//------------------------------//
// 29 - Rescue 
// Story: A Phoenix Beyond the Veil - The Philospher's Stone 
// by gerandakis 
//------------------------------//


Chapter Twenty-Nine

Rescue






Twilight was uncomfortable. She found that she didn't enjoy being gagged and tied to a chair. She didn't particularly like the two ponies standing beside her either. They hadn't believed her when she had told them that the princess would come for her. They would soon learn. She had realized months ago that Princess Celestia had a spell on her that allowed her to track her student. The spell was designed so that Twilight knew whenever the Princess looked up her location.

She had felt it go off a few moments ago. The Princess had thus gotten the ransom note and would be arriving any moment. Unable to do much about the situation, Twilight attempted to relax. She glanced at the two ponies beside her. She had no combat training, so they could probably take her out even if it weren't for the ring atop her horn. Still, she wished she could remove the itchy thing.

She sighed as well as she could through the gag and leaned back. For now, it seemed, she would be playing the waiting game.





Sunset arrived atop a roof in the lower district of Canterlot in a flash of flame. She quickly applied an invisibility spell to ensure she remained unseen. Philomena, clever bird that she was, had set her off on the roof, but beneath an overhanging section of roof from a neighboring building. As such, an aerial sentry would likely miss her arrival.

Lighting her horn, she prepared a series of spells. First a set of sound dampening spells to make sure her hoofsteps and breathing would go unnoticed, second a reactive dark vision spell, in case she had to pass a badly lit area. Seeing how she had just taken an extensive swim in a mountain lake, she decided to forgo a spell to hide her scent. Finally she used a spell to scan magical signatures in her surroundings.

She had expected such a thing to happen. Not so soon, admittedly, but it paid to be prepared. She had taken the morning she had spent around her successor as an opportunity to familiarize herself with her magical signature. As such, she found it easily. Several floors beneath her, in the basement.

Hardly surprising.

Another quick check revealed a few basic wards in her way. A more thorough check, revealed no further, hidden wards among them. She could even tell which instruction from which book on basic wards the schemes were from.

Amateurs.

There were several guards though, half a dozen in the basement. She had no way to tell how many in the building above were accomplices of the foalnappers. Having all the information she needed, she began to weave her teleportation spell. A minute later, the invisible unicorn vanished from the roof.

The wards never twitched.





Twilight had come to a conclusion. If one knew that help was on the way, being foalnapped was a rather boring situation. She was about to sigh, again, when she heard a voice.

"Really now, Twilight, I would have thought you could find better company." She recognized the voice as that of her mentor. Her foalnappers tensed, ready to spring into action, but also afraid. Clearly, they had recognized the voice as well.

"I'll be there in a moment," the voice continued to echo about the room, making it impossible to pinpoint a single direction it was coming from. Either the source was moving, or there was magic at work. Likely both. "Now, for you two. Did you really think you could foalnap the Student of the Sun without attracting the sun's wrath?"

There was something off about the voice. From the sound alone it was a perfect match, a normal listener wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. But Twilight heard her mentor's voice many times a day. She knew it well. This was not that voice. There were minute differences in enunciation and inflection. It didn't quite match Princess Celestia. But she had heard it before. Only a day before in fact.

"You do realize that 'Student of the Sun' is a royal position. As such, attacking a Student of the Sun, or holding them against their will, constitutes high treason. Did you know that?" Twilight shot a glance at her foalnappers. She had known that. They, clearly, hadn't, if their startled expressions were any indication.

The voice chuckled. "I suspected as much." As she spoke, the voice slowly shifted, the perfect imitation of Princess Celestia's voice slowly returning to its natural sound. Twilight's suspicion had been correct. It was Sunset Shimmer.

"Really now, you're not all that smart are you?" There was clear amusement in the voice now. "Really not impressed with your choice of company, Twilight. The phrase 'beset, on all sides, by idiots' comes to mind.

"Well, that can be fixed." Two glowing blue waves of force erupted from thin air on either side of Twilight, slamming into the two ponies standing there and throwing them against the wall. With a gentle wavering of the air, Sunset Shimmer appeared in the center of the room, not far from Twilight's chair. Two more ponies, thus far hidden in the shadows, ran out to grab her.

The moment they collided into each other, the illusion dispersed. A fine teal mist appeared above the head of each of the ponies, two still pressed against the wall, the other two frantically trying to disentangle themselves from each other. The mist simply seeped into them and, moments later, all four of them lay snoring on the floor. A powerful sleeping spell that would last for several hours.

"As I said, 'idiots'," Sunset snorted as she let her invisibility spell fall off her, appearing beside Twilight. With a glow of her horn, the bindings fell off the filly and the gag undid itself. She casually shifted into her human form, reached a hand out and gently removed the ring off Twilight's horn. "Now then. Princess Celestia should be here any minute, she'll make her way in so none of them escape, we'll make our way out doing the same. We'll meet halfway."

Twilight stared incredulously as the girl calmly drew her wand and twirled it. "How?"

"How what?"

"You're younger than I am, how are you so casual about this?"

"Right. This is your first time, sorry I forgot for a moment." She leaned down, gently stroking Twilight's mane. "Students of the Sun get foalnapped all the time. I'm just used to it. It's kinda part of the job."

"Wait. You were foalnapped too?"

"Of course. Seventeen times if I'm counting correctly. Sorry, they do tend to blur together a little. I think you can guess why. You did seem pretty bored when I arrived."

"I guess when you know that help is coming ..."

"You don't really worry. Yeah. I know." Sunset smirked a little. "In later years they started to become more memorable. After a while I became skilled enough to fight my own way out and leave them for the guard to pick up. Come on then." Her eyes lit up with magic for a moment and she looked at the door, then sighed. "Not even a magical lock. Seriously, amateurs. Alohomora." She tapped her wand to the lock which opened up with a quiet 'click'. "Stay behind me. I'll clear a path."

With that, Sunset calmly walked into the corridor. Twilight hesitantly followed.





Disguised as a sky blue unicorn mare with a smiling sun as a cutie mark, Princess Celestia walked down the street, guided by her tracking spell. She reached the house before long.

Taking a moment, she looked around to get her bearings. She quickly noticed several ponies unobtrusively watching the building. Hardly a surprise. Using one of the many spells she had learned and developed over her centuries of life experience, she marked all those she saw. If she sought to find any of them within the next two months, they would have nowhere to hide.

She committed their appearances to memory. Making sure she'd be able to recognize each from a description. The spell Sunset had used to give herself photographic memory was another of her creations, after all.

After she had taken a good look at each of them, taking care not to forget the two pegasi circling above, trying and failing to be inconspicuous, she made her way to the door of the building. A few quick spells showed her that there were quite a few ponies in the building and that they were quite interestingly distributed.

There were eight ponies in the unusually large basement of the building. Four of them showed telltale magical signs of being under the effects of a sleeping spell, another two of them she recognized as two very familiar fillies. Sunset, it seemed, had already arrived.

The two ponies in the floor above were ... busy. Clearly not among the foalnappers. The top floor seemed to be vacant. The floor in between however, held seven ponies, two of which seemed to be patrolling the stairs to the floors above and below.

She lit her horn again, creating a powerful shield over the door. None would be leaving through there. After placing similar shields over the windows, she teleported up onto the third floor and began her way down. The ponies on the stairs fell unconscious before they could even realize what was happening, such was the power she brought to bear.

The door was locked. After a moment, it wasn't locked anymore. Or a door for that matter.

These ponies had disappointed the sun. Now they would bear the consequences.





Sunset made her way out of the room, keeping an eye on the magical signatures in the building. She quickly noticed the powerful and familiar signature just outside the main door.

The princess had arrived on scene.

She pushed the matter out of her mind. The princess would be entering from above. She would be clearing a path for Twilight from below. Carefully aiming her wand, she shot two quick spells at the first of the two remaining guards in the basement.

The first silenced him so he couldn't alert the other, the second was once again a sleep spell. Unaware as he was, the guard made no attempt to resist the spell and was soon asleep standing, snoring soundlessly. The second soon followed. Snorting once more, Sunset shook her head.

Amateurs.

She returned to her equine shape and waved for Twilight to follow. When the older filly stood beside her, she smirked. "Feel it? She's here."

Twilight nodded. "She's not happy, is she?"

"Her student was foalnapped. I don't think she's going to be all too happy about that. I mean sure, it happens all the time, but it's still disappointing."

"Did they really foalnap you seventeen times?"

Sunset smirked."Well, they tried seventeen times. They only managed it the first eight. The other times, I took them out before it could come to that. Now come along, I think the princess wants to see you again."

The two of them climbed the stairs, each levitating three sleeping ponies behind them. When they reached the second floor landing each of them picked up another, they then went through the splintered remnants of a door with a conspicuously molten lock. The room behind it held two more unconscious ponies, each of them picked up one of those as well.

When they opened the next door, they saw Princess Celestia, no longer disguised, staring down a unicorn stallion, a unicorn mare, a pegasus stallion and two griffons. All of whom seemed to be terrified. Two fillies coming in carrying their remaining guards only served to drive home the point of how badly they had messed up.

"Twilight, my faithful student. It's good to see you again. Put them over there if you don't mind."

After the fillies had stacked the unconscious ponies in the indicated corner, Celestia smiled at them. "Thank you. Sunset, could you take the two of you to my quarters? I'll meet you there in a few minutes."

"Of course. See you then."

In a flash of teal, the two smirking fillies vanished, leaving the foalnappers with the furious alicorn.

"Can't we talk about this?" the mare squeaked.

"Of course," Celestia agreed, then her gaze hardened. "We will."

With a flash of gold, the room was emptied of ponies.





When Celestia teleported from the Dungeons beneath the palace to her chambers several minutes later, she found Sunset leaning back in a couch, once more in human form, wearing an outfit she hadn't seen before, clearly designed to be more practical and provide a greater range of unimpeded movement than her usual clothing. The protective enchantments did not escape her notice either.

She smiled when she saw her student curled up in Sunset's lap, snoring quietly. She had never seen Twilight fall asleep without a book before. Then again, she had had an exciting day. Looking to the balcony, Celestia saw her ward slowly sinking towards the horizon. She could feel, of course, that it would soon be time to set it to rest for the night, and wake the one she had taken from her sister. Still, the visual reminder was there.

With a calm smile, Sunset levitated Twilight to the couch beside her, continuing to gently stroke along her mane. She sighed. "Once more it happens. It really is a shame ponies would do this."

Celestia nodded. "It is. Still, I never had any illusions that there were no criminals among my little ponies." She, too, let out a sigh. "There always have been, and always will be, those that are driven by selfish desire, by greed for wealth, for power, or for something more abstract. There will always be those that would abandon the path of harmony for their own benefit.

"All we can do, is to make sure such sentiment doesn't spread. Traps such as this one are a good way to do that." She glanced at the filly beside Sunset. A pained expression flashed across her face. "One day she will understand that as well, though it pains me that I must use her so."

Sunset was fully aware that the Princess was no longer talking about catching petty criminals, but she decided to play along and keep the conversation abstract. She smiled at her old mentor. "She will understand. Assuming all goes to plan, none of them will come to harm. If only we could tell her, but that would defeat the point, wouldn't it?"

Celestia sighed. "It would. We both know that friendship cannot be forced."

"Do you think it would be viable to introduce them sooner?"

"I don't know, but I'd rather not take the risk. Too much hinges on their success." She shook her head. "But anyway, now is not the time for such a dour topic. You have a vacation to enjoy." She smirked at the little purple unicorn beside Sunset. "And I think I have a young filly to bring to bed."

"True, true." After a final stroke across Twilight's mane, Sunset got up. "Good night, Princess."

"Good night, my little sun. Sleep well."

With a nod, Sunset drew her wand and teleported back to Winsome falls.

A moment later, Celestia teleported herself and Twilight to the latter's room, leaving her quarters empty.