letters fits our conversations,” Pinkie Pie remarked to nopony in particular, earning her some odd looks from her friends.
“What does it say, Twilight?” Applejack asked with a last sideways glance at a smiling Pinkie. Twilight opened the scroll and began reading.
“Dear Twilight Sparkle,
I write this letter feeling better than I have in several days. This past night, the intensity of the nightmare was far less than it has been in previous nights. I do not know whether this is because of your efforts, or if some other force is at work, but I felt it would be good to inform you of these developments. I hope your mission is going well.
Princess Celestia”
“Well, it’s good to hear that whatever caused your magic to mix has also worked on Princess Celestia,” Fluttershy said when Twilight finished reading.
“It doesn’t seem to have taken the nightmare away completely, though,” Twilight said. “She said the intensity was lower, but not that it had vanished entirely.”
Sunset and Twilight looked at each other. Neither of them had expected that the other princesses would also be affected by their own success in stopping the nightmares.
“Well,” Sunset said hesitantly. “All of the princesses share the nightmares. Maybe that also means that whenever one of us, or in this case two, finds a way to mitigate the effects, it would also spread to all the others?” She shrugged helplessly. “Magic is involved here that is more ancient and powerful than I’ve ever encountered. I’m really just guessing here.”
Twilight frowned. “You could be right…but there’s something odd about it. Activating the Forges would most likely agitate the dark force we’re trying to stop, so the nightmares increase in intensity. I can understand that happening. But this…the good ending to our dreams was caused purely by our own magic getting mixed up. I just don’t get how it would affect the other princesses.” She sighed. “I guess it’s no use worrying about it now. Let’s eat something and get going.”
Normally, walking through a desert during the day wouldn’t be a very good idea. For Sunset and the others, though, it was much easier than traversing the swamp. There wasn’t any risk of sinking into pools of sludge here, and the predators were all crepuscular to avoid the heat of the sun.
With both Sunset and Twilight well rested, however, the heat wasn’t an issue for the group. Sunset was using her magic to redirect the sun’s heat around them, while Twilight cooled the sand they were walking on. Sunset was amazed at how much better she felt now that fatigue wasn’t clouding her mind anymore. Her magic, too, felt livelier than it had in days.
Twilight, too, was clearly feeling much better than she had been, and was having an animated conversation with Rainbow Dash about the latest Daring Do novel, which had apparently also involved crossing a desert.
“I never really understood why she was walking, though,” Rainbow Dash said. “I mean, she’s a Pegasus. She could easily have flown across. It wasn’t like there were any sandstorms, either.”
“Wasn’t that because Ahuizotl used the Eye of Tezcatlipoca when they met in the temple? Her wings wouldn’t have worked because the Eye temporarily blocks all the magic in its target, including Pegasus flight,” Twilight replied.
Rainbow Dash shook her head. “The Eye’s effect was contained to only the temple; that couldn’t have been it. But I doubt she’d make a mistake writing down her own adventures.”
Twilight shrugged. “Well, not every part of an adventure is glamorous. If we’d write our story down, do you think we’d write every train trip in great detail? Or would we just make up something that would look good in a book? Flying over a calm desert is easy. Walking through it isn’t…usually,” she added with a smile and a look at her friends.
As Rainbow Dash and Twilight found a new aspect of the Daring Do books to focus on, Sunset began to focus on her environment again. Not that there was a lot to see. There were mostly dunes of sand, with some rocks every now and then. There really wasn’t anything that caught her eye, and she was glad it was Twilight, and not her, who had the task of keeping them on course. Every direction looked exactly the same.
On a regular day, the featureless surroundings would quickly begin to bore Sunset, but today, with her magic finally feeling like its old self again after a night of restful sleep, nothing would be able to get her spirits down. So instead of giving in to boredom and just mindlessly walking, Sunset extended her magic and began playing with the dry desert sand, drawing intricate patterns in it as she walked along. She left trace amounts of her magic in the sand to prevent the patterns from falling apart immediately.
Soon, she moved on from making mere patterns and began building small sculptures, all kept upright by magic. She became so absorbed in her little art projects that she didn’t notice at first that her friends had stopped their conversations, and were all watching Sunset’s creations with amazed looks on their faces.
“I didn’t know you were so artistic, darling,” Rarity said admiringly when Sunset used her magic to melt the sand of one of her sculptures into glass, turning it into a statue of sorts.
Rarity’s remark shook Sunset from her thoughts and she turned her head towards her friends. “It’s something I used to do for practice,” she said. “One of my earliest tests as a pupil of Princess Celestia’s was to create a sand castle out of dry sand. It was mainly to help me get more fine-grained control over my magic, and before you ask: yes, Princess Celestia actually used that pun when she gave me the assignment.” She shrugged. “I got bored with it and started to make more complex creations, several at a time, and melting the sand into glass.”
Twilight looked impressed. “That’s really advanced magic at such a young age. Had you studied sculpting techniques when you got the assignment?”
Sunset shook her head. “No. Like I said, I just got bored and decided to test my skills a bit further. Building sand castles is fine on the beach and all, but it’s not exactly a challenge worthy of deep study even using the driest possible sand. You have to remember, I felt that I was destined for greatness. I wasn’t really one to get worked up over the details…which is also why I believed I could take over Equestria with an army no larger than your average high school.”
Rainbow Dash laughed. “Really? You thought one school’s worth of soldiers would take over the entire country?”
Sunset gave an embarrassed chuckle. “Honestly, I planned on using them as a diversion only. I figured my magic combined with the power of the Element of Magic would be enough to handle anything anypony could throw in my way.”
“What about the Princesses?” Applejack asked. “Surely you didn’t think you could defeat them like that?”
Sunset sighed and looked up at the sky. “I don’t think I ever really wanted to take over Equestria anyway. I wanted admiration and praise, and being a Princess is an almost guaranteed way of getting it. Now that I have friends…I don’t need those things anymore, not like I used to.” She looked at Twilight and smiled. “Now, I’m just glad I can come with you on this adventure and help save Equestria instead of trying to conquer it.”
Twilight smiled back at her. “And I’m glad that you’re here with us,” she said.
When the sky began to grow darker, the group decided to camp in a small rock shelter they came across in the side of a plateau. Twilight and Sunset used their magic to turn rocks into logs of wood, and soon they had a fire going. When the flames were merrily crackling away in the opening of the rock shelter, Twilight turned to her friends.
“I have…a bit of bad news,” she said.
“What is it, Twilight?” Applejack asked.
Twilight took a deep breath. “Well…I have no idea where Zerzura is,” she admitted.
When Rainbow Dash wanted to begin a lecture, Twilight held up her hoof and continued talking. “It’s not like I had no idea from the start,” she said, figuring correctly that this would have been Rainbow Dash’s first accusation. “The thing is, though, that Zerzura features in myths mainly for one reason, and that’s that nopony knows exactly where it is. It’s been found enough times that most ponies are quite sure it exists, but all reports of its location give a different spot for it and none of the documented locations have ever turned out to be correct.”
She sighed and gave her friends a helpless shrug. “Of course a lot of the sightings will have been fake, which only muddies the issue even further. All I know is that the area south of here is the site of by far the most sightings. It could still take us several days to locate Zerzura itself, however.”
She fell silent and looked around the group. Rainbow Dash shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense! How can an oasis possibly change locations every time?”
“It can’t,” Twilight replied simply. “I think that the real Zerzura is and has always been at the same location. However, the magic used to cloak it creates mirages of it in different places. It’s been theorized that, if you’d put all the locations on a map, you’d be able to extrapolate a circle and find Zerzura at the center, but all attempts to do so have met with failure, so we’ll have to assume the spell is more sophisticated than that. And, since it holds one of the Forges, it’s not hard to imagine why the wizards would want to hide it very well.”
Rainbow Dash said nothing, nor did anypony else. Sunset frowned. They’d have to find a way to get past a spell which had been tricking entire generations of archeologists and wizards. It was a daunting task, and Sunset had no idea how they’d be able to do it, unless they could somehow figure out what the wizards who cast the spell had been thinking.
Sunset’s eyes widened when a thought shot through her head. “Maybe there’s a better way to find Zerzura than turning over every grain of sand in the desert,” she said.
Twilight cocked her head questioningly.
“The journal,” Sunset explained.
Twilight gave her a confused look. “It might have answers, but how would that help us? The journal is still in the swamp,” she said.
Sunset smirked and reached into her saddlebags, levitating the journal in front of her friends. “It isn’t. I took it with me because…” She blushed a little. “Because I wanted to see if there was more in it about Atonement. I just forgot about it until now because I was so happy at finally having gotten a good night’s sleep again.”
Twilight sternly looked at Sunset. “While I understand your interest in the possibility of another Element, I really don’t think you should’ve taken the journal with you,” she said. “Until we can get a team of archeological experts in we shouldn’t just go around taking things for ourselves, no matter our personal interest in them.”
Sunset sighed. She’d been afraid of this reaction. “I know, I know. And I knew you’d react like this, so I’d rather have kept it to myself, but don’t you think the journal is our best bet right now? Or would you rather spend all of next week walking around in the desert? There’s really only so many sculptures I know how to make, so if it’s all the same to you I’d rather read the book.”
Twilight groaned in frustration. “Just because it’s useful now doesn’t make it right,” she said, but then she sighed. “But since you have it here…”
Sunset grinned brightly at Twilight, whose attempt at a return smile looked like she’d suddenly developed a major toothache. Sunset opened the journal and scanned through it until she found a mention of Zerzura again.
We’ve finally got the third set of enchantments working. It really shouldn’t have taken anywhere near this long, but Parallax Dream and his fanatics are becoming much more of a nuisance lately. Just a few days ago they tried to sabotage us by making alterations to our equations. I don’t really know what their goal was, because everypony here knows the equations back to front AND we have numerous written copies all over camp to prevent exactly such an event. I really hope Zerzura doesn’t become his next target. While I doubt the Forge itself is in danger, the mirage spell might still be susceptible to tampering. At the very least he still hasn’t managed to brainwash Stellar Pulse completely yet. All of her objections to our project remain polite and she disagrees with his methods. Now if only the rest of his little cult of Atonement would get that smart, we’d all be a lot happier.
Sunset looked up from the text and shrugged at her friends. “That wasn’t much to go on. Maybe there’s something a bit more useful further in.”
She turned back to the book and began searching again. While she saw Zerzura being mentioned a couple of times, there was never much describing the location. She did see the names of Parallax Dream and Stellar Pulse quite a bit. Apparently the journal’s author was growing increasingly worried about his friend, and Sunset found it hard to disagree.
With every mention of Atonement came more scathing remarks about Parallax Dream’s ‘cult’, as the author called it, followed by the most recent acts of sabotage at several Forge sites. Sunset felt uneasy that the one pony who apparently believed in a seventh Element was every bit as much of an extremist as she had been before she knew the power of friendship, but her worries were pushed aside when she found a promising entry referencing Zerzura.
Today, we’ve finally received word from Zerzura. Their defenses are up and running, and they’ve been gracious enough to finally tell us how to actually get there in the event of an emergency, and of course they’ve made it needlessly complex. Nopony in their right mind wanders into a desert, for Harmony’s sake, let alone that far into a desert. In any case, the mirages happen in concentric circles from a central point, which itself shifts locations around Zerzura following a set of equations that gave me a headache just looking at them, allowing one to derive the location of the oasis…which is how an unaffiliated pony would do it. Blue Moon told me privately that the wizards themselves find it by traveling east from a landmark they call ‘the rock forest’. I’ve never seen anything distinctive enough to warrant that name in the desert, so I’m sure they’re exaggerating the name as usual. It’s probably just a bunch of boulders, but at least it’s easier than solving a thousand equations.
“The rock forest,” Twilight repeated with a frown. “It’s nothing I’ve ever heard of, but maybe the map will give some ideas.”
She levitated several maps from her saddle bags and spread them out in front of her. “Uh, how many maps did you think you’d need of this specific area?” Rainbow Dash asked, curiously looking from map to map.
Twilight didn’t look up from the maps as she replied. “They’re of different areas of the desert, with varying levels of detail, from various time periods. Even if this ‘rock forest’ was clearly visible thousands of years ago, I highly doubt the same can be said for today. I’m trying to cross-reference older maps of this region with more modern ones to see if any landmarks vanish after large periods of time, or if newer landmarks are missing from older ones.”
Sunset let her eyes wander over the maps as well, hoping she’d be able to help Twilight spot anything that might be of use, but to her frustration all the maps looked more or less the same. Twilight shot a glance at Sunset’s increasingly frustrated face and nudged her with her wing. “Why don’t you just relax for now? You got us the clue, remember? You don’t have to do everything yourself,” she said with a smile.
Sunset grimaced. “I know, I just…I don’t like doing nothing while the problem hasn’t been solved yet.” She smiled faintly as she recalled her time as a student of magic. “I’ve skipped entire nights of sleep to solve magic problems I had trouble with. I couldn’t accept that simple assignments had me beat. I guess I still can’t, even after all these years.”
Twilight gave her a sympathetic look and Spike said, “You should see Twilight sometimes. She’s relentless when she’s bitten down on research. I once had to remind her to eat after a full day of hearing nothing from her.”
Twilight blushed a little. “I wish I could say that it was really only once…” she muttered.
Sunset chuckled and stepped away from the maps. “You’ve convinced me. I’ll leave this one up to you. I’ll just go outside for a bit.”
Sunset walked past the fire still burning outside the entrance to the rock shelter and headed a short way into the desert. With every step away from the fire, the air became colder. Unlike before, though, when the cold would have brought with it the fear of the nightmares, this time it just made Sunset feel calm and peaceful. She sat down in the cold sand and looked up at the clear night sky. As her eyes got more used to the darkness, more and more stars seemed to appear. Everything was quiet while Sunset sat there, just looking up at the infinite sky above her. It was almost as if she was in some kind of meditative state. She had no idea how long she’d been there, just staring at the stars, when Twilight sat down next to her.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said.
Sunset just nodded, unsure if Twilight could even see it in the darkness. Twilight, however, seemed to have seen or at least guessed Sunset’s response.
“I used to do this a lot, back in Ponyville,” Twilight said. “From the balcony of the library, I’d just sit and look at the stars. I didn’t use the telescope or anything. I’d listen to the sounds of the night, enjoy the smell of the trees, it was the best.”
She fell silent for a moment and Sunset wondered where she was going with this. “But then, the library was destroyed by Tirek.”
Again, she paused, unsure how to voice the thoughts in her head. “I can still sit outside on the castle’s balcony, gazing at the stars, but…it doesn’t feel the same anymore. The castle’s crystal, beautiful as it is, doesn’t have the warmth of the wooden boards. There’s no leaves rustling, no buzzing bees anywhere. After some time, I just stopped star-gazing to relax. I studied the sky for astronomical phenomena, but I never went back to doing it for fun.”
She sighed. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I just…I don’t know. I wanted somepony to know this, but at the same time I never really wanted to tell anypony. I’m sorry, I’m not making any sense,” she said. She sounded a bit embarrassed.
“That’s not true,” Sunset replied softly. “There’s nothing wrong with thinking back to the past.”
“Maybe…but if you look at it objectively, haven’t things only gotten better for me afterwards? I mean, I have a castle now. I got new copies of all the books I lost in the explosion and a lot more to boot. Should I really still be…wishing I hadn’t lost the library?”
Sunset didn’t respond immediately. She knew, more or less, how Twilight felt. When she’d come to the human world, a part of her, hidden deep beneath her arrogant façade, felt sad at the prospect of never returning to her old room at the castle in Canterlot. Even with her relationship with Princess Celestia now restored, she still wasn’t sure if she’d ever return to Equestria for good. But for Twilight, the situation was a bit different.
“I don’t think it matters whether or not things have gotten better for you,” Sunset replied eventually. “You still lost a place you’ve lived in for years. There was far more there than just your stuff. There’s nothing strange about missing that.”
“I guess…” Twilight said.
Sunset cocked her head. “Why is this bothering you so much now, of all times? I mean, I know you just said you weren’t sure, but still. Something must have provoked it,” she said.
Twilight was silent for a moment. Then she said, “I thought of it when I saw you sitting there, lost in thought. It just reminded me of what I used to do. It’s only been a few months, but it feels like a lifetime.”
She paused for a moment and chuckled. “I sound so old when I say it like that. For Princess Celestia, a few months might as well be a few minutes. I…I can’t really fathom what that’s like. To have lived for such a long time, to have seen and to have been through so much, and yet here I am worrying about a library.”
“While on a mission to save Equestria,” Sunset reminded her pointedly. “Do you think Princess Celestia never thinks of things like this? Do you really think that, just because she’s so much older, she’s that different from the rest of us? I don’t. You saw what she was like when she gave us this mission, right? She was afraid that she’d somehow changed my destiny the day she showed me the mirror, and she still felt guilty over it even though it turned out far better than either she or I could ever have imagined.
“Princess Celestia is just like us, Twilight. She has fears, doubts, and regrets much like we do. But she has a responsibility to Equestria. She can’t linger on her doubts and regrets. She has to move forward confidently, because everypony in Equestria looks up to her and expects her to.
“The library was your first home in Ponyville, wasn’t it? It marked the beginning of your new life. If someone blew up CHS right now, even if everyone there would be fine, it would still hurt. It would still leave me shaken up.”
Sunset paused for a moment and sighed. “It’s true that you haven’t been around for more than a thousand years. But don’t think even for a second that that makes your experiences less important. And don’t think that you need to keep your worries to yourself, either. All your friends are here for you. I’m here for you. We won’t laugh at you if you share your problems, certainly not something like this.”
For a moment, both Sunset and Twilight sat in silence. Then, Twilight abruptly got to her hooves, startling Sunset with the sudden motion.
“Well, we’d best be getting back to the others. We’ve got quite a bit of walking to do tomorrow. The rock forest is to the southwest of here.” Twilight tried to sound energetic, but Sunset could hear a bit of strain in her voice.
“Twilight, are you…?”
“I’m fine,” Twilight replied quickly. Then, slower, she went on, “I’m fine. Thank you, Sunset. Thank you for listening. Now, let’s head back.”
Sunset got up as well and smiled at Twilight in the darkness. Together, they began walking back. “So, how’d you figure out where the rock forest is located?” Sunset asked.
“Well, first I cross-referenced the maps…”
The next morning, Sunset woke up feeling well rested again. She and Twilight had pitched their tent just outside the rock shelter, as a precaution in case the nightmares would return that night. But, as they had the night before, they’d once again put their sleeping bags close together, and their dreams had been peaceful.
After a quick breakfast, the group set off into the desert, sheltered from the increasing heat by the combined magic of Sunset and Twilight. Along the way, Sunset passed the time by showing Rarity and Twilight how to create sand sculptures with their magic. It didn’t surprise her much to see that Rarity was a natural at it, although Twilight was better at the more technical parts of the magic.
The others judged the sculptures while they were being made, and soon enough a little competition had begun. Sunset herself joined in as well, and she was more than a little annoyed when Rarity actually ended up outdoing her despite Sunset’s better technique.
Even so, she congratulated Rarity on her win with all the grace she could muster. Being something of a sore loser, that wasn’t very, and Rainbow Dash wasted no time in mimicking her sour face.
“Okay, I get it,” Sunset said through gritted teeth after the fifth repetition of her attempt at congratulating Rarity like a good sport. “Now let’s change the subject. I think I’ve got something fun to talk about. I’ve heard good things about this barn party you had a while back…”
Rainbow Dash paled at that. “It keeps haunting me…” she muttered.
Sunset laughed. “I won’t bring it up again if you won’t bring this up again,” she said with a smirk. Rainbow Dash grinned, relieved at not having to talk about the infamous party.
“Deal,” she said.
“Just in time, too,” Twilight remarked, and she gestured at some boulders in front of them. “We’re here.”
Rainbow Dash gave the boulders an incredulous look. “This is the rock forest? Are you sure?”
Twilight nodded. “Like the author of the journal wrote, it really isn’t worth the grandiose title the wizards gave it. If we go east from here, it shouldn’t be a long journey to find Zerzura.” Her eyes began to shine with excitement. “I can’t wait to see what this Forge is going to look like or which Element it represents.”
She was almost bouncing up and down, and Sunset smiled. Twilight still looked adorable every time she talked about advanced magic.
The group set out again, and when the sun began to get a bit lower in the sky, Twilight suddenly spoke up. “Look,” she said, holding out a hoof.
In the distance, Sunset saw a thick row of palm trees, and her heart began beating faster.
“Do you think it’s Zerzura?” she asked.
Twilight nodded. “It has to be. This oasis isn’t on any maps that I know of, and it’s exactly where the journal says it should be.”
They picked up their pace, and soon they had reached the tree line. There seemed to be more trees here than there would usually be at an oasis, probably to make it harder for anypony to enter even if they did manage to find it, but it didn’t take long for the ponies and Spike to get through the trees and reach the waterline.
Sunset blinked a couple of times when she saw the shimmering pond. It was much larger than she had guessed from the outside. The pond was perfectly circular and the water in it was a bright blue. It almost seemed to glow.
“So…where’s the Forge?” Applejack asked hesitantly. “It can’t be hidden between the trees, can it?”
Twilight shook her head. “I don’t think so…but I had expected it to be on an island or something, in the middle of the pond.”
“What if it’s at the bottom?” Spike suggested. “They must have hidden it to keep unwanted visitors out, right? Especially with that Parallax Dream pony trying to sabotage them and all.”
Sunset and Twilight exchanged a glance. “That…makes sense,” Twilight said. “In that case, there should be a way to access it. Let’s spread out and search for any clues around the lake. There might be a cache of hidden documents like there was in the swamp, or anything else that sticks out.”
Sunset began walking around the pond. She looked along the water’s edge and between the trees for anything that didn’t seem to belong in a normal oasis. As she searched, she couldn’t help but feel a bit underwhelmed. Zerzura was a legendary oasis. Shouldn’t there be more to it than just some dense trees and a somewhat larger pond than a normal oasis might have? But then, most of its legend came from how difficult it was to locate it. After all, the other two Forges they’d visited so far had been in a mine and a swamp. Not exactly the most remarkable locations. This one had been given a lot of magical protection, but other than that it had probably begun its existence as just a normal oasis, which had a legend built around it later when it proved to be elusive.
She sighed. “I guess this is why A. K. Yearling makes up parts of her adventures…” she muttered.
Then, her eye was caught by a strange glint, just below the water. She walked over to it and saw that the glint was caused by a crystal in the sand. When she looked a bit better, she noticed that there were more crystals around, which formed a line deeper into the pond. She used her telepathy to call the others to her.
“I think I may have found something,” she said when the others had gathered around.
She pointed at the crystals and Twilight nodded. “I think you may be right,” she said. “But I don’t know what to do with these crystals.”
She tried casting a number of spells at the crystals, but her magic seemed to have no effect on them at all. The water didn’t even ripple. Sunset watched with a frown while Twilight kept trying spell after a spell, until she eventually held up her hoof and Twilight stopped.
“Let me try something,” she said.
Sunset wasn’t certain if what she was about to try would have any effect at all, but she figured it couldn’t hurt to try. She took a deep breath and stepped into the water, onto one of the crystals. The crystal glowed light blue, and in response the other crystals began to glow with the same color. The water in the middle of the pond began to churn as if it had suddenly come to a boil and with a deep rumble that they could feel through the ground, something began to rise up.
First, the crystals began to rise up from the water. They folded open and formed circular stepping stones, almost like water lily pads. One by one, the crystals rose up, further into the pond, until they stopped at the edge of the churning water.
A large, white plateau rose up. Intricate patterns were carved into it, and six obsidian crystal holders were spaced at equal distance around the edge. In each of the obsidian standards, there was a blue crystal. When the plateau had risen up completely, the rumble stopped.
Sunset looked at her friends and smiled faintly. “I think we found it.”