//------------------------------//
// 14 - Smoke on the Water 
// Story: Velvet Underground 
// by MagnetBolt 
//------------------------------//

“It’s dumb, right?” Sunset asked, once the guard station came into view. It had, not long ago, been just a barn on the edge of town, perched on the one road in and out and used by the few traders who came along the path to store their carts and wares overnight.
Now it was trying very hard to be a fortress. The fence had been reinforced into a palisade, a gate had been added across the road, and a tower had been built to allow one pony at a time to keep watch over the dirt path. There was one thing clear about every modification to the barn - it was all definitively temporary. Measures that weren’t intended to stand the test of time, and would be removed just as quickly as they’d been added once they weren’t needed.
“Princess Celestia had to assign like, a dozen guards,” Sunset said. “They didn’t even have one here before Cadance.”
“It’s a safe town, usually,” Cadance added. “I don’t think we need the guards but… Princess Celestia insisted.”
“It’s supposed to be an honor guard but it’s more like a punishment detail,” Sunset said. “This is the most boring town in the world.”
Cadance sighed. “It’s not always boring. There was Prismia…”
“Not this story again,” Sunset groaned.
“What story?” Velvet asked.
“There was a witch named Prismia who came here with an evil artifact that amplified her power,” Cadance explained. “She tried to enslave everypony here. Her dark magic didn’t work on me, and when I tried to stop her, the artifact exploded.”
“And unfortunately, the story doesn’t end there,” Sunset grumbled.
“She changed her evil ways and I, well, I grew a horn. Princess Celestia sensed something and came here herself. She wanted me to go with her to Canterlot and become a Princess and… I just can’t handle that,” Cadance sighed.
“You’re stronger than you think,” Velvet said, putting a hoof on the pink alicorn’s shoulder. “You’ve had to put up with Sunset for even longer than I have, so you must have an infinite reserve of patience.”
“Hey!” Sunset snapped. “She’s lucky to have a great teacher like me! I learned from the best, and she learned from me, so that’s basically like she’s learning from the best too!”
“I really am thankful,” Cadance assured her. “Everypony else in town is an earth pony. None of them knew how to help me. Not that they would.” She sighed. “Ever since this happened all of them are afraid to even talk to me.”
“It’s called respect,” Sunset corrected. As they walked into the guard post, the stallions standing watch saluted. Sunset motioned to one of them. “Like this pony. He’s not afraid of you, but he respects you.”
She stopped in the middle of the barn. Cots had been set up along one wall, and tables along the other.
“The good news is, they won’t have to salute you in this dump for much longer. We’ll be going back to Canterlot as soon as possible.”
Cadance frowned. “I already told Celestia I didn’t want to go.”
“Well, things are different now!” Sunset jumped up on one of the tables to be at eye level with Cadance. “There are monsters looking for you. If I let you get eaten, Celestia is gonna kill me!”
“If there are monsters looking for me, I definitely can’t leave,” Cadance said.
“How does that make sense?” Sunset demanded. “You think they’re not gonna find you just because you’re in the middle of nowhere? They can probably smell you from a mile away with how sweet you pretend to be.”
“If they’re looking for me, they probably will come here,” Cadance agreed.
“Right. So we have to leave.”
“No!” Cadance looked back at Velvet and Night Light. “You have to understand, if I leave, the guards will leave too. The town will be totally undefended. Whatever these monsters are, I’d rather be here so I can at least try to do something to stop them. If I left and they came here and hurt ponies when I wasn’t here to stop it…”
“You’d never be able to forgive yourself,” Velvet finished.
“Exactly,” Cadance said, with a sigh.
Sunset paced on the table, stepping on the paperwork that the guards had been doing. “What if you knew the ponies here would be safe?”
“If I knew they’d be safe… I don’t know. Maybe.” Cadance looked uncomfortable. “But I don’t know for sure. That’s the problem.”
“We can find out, though!” Sunset pointed at Velvet. “She can tell us!”
“She can?” Cadance turned, her eyes wide with amazement and surprise.
“Wait, wait!” Velvet backed up. “I can’t--”
“You have precognition! All you have to do is… precognate things around here,” Sunset said, waving her hoof. “Then we’ll know if a monster is coming or not, and we’ll be able to agree on what to do.”
“It’s not like that,” Velvet said. “I can only see a few seconds into the future! You’re talking about, about hours or days or weeks!”
“There was that one thing back in Canterlot,” Night Light said. “You know. The prophecy thing.”
“You’re not helping!” Velvet hissed through her teeth.
“What was different in Canterlot?” Sunset asked.
“What I did in Canterlot was automatic writing,” Velvet explained. “It’s not something I can just do whenever I want. In Canterlot I had a big magic surge, and that set it off. It was an accident, not some kind of spell!”
“A magic surge, huh?” Sunset said, tapping her chin.
“Exactly,” Velvet nodded. “And it doesn’t happen that often. It could be weeks until it happens again.”
Sunset grinned. “No problem. I can give you a surge right now!”
Velvet took another step back at Sunset’s expression.
“No, look, it’ll be safe,” Sunset assured her. She hopped down from the table, her horn already glowing. “Princess Celestia taught me how to control my own magic surges, so I can totally set one off, too. It’s just like, uh, pouring water in a cup until it overflows, or something like that. She was better at the metaphor stuff.”
“Maybe I can, um, work on it myself?” Velvet offered. “Really, we don’t have to go to all this trouble when--”
“Here we go!” Sunset reached out and grabbed Velvet’s horn with her magic, and the air was filled with a smell like thunderstorms and starlight, the magic filling the air with static.
Velvet stumbled into the wall, one of the guards catching her before she fell.
“Sunset, you can’t do that without permission!” Cadance admonished. “What if you hurt her?”
“I’m an expert,” Sunset said. “If she got hurt it would be because I was trying to hurt her, duh. Since I didn’t try to hurt her, she isn’t hurt.”
Night Light waved a hoof in front of Velvet’s eyes. “Uh, she’s acting a little strangely. Velvet? Are you okay?”
Velvet pulled out of the nameless guard’s grasp (well, he wasn’t nameless, but Sunset had never bothered finding it out, and Cadance hadn’t asked the first day because she was so overwhelmed with everything and now it was too awkward to ask him) and stumbled into the table, knocking over an inkpot.
“Is this supposed to happen?” Night Light asked.
Sunset shrugged. “How should I know?”
“I thought you were the expert!”
The ink on the table started to glow as it spilled over the papers on the table, flowing and pooling and mapping out the tributaries of an invisible river. An image started to form on the timesheets and reports, becoming clearer by the moment.
“Um, everypony?” Cadance looked over Velvet’s shoulder with increasing worry. “Look at this.”
On the paper, picked out in white on black like a negative woodcut, ponies fled in every direction, trying to get away from some horrible disaster that had reduced everything behind them to burning rubble, half-drowned in the sea.
“That doesn’t look like everything’s going to be okay,” Cadance whispered.





“It could mean anything,” Sunset argued.
Night Light pressed a tin cup into Velvet’s hooves.
“Here,” he said, quietly. “This is made with willow bark. It’s good for headaches.”
“I’m glad we’re so far from civilization we’re using home remedies instead of medicine,” Velvet sighed. “Thanks for the tea.”
“It’s obvious there’s some kind of disaster,” Cadance said. “I am not leaving these ponies to their fate.”
“Maybe the disaster is only because you stayed here!” Sunset yelled. “If we leave, it might follow us, a-and leaving will keep them safe!”
“If you want to leave, you can,” Cadance said, quietly. “I know you don’t like me, Sunset. I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to face this. You’re just a filly.”
“I’m not just a filly!” Sunset snapped. “Don’t act like you’re in charge! I’m your teacher and that means you have to do what I say!”
“Whatever you decide to do, can we avoid using me as a test subject?” Velvet called out, interrupting them. “This argument is just making my headache worse.”
“Do you need me to get you a doctor?” Cadance asked.
“Is there a doctor here?” Sunset muttered.
“I’ll be fine,” Velvet assured her. “At least nothing too bad happened.”
The ground shook.
“Was I the only pony who felt that?” Velvet asked.
“No, you weren’t,” Night Light said. The earth shook again, and bells rang across town. Cadance bolted outside, the others following her.
A plume of smoke was visible even from this distance, rising over the horizon from some source out in the ocean.
“What is that?” Velvet asked.
“I’m not sure,” Cadance said. “But I don’t like it.”





“It looks like Mt. Kalessin,” the sailor said. “It’s about ten miles out to sea.”
He pointed to a spot on the map, one of a chain of islands. He’d brought the chart out to the guard station after getting back to port, and had so far been polite enough not to mention the scene of destruction 
“All these islands are volcanic, but they’ve been dead for centuries,” he said. “Not even so much as a rumble of them turning over in their sleep. There’s no reason it should have woken up now.”
“No natural reason,” Velvet muttered.
“Accordin’ to the stories, the last time it blew its top, everything in a day’s sail burned,” the sailor muttered.
“We should evacuate,” Cadance said. “If we move everypony inland, maybe it’ll keep them safe.”
“There are probably a hundred little towns and fishing huts around the sea you’d have to evacuate,” the sailor said. “And accordin’ to local legend, most ponies who died starved because the eruption blocked out the sun an’ killed the harvest.”
Cadance swallowed, staring at the map. “If the guards go out, maybe they can at least warn some of them.”
“Ma’am, there’s somepony coming down the road,” a guard called out from the doorway. “You might want to see this!”
“It might be a pooka,” Sunset said. “I’m going first!”
“Hold on!” Cadance yelled, chasing after the filly as she ran outside.
In the middle of the road, three ponies were standing placidly, two of the Royal Guards keeping them there at spearpoint.
Each of the three strange ponies had cracked, dry skin, blistered around their hooves. White and black ashes had been spread across their bodies like paint in rough, tribal patterns.
“Are those pookas?” Cadance whispered, leaning close to Velvet.
“Trust me, you’d know if they were,” Velvet said. “But when one of them was controlling my dad, it affected them like that. They’re probably some kind of servants or slaves.”
“Hear us!” The lead stallion yelled, his voice as dry as his skin. “Our mistress knows the pony she demands is near! If she is not appeased, she will destroy this land!”
A crowd had started to gather, the townsponies coming to see what was happening.
The stallion reared up, the guards holding him back from charging forward. “Our mistress, Danger Zone, commands you to turn the alicorn over to her!”