The loaned shirt had told her there was something which locally existed that had shoulders and arms. Magic and tools combined to provide a level of technology, and it was possible that whatever was working with a more standard variety of limbs had created some of it. However, the return of her original clothing suggested that in a place where the majority of the locals were covered by nothing but their fur, nothing was capable of laundry or fabric repair service.
Then again, upon closer examination, there hadn't been all that much left to clean or save.
"Um," Nightwatch awkwardly said, wincing as Cerea unfolded what remained of the blouse. "Um... the -- torso? Upper torso -- um... the torso part is mostly intact. Except for the rents on the sides. And the back. And nothing gets quintail stains out, unless it's from fur. We've tried."
Cerea was still looking. "It happens," she tried, because in her experience, it happened rather frequently, only along the front: it was both where most of the strain was typically located and a too-frequent target for... just about everything. "So that's my skirt." Just barely keeping the question mark off the end.
One of the earth ponies carefully raised his head, offering the full bag up to her hand.
"That's a skirt?" Nightwatch asked, light stun openly filling her voice.
It covered Cerea's buttocks (and getting her tail through the provided gap could take some work) while failing to surround her legs in tubes of fabric, and it didn't reach the floor: therefore, it was a skirt. It also happened to have all the style of a car's draping tarpaulin and did about as much to hide the shape of what was underneath.
Quite a few female centaurs wore skirts. Knights got to wear barding. Even without the formal title, Cerea had gained a set which had accompanied her to Japan: training gear which didn't have to be made from plastic -- but it was still training gear. While giving it a decent polish (up to two hours: three if the inspection was being conducted by her mother) would make it pass for something suitable, it wasn't the highest-quality metal, some of the joints weren't as smooth as they should have been, the breastplate pinched her exactly where the name implied, and it was understood that she would only gain her real armor when she had both reached her full adult size and won her title. The second factor had been the true sticking point.
"Yes," she carefully replied, setting the blouse down before extracting the larger garment from the bag and shaking it out. One gap quickly caught her attention.
...well, it's not as embarrassing here. They go around with that part of their body on display all the time. Although now that she thought about it... well, it wasn't as if she made a practice of inspecting that area, but she was sure she hadn't actually seen anything. And that applied to mares and stallions.
Maybe they have some sort of trick valve. If I looked --
Cerea wrenched her gaze back to what was left of the skirt. (Looking was rude and besides, when it came to that purpose, she was too far above the stallions and all of the mares were facing the wrong way.) All things considered, she was best off with the tablecloth for now.
One of the stallions spoke up: a unicorn, visibly larger than all but the male earth pony, and quite a bit older than the rest of the group. The most experienced, the one who clearly played the part of advisor to the younger members of the group -- and Cerea's nose told her that his fear had only been banished from sight. "In the event that we can send you back today," that stallion told her, "the Princess wants you to take all of your things with you. As many as we can find."
Her mind ran it through an additional translation and came up with Cutting down on contamination. But that was a hopeless cause: there were scraps of lost fabric all over the forest, and she didn't know what had happened to her sword. For that matter, she was still short several hairpins. And that wasn't all.
It's probably broken.
It wasn't working anyway. Not that it could work here. Even if they had something similar... Well, that was the stuff of fantasy, and the type which went beyond mere magic: it was hard enough to get two supposedly-compatible pieces working with each other, and it took a poor writer to assume items with fully separate origins would just cooperate. It was currently junk, and it was littering some part of the forest. She would look for it, but she didn't expect to see the thing.
Another major gap in the skirt indicated where the second pocket had once been, and that was actually more distressing. She was supposed to carry her identification at all times: this was partially to prove her legal temporary residency on demand, and the rest was apparently because Japan had decided it was possible for some of its citizens to confuse a centaur with something else. (Cerea had first presumed that no one could be that stupid and, after gaining some experience, had revised that to 'Anyone that stupid isn't going to be convinced by identification anyway.') Losing her ID was good for three hours of punishment, with all of it spent in the line which required multiple international calls and faxed documents before lining up a replacement. She already knew the agency wasn't going to accept her excuse for having lost it.
"I understand," she told them. (It took a moment before the words emerged, used for internally glaring at the part of her which had just semi-sarcastically decided that remaining lost was a very good reason for not dealing with integration bureaucracy.) "This is everything I still had. I did lose some things in the forest, but I don't know where." And she had retained her scabbard, the leather-and-metal straps were fully intact, but -- it was empty.
The stallion nodded. "If we can find them," he told her, "they'll go back with you. But the priority is getting you home. So you're ready to go?"
She'd groomed herself as best she could. (Still no long-handled brushes, and she'd been reluctant to ask.) Food had been provided: not just meals before departure had come around, but a supply to take with her, along with a canteen which she swore had been designed for opening by hand. There had to be other species...
Then again, hornlight seemed to have its privileges. But so did wings, and she supposed the earth ponies had their own magic. Based on the name, it probably had something to do with rocks.
"Yes." They're looking for me. They're waiting for me. He's --
-- no. It was too early to hope. "How long will it take to get there?"
Several ponies blinked at her.
"How -- long?" Nightwatch finally tried.
The translator made it possible to recognize vocal confusion, and Cerea didn't understand why it was there. "We're at least a few kilometers away, correct?" She hadn't seen the current castle from the outside, but she'd been taken through enough of it to recognize that it was big: any structure so massive would have been visible from any point in that first town. "So there's travel time. And --" she tried not to wince "-- when you take me outside..."
It was possible that she was about to be marched into a very large box, one with both just enough air holes to keep her alive and a lot of sheer black fabric draped over them to prevent the ponies from peeking within. Keeping the population from having to see the monster.
"Um," Nightwatch initially said.
That turned out to be the less incredulous explanation.
The dark Princess came to them.
The sound of hoofsteps reached them first: greater mass being planted with more strength. The aura was right behind that and finally, tiny twinkles from something very much like mane-captured stars reflected off the stone.
She was wearing saddlebags again, exceptionally full ones which bulged in awkward ways from the odd shapes within. An orange earth pony stallion in silver armor was trotting at her right, a light green unicorn mare matched the pace on the left, and the already-present Guards were openly staring at the group.
"Princess," the large unicorn stallion quickly said, "where are they?"
"I presume you mean the typical expected parties," the Princess dryly replied. "The Bearers have a mission and cannot be pulled away from it: this means the direct services of Magic are not currently available. However, should we not succeed in an immediate return, I will request that she examine our results. And while I had hoped to retain the performer, she is currently serving as consultant to their cause." A soft snort. "While there are benefits to the ongoing repair of that relationship, there are also certain detriments. Having the two of them studying our findings together might result in a laboratory door which never opens again."
The stallion wasn't quite done. "What about Sunbur --"
"-- I would prefer the services of a party who possesses the potential to be in this corridor while conscious," the Princess sharply cut in. "That one has a difficult enough time dealing with the world beyond his chart-cluttered window: asking him to step into a wild zone would result in my levitating his fallen form along until he once again awoke, likely just long enough to perceive that I had not been bluffing about bringing him regardless." This snort was decidedly louder. "Should I make the decision to involve him, Bulkhead, you will know through the room I dedicate to his excess notes and the padding layered onto the floor, as falling onto said notes seldom protects him during subsequent faints."
Bulkhead took a step forward.
"I don't like you going out there again. Especially after what you did last night."
And now Cerea was staring at him. At the knight speaking harshly to his lady, with the words brought forth by the needs of duty.
(She wasn't offended: part of a knight's role was to keep their master safe in spite of themselves, and evidence had proven that her own love could get into trouble simply from taking out the garbage. It was just a shock to see someone else doing it.)
"Somepony has to wear the signature scanner," the Princess coolly declared. "As the pony with the most experience in interpreting its findings --"
"-- I didn't like you confronting her alone either," and his snort had been just as loud as that of the dark mare. (He didn't look at Cerea when he said that. He didn't have to.) "Especially when you didn't tell us that was what you were going to do. We turned around and you were gone --"
"-- in the event that she had been like Tirek," the Princess stridently stated, "confronting her as a group would have been a mistake, as there would have been that much more to drain. She was captured. And now we will attempt to send her home." The dark gaze moved up to Cerea's eye level. "Centaur?"
The mare was royalty, and that was most of why Cerea put up with it: the remainder came from lingering doubt as to whether she'd earned anything else. But it was beginning to truly register now, outside of fever and throne room: Cerea had told the Princess her name, and she hadn't been addressed by it once.
"Yes?" she replied, and waited for the rest.
The Princess trotted closer. "We are teleporting." The large head tilted slightly to the left. "Did that translate properly? You are familiar with the term?"
From stories. It was still enough to let her nod.
"We know that you can be transported in such a fashion," the dark mare said, "as that is how I brought you to the palace: the nature of your medical emergency did not allow for anything slower. Therefore, it can be presumed safe to do so a second time. However..." The pause lasted for a full breath. "...during the initial teleport, you were unconscious. So I am advising you to close your eyes and keep them that way, until I tell you it is safe to open them again -- and that will not be immediate: covering that distance requires a small amount of time. You have no direct experience of the between, or training in calling upon memories to form a shield. A realm which provides no input for the senses has been known to disorient the mind, and we will need you to be fully focused when the search begins."
Another nod. It seemed to be the current limits of her conversational capacity.
"And the process is easier when there is direct contact," the Princess continued. "So we will need to touch." A long, slow look at Cerea's upper torso. "I will permit you to place a hand upon my back. Briefly. And..." This regard roamed the full length and breadth of the centaur's form. "...in order to better manage the total mass, there shall be multiple transports."
So it had come to this: ponies were talking about her weight...
(For a centaur, she was exceptionally fit. But Cerea had made several mistakes before traveling to Japan, and one of the most damaging had been a carefully-studied collection of exactly the wrong articles.)
"Counting the centaur and myself," the dark mare went on, "we will travel as a party of seven, and we will do so on hoof: the search has reached the point where scouting from the air will no longer be effective. There are sufficient hours of daylight remaining for us to cross a considerable distance."
Nightwatch's legs reluctantly moved forward. "Um," the little knight awkwardly began, "have you slept?"
"Sufficiently," the dark Princess steadily replied.
"A normal sufficiency," the pegasus valiantly tried, "or --"
The dark left foreleg came partially up, slowly went back down. "I appreciate your concern. But this search, conducted as a group, requires daylight. We could bring illuminating devices or rely on corona light, but I wish to limit the total amount of magic we are both carrying and using. In part, this is meant to keep the readings from becoming contaminated and additionally... we are, in many ways --" a glance at Cerea "-- already risking enough."
"But --" Nightwatch attempted.
"-- and the subject," the Princess stated, "is now closed." She stepped forward again, silver-shod hooves moving easily on stone, and passed through a gap in the line of Guards. Shifted until she was standing on Cerea's left, about a foot away.
"Your hand upon my back, centaur," the dark mare ordered. "And close your eyes."
It left Cerea with a moment where she was relying on her remaining senses. Listening to the sped-up breathing of the smaller ponies as they watched the touch. Scenting not just the constant fog of their fear, but a sharp surge of what she guessed to be shock.
And then there was the Princess.
The back was... solid. Exceptionally so, and she hadn't quite expected that: the seemingly-ethereal nature of mane and tail had somehow suggested an equal lack of perceived mass for the body. But the spine was under the center of her palm: the peak of a vertebra poked into her skin. Powerful muscles stretched out to the sides, and there was a slight sensation of movement as the mare steadily breathed.
She smelled something like the scents of the other three subspecies combined, only with additional factors. Her fur was slightly cool to the touch, and exceptionally soft.
"Now," the Princess said.
Sound stopped. Scent vanished. The floor went out from beneath Cerea's hooves, and all four legs briefly scrambled for purchase before she realized she was standing on nothing. There was enough time to take a breath, and something which was neither air nor vacuum sent her body reeling as every instinct tried to figure out how it was possible to survive within absence --
-- dead leaves crunched beneath her hooves, and the scents of an autumn day drifted up to her. There was also a heavy overlay of paint and wood.
"We have arrived at the base camp," the Princess told her. "Lift your hand, and then you may open your eyes."
Cerea did, and saw -- a hollow wooden structure with no floor and closed double-doors leading out. It was somewhat larger than the average toolshed.
"This," the Princess informed her, "is a gatehouse. Each settlement is meant to have at least one: larger populations have them scattered throughout their settled zone. They provide those who can teleport with a safe location in which to arrive: something meant to be forever empty unless somepony is using it. During emergencies, they allow the thrones to dispatch select forces with efficiency -- presuming any enemy did not think to cut off the gatehouses, or render them less than safe. And they can be constructed rather quickly. This one is but hours old." The horn ignited with dark energy, and the coated doors swung upon. "Does this part of the wild zone look familiar?"
Cerea stared.
They had been in the hallway outside her cell, and now they were back in the forest -- only this time, there were three ponies standing outside the gatehouse, their attention smoothly shifting to the opening doors in the split-second before they saw her.
Spines stiffened. Jaws went tight, and the newest fear cloud began to spread.
"I..." She swallowed. "I'm not sure."
A slow nod. "I hardly expect you to have memorized every hoofstep of your journey," the Princess stated as she moved forward, the cool back shifting away from Cerea's reach. "And your current view is rather narrow. However, this is the last place in which I was able to verify your previous presence -- at least from the air."
She left the gatehouse, and Cerea began to follow her out into the little clearing. A section of the forest which was fully exposed to early afternoon sun and clear sky, no more than sixteen meters across at the widest point. The size of the space meant the depth of drifting leaves was fairly minimal, and so it was possible to see where a number of stained ones had been crushed into the soil by desperately stamping hooves. Another, significantly larger portion of earth looked as if something had recently exploded outwards, with a very large, rather irregularly-shaped mass having been pulled up from beneath: the soil wasn't just disturbed, it was disrupted, and a series of partially-filled pits were surrounded by dark debris. A small portion of that was rocks, stone encrusted in deep soil. The larger percentage came from bones.
"Your hoofprints, I believe," the dark mare said, and inclined her head towards them. "Along with what I am presuming is your blood."
The young centaur swallowed again, for now she knew exactly where she was.
They came up from the ground...
"You saw what you presumed to be the protruding portion of a root vegetable, correct?" the Princess not-quite-asked. "It would have both looked and smelled edible, and for the very little it might be worth, it is. If you can wrench it free from the end of the tentacle. Something of a delicacy for those who feel the refinement of their tastes is best reflected by the total number of digits on the restaurant's bill."
"...how did you find this?" She couldn't even smell the creature now, and the blast of its emergence had fouled her nostrils for hours.
The Princess glanced back at her.
"I knew the direction from which you had entered the town," royalty calmly said. "That provided a place to begin. I also considered that you would have had no need to conceal yourself from an aerial search until such was initiated and those moving through trees tend to tilt towards open spaces. The duration of the hunt, combined with the distance covered, gave me some idea of your fairly impressive ground speed, and you told me how many Moon-raisings had passed since your arrival. So I ranged outwards from that starting point, checking any clearing I could find from the air along that general direction, also working under the theory that those who are lost, even in cloudy weather, will try to track either water or the movement of Sun and Moon -- and streams are fairly plentiful in this area, so you would have possessed no desperate need to remain near a riverbank. Additionally, I can see perfectly in the dark, and the Royal Physicians took a number of pictures while you were being examined. This allowed me to memorize your hoofprint."
The dark mare lightly, almost casually shrugged, and Cerea had just enough left within her own shock to recognize the movement as having been exactly that.
"I also happen," the Princess added, "to be capable of flying rather quickly." Another look at the trampled area. "So I tracked your path from the air, as far as I could. And when I found what seemed to be the last clearing along the general trail, I extracted the wounded root angler, memorized the location, then teleported back to the palace and retrieved a gatehouse team. They have been guarding this spot since." And now that dark gaze moved back to Cerea. "But this is the point at which aerial surveys cease to help: not only does the wild zone becomes too thick, but one of the devices we will be utilizing is distressingly short-range. A maximum effectiveness of two hoofwidths. We can no longer search from the air. And so we will proceed on the ground. Centaur?"
Cerea managed a blink.
"Your hindquarters," the Princess noted, "are still within the gatehouse. As I have already indicated that such spaces need to remain empty?"
After a few seconds, a stunned mind managed to direct four legs into a forward stagger.
She worked all that out. Overnight.
There were many kinds of power, and this mare seemed to possess all of them.
"Good," the Princess decided as Cerea cleared the structure. "Wait here."
She did: she had no other choice. She watched as the flash of light took the dark mare away, and waited upon her former battleground as the gatehouse team stared at her. As the little ponies fought against the urge to run.
It took a little while before everyone arrived: the Princess stated (with some annoyance) that one Guard had abruptly decided to use the nearest trench before they left, and that had held the process up. The earth ponies were brought in last, and stayed in the closed gatehouse with the Princess for a few minutes before emerging.
"Very well," the Princess finally said. "We are assembled. However, there is still something we are waiting for --" with not-at-all concealed grouchiness "-- and I had hoped it would be here by now. But the delay does provide time for giving the centaur a briefing regarding our chosen devices." Dark light opened the lids of the saddlebags, delved and sorted. Three objects emerged.
The light green unicorn mare took a too-slow breath. "That's a lot," she simply stated.
"Yes," the dark Princess replied. "It is." Turned towards Cerea, and the floating items shifted with her. "I wish for you to understand how we will be proceeding. This is a thaum compass." And it looked very much like a normal one, only with a diameter slightly larger than a hoof and a height to match. The inner needle was currently rotated towards the west. "It points towards sources of magic. But it is not the most reliable of guides. In particular, it can be disoriented by any relatively localized use, and has to be told to ignore a given source: it took some time to convince it not to constantly indicate me. As such, it is meant to be a secondary factor in our search. This --" thick goggles, crystalline lenses within a housing of brass, all sized for a pony's eyes -- "is a signature scanner. It also detects magic. Any magic, although some forms require the wearer to be fairly close. And it does so when those signatures have faded to a level where a pony's own senses cannot detect them. But it presents that information visually, and such requires a significant amount of experience to interpret."
Cerea, for lack of anything better to do during the discussion of a subject she knew nothing about, tried nodding again.
Her ears twitched, and it took her a second to recognize the sound of multiple large wings moving in from the east. Another moment was required before she fought back the urge to flee again.
"Lastly," the Princess told her, "this is our analyzer." A center-indented electrum disk with runes lining the edge: even with the dark light covering it, the metal shimmered as if it had been coated in the thinnest film of soap. "It is capable of recognizing any spells which it has previously encountered. It can also compare aspects of a new working to anything it already knows, and suggest what the fresh creation was meant to do. This is the piece where the range issue is the most severe, and the device itself is slightly more scarce than your loaned translator. New thaum compasses can be constructed, albeit with significant effort. A damaged signature scanner can be repaired. A wounded analyzer is gone." Staring directly into Cerea's eyes now, the dark gaze lancing through a gap between floating metal. "Do you understand?"
"Yes." Which was a partial truth. She knew what the -- devices -- were supposed to do. Cerea just didn't understand why she was being cautioned like this. It wasn't as if she was going to use the things --
-- the Princess' head lifted, turned to the east as the bearers of those wings came into view. But she wasn't really looking at the pegasi. Her attention was focused on what they were towing beneath them.
The small flock descended over the clearing, didn't touch down. Instead, they simply released the mouth-held tow ropes at the instant the net touched the leaves, and then quickly flew away.
"So I would appreciate your efforts," the Princess darkly stated, "in doing your best not to have that thing touch it."
Cerea's eyes were focused on her sword (and the little bag next to it), and so she didn't see the ponies backing away from it. She only heard hooves crunching across leaves.
She also picked up on Bulkhead's rather loud gulp. "Princess," the oldest knight shakily said, "we -- I hate to say this, but we could use that. Something which wounds magic --"
"-- yes," his lady interrupted. "I have spent some time considering the possibilities." And even without being able to read pony expressions, Cerea could hear the mix of revulsion and fascination within the steady voice. "But as a weapon, we would have some trouble in wielding it. A sword cannot be effectively used with teeth clamped upon its grip, and I am told that those who tried to lift it that way became ill until they stopped. There is no way to encase it within a field. It could be given to a protector, someone with hands who was utterly trusted --" the dark eyes briefly closed "-- and the first entity who came to mind has been dead for -- some time. And he had his own magic, something which merely holding the sword might negate. To think is to possess some form of power: to touch that thing is to have that power quelled. None can use it. None who were born upon our soil."
"But it could break enchantments!" the light green unicorn suddenly insisted. "Things like Poison Joke, or what Joyous went through --"
"-- by repeatedly hitting the victim with the blade until the curse was eliminated?" the Princess asked. "Is that how it would work? Should the cursed one carry the sword at all times, effectively trading ailments? And there is but one sword. Does it still suppress magic if broken into pieces? What if fragments are lost? Stolen? And what happens if someone shaves off a portion which is small enough to be ingested? A new kind of poison..." She slowly shook her head. "There are many ways to use the sword, Abjura, and so many seem to be beneficial -- but keeping it is a risk. One which comes with fearsome consequences. And --"
The dark eyes went to Cerea again.
"-- we are not its owners. Place that within its scabbard. Quickly. And do not draw it unless you see no other choice."
She slowly trotted forward, and more leaves crunched as her hooves stepped into the net's spaces. Foreknees bent, and she carefully lifted the sword.
"...how do you feel when you touch that?" Abjura breathed. "Sick? Weak?"
The typical answer would have been useless. "Normal," Cerea quietly replied, for the sword only wounded magic, and she had none. She sheathed the blade, then knelt down again, collecting the bag before turning back to face the others.
"And the translator functioned while she held it," the Princess exhaled. "As your widening eyes suggest you can still understand me, it also does so with the blade concealed. The few experiments we conducted at the site more than suggested direct contact was required. Simply do not have it touch disk, wire, or any device at all. I would also be rather offended by any contact made with us." The dark gaze moved around the clearing. "I trust you recall having been here now?"
"Yes." (As words went, that one seemed to be doing a lot of work.) She opened the bag.
"And how much time had passed since your arrival -- yes, we were presuming those were also yours, especially given the effects. Keep them away from the wire."
Cerea, who had already been getting ready to pin up some more of her hair, fought back the blush, lost, and simply started shifting the metal pins towards that side. "A few hours." She was certain of that: time only blurred during fights and fever.
Another slow exhale. "Good. If we are fortunate, we may approach the rough vicinity of your arrival before Sun is lowered. And your point of entry for this clearing?"
She had been tracking along the path of the cloud-shrouded sun: Cerea's right hand gestured.
The Princess nodded. "The thaum compass was already indicating something in that general direction. Let us proceed."
The procession carefully trotted into the deeper woods: the Princess near the lead, with Guards both leading and flanking her. The remainder moved with Cerea, and it didn't take long to notice that they were proceeding at a distance which put them just beyond the combined reach of arm and blade. Even Nightwatch was --
-- she's a knight. It... makes sense. She has to think about her lady, about threats, and...
She trotted, accompanied by the group without ever being part of it.
They were trying to send her home.
She was surrounded by a mobile chasm, one which had been filled by fear. Some of it was her own. She had been attacked in this forest, over and over. She had nearly died...
I want to go home.
It wasn't the steadiest procession. Stories left a lot of little details out, and one of what turned out to be the major omissions regarded the occasional need for someone to step behind a tree. (Not too far away: she'd noticed that all of the ponies generally did their best to stay in sight of each other, and that was the lone exception.) Every so often, the Princess would pause, snort, and something about the dark eyes suggested a steadily-elevating level of irritation, one which had initially been launched from a point well above sea level. This frequently led to the thaum compass being rapped with a silver-coated forehoof or, at the moment Cerea finally identified the scent of frustration, knocked against a tree. It wasn't too long after that before it became possible to hear royalty darkly muttering under its breath.
Most of the Guards were rather studiously ignoring it, and their posture said they were doing so in that special way which told Cerea they were actually paying exacting attention to their lady's behavior while doing their best not to get caught. She didn't quite have the knack for that lack of attention, and so Nightwatch eventually flew just a little closer.
"It's okay," the small knight tried to softly reassure her. "She's just... been up too long."
Cerea blinked. "It's only --" four in the afternoon? Five? Was this place so different as to have its days be a new length? "-- oh." Because she'd just remembered. "She was looking for my path at night." Which meant Cerea had kept royalty up well past its bedtime, and the wince settled in. "So she hasn't rested..."
It seldom took very long for her to conclude that most things were her fault. Actual involvement only shortened the process.
"That's not it," the pegasus said, wings moving in a way which somehow maintained a sort of mobile hover. (Cerea couldn't work that out. It should have taken hummingbird speed to accomplish that, and the limbs weren't going anywhere near that fast. Magic seemed to be involved.) "She's always awake at night. Um. Usually she gets up a duration/hour or two before Sun-lowering and goes to bed about the same after Moon is brought down." With a sudden surge of defensiveness, "And she can be awake any time she likes, no matter what anypony says. Sun doesn't burn her, and it never will. Writing down lies doesn't make them true."
Which was when it finally hit her. Sun-lowering?
"But she sleeps during the day," the pegasus went on, the near-whispering voice just a little steadier. "And Sun doesn't hurt her, but too much of it and she..." Their faces were different. The winces were just about the same. (The pony's was actually easier to spot: eye size did a lot there.) "She just starts feeling... irritated. Edgy. And it's not just the lack of sleep, she didn't sleep enough no matter what she told Bulkhead. It's just Sun and being awake for too long at the wrong time." With the tone of gossip, "The Solar shift told me that Princess Celestia gets the same way during all-nighters. It's just -- who they are --"
"-- we have phoenixes in the area," that irritated voice dryly announced.
"Princess?" one of the earth ponies asked. (Cerea didn't say a word. She was just automatically bracing herself for having to deal with the world's foremost level of misplaced, fully unjustified ego.)
"I know exactly what that particular tilt of the needle means. Along with the fact that if it continues to attempt upwards movement, it will break -- for the third time, dismiss that before I open your lid and -- perfect. It seems they are mating. I suppose this means we can look forward to a char of dragons next. At least that would provide the occasion for exercise..." A snort, another rap of the light-held compass, and the dark mare moved on.
Cerea needed a second.
"Phoenixes..."
"Yes?" Nightwatch asked.
"...they're -- birds, right?"
"Um. Yes." A too-long pause. "Except for the one Princess Celestia keeps as a pet. That's more of a menace."
"So what are gryphons?"
The pegasus abruptly tossed her head, as if trying to dislodge something from one ear. "Did you say griffons?"
"I... guess so. The ones in the statues..."
"They have their own nation. We're at peace." Another pause. "Well, we're at peace now."
"And the statues represent what they look like?"
"Yes," Nightwatch replied, the confusion wafting in wing-shifted air. "Except for that kinetic one we passed. Their beaks only have that much blood when they're eating. Why?" And with a surge of mental flight, "Do you have them where you came from? Griffons?"
"...yes."
"So what do they look like?"
Cerea tried to find a starting place.
"They have hands --"
-- and then she saw it.
I know that tree.
I circled it a few times because I was -- trying to pick a direction. Somewhere to start. That's my hooftrack in the dirt...
"Princess?" (And wished she'd somehow been more formal, even as the dark mare glanced back at her.) "We're close."
The Princess looked her over, with most of that regard staying near Cerea's eyes. Shifted her attention back to the thaum compass.
"It is... somewhat more intense up ahead," she stated. "Assuming the interference from phoenix reproduction has been factored out. Let us open our own senses. Can anypony feel anything?"
Abjura took a slow step forward. Her head moved from left to right, then up and down, as if the horn was somehow testing the density of the air.
"It's..." A quick head shake. "Something happened. But it's too faint for me. It's like trying to find a shape in drifting smoke. I can't retain anything..."
The Princess frowned, closed her eyes: the light-held devices bobbed and dipped.
"Not smoke," the dark mare softly countered. "Water. Or rather... a dry riverbed. The place where something once flowed --"
Her head abruptly tossed, and stars shifted within the strange mane.
"Now why are my thoughts proceeding down that exact path?" royalty carefully asked itself. "Air to water. Water to riverbed, and it feels as if there is another hoofstep yet to come. Forward, all of you. And be on your guard. I sense nothing powerful enough to be active -- but that does not mean it could not become active again."
They shifted forward. Every horn seemed to be testing the air now. Pegasus wings rustled in strange patterns, and the earth ponies looked as if they were listening to something no one else could hear.
And then they were there.
The trees were much more widely-spaced, but that was just for the trunks: the branches were more than sufficient to cover the gaps. In spring and summer, all light would have been dappled green: for mid-autumn, there were just enough dead leaves clinging to their former source of life to make any view of the sky uncertain. They had room to move, but only at ground level: any attempt made by the pegasi to reach a higher elevation would have quickly found itself working through a maze of wood.
A slight breeze was moving in from the north: cold air shifted fur and feathers, made Cerea's right arm automatically begin to shift forward in case covering was required. They could hear animal noises in the forest: it was possible to identify a squirrel's chatter, and the strange birdsong had some chance to be that of a phoenix. (The song which arose from those Cerea dearly wished to forget usually sounded like exceptionally mindless gossip.) At the southern edge of that auditory range, a harsh surface scraped against bark. It somehow felt as if there was a familiar aspect to that sound, something which aborted the covering motion and dropped Cerea's hand closer to the sword's hilt.
But there was also a strip of black fabric around a low branch.
"Your marker," the Princess said. "Many would not have thought to provide such a detail. Abjura, take the analyzer. I shall utilize the signature scanner." The dark light shifted: one bubble sent the disc towards the light green mare, while a secondary portion brought brass down over her own fur. "Let us see..."
Cerea watched, and for nearly half a minute, there was very little to look at. Six ponies: three moving around the clearing, two standing still, and one hovering nearby.
Several of the disc's runes brightened. Two flashed, once each. Then they did it again, only faster. And again...
"What is this?" Abjura breathed as the display increased its speed. "It's digging deep, Princess. It doesn't know the exact spell, but it's finding something in common with a previous encounter. It's just something from a long time ago, something it has to reach for..."
The brass-covered head didn't look at the unicorn. It was staring into the woods.
"The next hoofstep," the Princess softly said. "A logical progression, and we never would have perceived the final link had it not been for the device. Air to water, water to riverbed -- and riverbed to mud."
One of the earth ponies looked up at that. "Princess -- I don't know what you're seeing, but when we get back, I need to --"
"Be calm, Acrolith." (The multi-hued mare's breathing slowed.) "None of you can perceive what I can through these lenses, and so explanation is needed. I must try to explain, because this is something I have never seen before -- and yes, I am aware of what it means to hear those words emerging from my throat. To translate the perceptions..."
A long moment of silence, during which the flashing of the runes steadied. Somewhere to the south, a piece of wood was abruptly sundered. It was something Cerea mostly registered on a subconscious level: the wind was wrong for registering the nature of the true danger -- but her hand tightly closed on the sword's grip.
She felt her shoulders go uneven, her posture lightly listing to one side. The length of the day was blamed, and a simple effort brought her upright again.
"Imagine magic as hues," the dark mare quietly told them. "Simple enough to do, given the way coronas manifest. Every effect as its own color. But those colors are most distinct when they are separated. Bring red and yellow too close, and the viewer might believe there was a single orange working present. And with every additional overlapping shade, the perceived color continues to shift. Add too many, superimpose to the point where everything blends...”
They were all watching her, and so none truly noticed when two of the Guards sat down, their expressions mutually shifting to something Cerea would have been unable to interpret as a dazed smile. The young centaur simply watched the Princess turn towards her, and caught a glimpse of the eyes behind the lenses.
"Add enough colors, and all one can perceive is a murky brown," the Princess declared. "Everything sluggishly flowing in the same direction, barely functioning. A working as relentless, unstoppable mass pressing against a barrier until sheer weight collapses the wall. This is a mudslide."
Abjura slowly nodded. "But it's a mudslide with intent," the unicorn said. "I think somepony directed it. Multiple ponies, and... that shouldn't be possible, to get that many together on one effect without the disparities in their signatures ruining everything. The limit on the Combiner is three." She stared down at the disc. "But what I'm seeing here -- yes. This was a deliberate attempt to corpuscle."
And if she had known more, it would have been the moment when Cerea truly reacted. When she began to search for the threat. But she had some experience with the translator now, believed she understood a few of the faults: 'somepony' was presumed to be one of them. Having 'corpuscle' reach her wire-touched ear simply made her wait to see what the near-overlapping next word would be, the magic struggling to retrieve the proper term.
But the Princess regally nodded.
"Sanctity," the dark mare agreed. "Sanctity and steak. Triplets?"
It was still the wrong assumption: that magic was something which ran on its own sort of battery, especially since the Princess had mentioned charges during their first meeting. Cerea now believed that charge to be running out, wasn't completely sure how to communicate the problem when communication itself was on the verge of becoming impossible. She moved forward, her free hand frantically gesturing to the jewel, trying to make herself understood.
But then the Princess' wing joints loosened. Feathers splayed across the forest floor, and did so at the same moment when the male pegasus calmly perched in a tree.
"Carpet!" he declared. "Ursury shadows!"
A much larger piece of wood broke, still to the south. Cerea heard something rough scrape, and that noise was nearly lost in the solid triple impact of shell into dirt, an announcement of impending arrival made by something which no longer had any need to move silently.
She spun to face it, and initially took a wing to the face for her trouble.
"Quiver!" Nightwatch wailed, the frantically-flapping little knight moving in rough ellipses. "Avatar uneven, frantic cabal --"
But the Princess was the one who found what felt like the right word, a single moment of desperate focus giving a name to the monster which broke through the branches, almost leisurely moving towards smiling, sitting, flapping meals.
"Neurocypher!"
After the first encounter... that was when Cerea had almost expected the memory to fade. You went through a nightmare and once the daylight touched you, the terror began to blur, smear, thin out. Eventually, unless you did your best to fix every aspect of it, deliberately reliving it again and again, all you would remember was that you had been scared. The details went missing and with those gone, the fear itself would be lost.
But it had happened during the day. It had been real. It was still real, when nightmare was all it ever should have been.
The basic form was actually fairly easy to describe. You took a crab's leg, tinted it to a particularly nauseating shade of brown-tinged puce. Expanded it until the full arc of the joints could just about shadow a centaur's body from head to tail. Add tiny spikes to the armor, ones which weren't so much sharp as abrasive: close contact would take layers off skin. (A few strategic cracks had to be placed at this time, mostly around the joints.) Then you added two more legs just like it, spaced evenly around an armored circle, something roughly the diameter of a small car, with the underside just about as high off the ground as the roof.
And once you'd imagined that -- you pictured another just like it. Inverted it, stacked the second directly on top of the first, gave it two bands of partially-exposed musculature at the joining seam. One allowed some degree of rotation, let the halves shift independently. The second was where the eyes were, or that which passed for eyes. Normally, there would have been a full circle of black orbs evenly spaced around the perimeter, something which took in all light and gave back nothing except malice. This particular specimen was down two.
There was no point to looking for the mouth, for that was on the underside. A mouth larger than the pony it would lower itself onto, a pony who couldn't think about running or fighting or anything at all, a pony who simply sat among the leaves and merrily chatted about muddles and masks as the monster closed in with its tripod half-limping gait, the serrated fangs preparing to descend.
The second encounter had given it a name. The first made a pointed limb freeze, because three of the remaining eyes had just spotted what was galloping in from the north.
Strictly speaking, the thing didn't need to be treated with all that much formality -- but battle cries had rules all their own.
"Greetings, monster!" Cerea shouted. "I see thou dost remember me!"
And the sword slammed into the closest leg. Or rather, a selected portion of it.
She wasn't on the best terms with Rachnera. It was possible to find multiple liminal species who weren't exactly fond of the arachne, and ancient wars meant dusty battle tactics were available. This was so much bigger, had both the wrong arrangement of limbs and less of them -- but there weren't any webs. And when you were fighting something with this kind of armor, a coating which followed so many of chitin's rules, there was a basic tactic. You didn't worry about the armor itself: even with centaur strength and the dense plastic of the sword, it took a serious swing to put a crack in that shell (and she'd managed a few). Because the creature needed to be capable of movement. It couldn't shuffle on fully-frozen limbs, it needed flexibility, and armor could only overlap so much.
It meant you went for the joints and in Cerea's case, she went for the one she'd already cracked.
The little ravine in the shell deepened, spread, and there was a grinding sound, something which was nothing at all like a scream because the thing couldn't scream. It had no language with which to protest, and there would have been no excuses it cared to make. It simply knew it had felt pain, that something which had caused it pain was back, and pain wasn't something it knew how to deal with. Its magic would approach before it did, sedating the prey in advance. It fed, and nothing felt pain at all. It was incapable of realizing that some of its victims even laughed as they died, because that was the behavior which randomly-firing neurons had picked at the last.
It killed, and so it survived. That was how the world was supposed to work. It killed, it reproduced, and it lacked the intellect to realize that enough years of those behaviors would lead to a natural death. It couldn't think about death. Thought was something it destroyed.
But it had memory, even if those recollections lacked a true sense of time. There had been a new kind of prey. It had moved towards the prey, because that was what it did. Its magic had done the work, and so it was time to feed.
Then the prey had moved.
The prey was back, keeping it from reaching the little meals. And the tripod shifted, moving backwards in that strange limping gait, something which was only happening because armor was so slow to heal. It rotated the upper circle, tried to catch the prey with one of those limbs, but the prey jumped and all it could do was brush against the prey's lower back.
There was a tearing sound, and the noise hadn't come from flesh. Stitches had given way, and a rather ugly repurposed tablecloth fell to the forest floor. The black orbs saw the movement: one tracked it, another focused on the moving prey, and the most local third ceased to function forever because a plastic sword with no true edge was still perfectly capable of being jammed directly into an eye.
It rotated as much as it could, flailed its limbs. But it didn't know what to do: it had no true knowledge at all. The armor was meant to give it protection against that which could attack at a distance and when that happened, it would retreat. Close quarters combat was beyond the realm of every instinct it possessed. It was being driven away from subdued prey, its upper limbs broke branches as its body was driven backwards towards a clearing, it twisted this way and that and another branch broke and came down on the prey's left shoulder.
The impact staggered the prey, made it lose focus. A lower limb shifted, raised, the terminal point lined up --
-- and leaves blasted into its surviving eyes, with the gust sending a few into broken sockets. A gust which went around the centaur, because the pony who'd created it was just that good with wind.
Nightwatch, easily twenty-five meters above the ground, flapped her wings again, and the monster retreated from Cerea, lost more ground to the pain of debris pelting against wounds.
"You don't radiate up much, do you?" the pegasus shouted, and the increased distance between centaur and monster made it safe to look up towards the sound. "Because you can't! It's a torus, not a sphere! I remember that now, I remember what you are!"
And there was more than that in the sky: larger wings beating against the air, silver-covered legs shifting in a strange pattern beneath the Princess' body, blackening vapor was rapidly coalescing between limbs --
"-- no!" the Guard yelled. "Princess, it'll go for the sword first! You can't --"
"-- the sword," the Princess calmly said, "is not metal."
Her forehooves slammed into the newly-created cloud.
Cerea wasn't sure how old she'd been when her mother had formally taught her about thunder. Three or four, probably. She did have a distinct memory of having been told to count the seconds between flash and boom: every extra moment of delay meant the strike was that much further away. Storms visited places where she had never been, and it hadn't taken all that many more years before the jealousy had set in.
There was light, and then there was sound. It always happened in that order. But when the origin point was about twenty-five meters over your head, there was no perceptible delay. There was only the explosion which still echoed in pressed-back ears, and the flash which felt as if it had seared itself into her retinas.
She blinked until she could properly see the monster's corpse (a monster she hadn't even properly defeated, something where she'd needed to be saved), and she shook her head until she could hear again. The process took more than long enough for the ponies to reach her: some trotting, some landing, and all staring.
The Princess' horn sent dark light onto brass, lifted it away and revealed unreadable features.
"It now occurs to me," the dark mare quietly said, "that, even in my haste to reach this site before all residue had faded, I might have spent more time inquiring as to what you had faced in the wild zone." She slowly shook her head. "A special danger of the neurocypher: the more intense one's thoughts, the more easily those thoughts are disrupted. With all of us trying to deduce what had brought you here, there were none to watch for the signs. None who knew what those signs were. And you were not affected. I have previous experience with the abominations, where nopony else here does. I have needed to bring myself down to instinct before, to get out of range before striking as a being which could once again think. But it would have required leaving its range. In that time, with the thing already so close..."
She looked up at Cerea.
"You are shaking," the Princess stated.
It was adrenaline. She frequently found herself shaking after a fight: unused energy with nowhere to go. "It's nothing."
"Is the wound on your back also nothing?"
Cerea looked.
I didn't even feel that.
"It's just a scrape in the fur. There's barely any blood --"
"-- you have already been through one infection, and I was informed that antibiotics are not universal between all species. However, topical disinfectants are, and so Bulkhead is carrying a quantity in his saddlebags. Allow him to apply the liquid before the next medical crisis arrives. At a distance, please. The sounds produced by cleansing can be worse than those forced by the wounds."
The centaur slowly trotted away, with the unicorn stallion following. The rest of the group stayed near the corpse, and silently held that position until they heard the first distant hiss emerge from between clenched teeth.
"Abjura," Luna finally began, "before anything else happens, while we have privacy: the analyzer. Your speech before the attack indicated that it had produced a result. Did it recognize the exact spell?"
Slowly, "No. Just a commonality with another working. Something old, something I don't think anypony's cast in my lifetime. The general category of effect."
Silence.
"You do not wish to tell me," Luna observed. "I will not blame her for whatever --"
The word wasn't spoken so much as extracted. "-- summoning."
(At the far right of the group, silver eyes slowly closed.)
"So the working tried to bring her here," Luna calmly said.
"Tried to bring something." There was helplessness in those words. "Was there any residue on her body?"
"Not that the scanner showed. But she was carrying the sword: extended contact might have dispelled it. I failed to perceive so much as a single lingering thaum from the teleport. You are suggesting that the caster missed their true target?"
"I'm saying it's possible --" and the unicorn took a deep breath. "-- no. I'm lying. I'm saying I can't tell. But I don't think it was a natural effect. I was hoping she'd just stumbled into one of the deep places, but with this..." Another. "It's not impossible, but the only reason I'm saying that is because the rules are different in the deep places. They're just about as bad as chaos terrain. There's a chance it was an accident -- but it's a small one."
"And reversing the effect? Sending her back tonight?"
Sun was starting to dip now.
"...you're the Princess," Abjura finally replied. "I was hoping --"
"-- Princess," Luna softly countered, "still does not mean 'deity'. So we cannot simply reopen the passage. We will need further study, and possibly the combined services of Twilight Sparkle and Ms. Lulamoon. But even with their help, we will likely be hosting her for weeks. Moons..."
There were possibilities beyond that. Everypony knew what they were, and so nopony voiced any of them.
"What if the press figures out she's in the palace?" Acrolith finally asked, timing the words to get past the next hiss. "We could try to claim she was placed in Tartarus." A long pause. "We -- we might even have to --"
"-- no," Nightwatch stated, and still did not open her eyes.
"Just to have them see her go in, in front of the cameras." Acrolith protested. "We could bring her out right after --"
"-- no --"
"-- the decision is mine," Luna interrupted. "The decision also happens to be 'no.'"
A curl of smoke rose from the scorched shell, dissipated into dimming sky.
"Then what can we do with her?" Abjura softly asked. "After Tirek, what place does the world have for a centaur?"
And nopony said anything at all.