Chancellor Neighsay lifted his hooves elegantly over the thin line of string as he exited the EEA portal, and didn't even look up as his magic took hold of the bucket poised in the tree above.
"Greetings, students," he said, his voice a flat monotone. "I can already see this is going to be a very enlightening trip, so I'll skip the niceties." The bucket emptied itself into the pond with a resounding splash, and this was met with a round of disappointed groans from the six students gathered by the pond. The portal snapped shut behind him with a soft whoosh of displaced air.
The Chancellor wore his usual EEA official’s robe and medallion, but a pair of saddlebags were slung over his back, looking weighty. One of them sported a circular patch with the EEA’s laurels-and-horseshoe logo.
"I trust you all have everything on Headmare Sparkle's list?"
Gallus gave Sandbar a pointed nudge. Good prank. Worked great. Sandbar gave him a sheepish sidelong glance.
"Uh, I don't have my waterproofs!" chimed Silverstream, one flipper raised.
Chancellor Neighsay opened his mouth. He glanced down, saw that Silverstream was speaking to him from the pond, and closed his mouth again, raising an eyebrow.
Seeing that Neighsay had no intention of humouring her, she offered an explanation. "Because I'm already waterproof!" She flapped her forefins in the water a little to illustrate her point. “Duh.”
Neighsay’s magic pulled a scroll and pencil from one of his saddlebags, holding it in front of his face so that he didn’t have to retain eye contact. "Can somecreature please confirm for me that the seapony will be waterproof in her hippogriff form as well,” he droned, “so that we may move on?"
Gallus rolled his eyes. "Yeah, she’s good. Waterproof feathers or whatever."
Neighsay marked something with a check. "Has everycreature eaten breakfast." Somehow he managed to make it sound like anything but a question, but their replies came easier this time and he drew another checkmark. "I have your permission slips… I’m hoping you’ve all been to the bathroom…?" Check, and check. "Does anyp- anycreature have allergies?”
The students glanced at each other in amusement at the Chancellor’s near-mistake. Oh, he was not ready for this trip.
The Chancellor narrowed his eyes. He had a sneaking suspicion the students were about to be difficult.
“Yeah, I’m actually allergic to carrying bags,” Sandbar answered, and promptly kicked with his hind leg to send the saddlebags he’d left on the floor sliding towards Gallus.
The griffon smirked. “I’m more allergic. Ocellus is actually the only creature here not allergic to bags,” he elaborated, and slid both his and Sandbar’s bags across to the changeling. “She’s gotta carry them all.”
She lifted a foreleg and pressed it to her mouth, stifling a giggle. “Mr. Neighsay, should I turn into a bigger creature so I can carry all these?”
“Yeah,” suggested Smoulder, “like a really big bug monster?”
They all watched for the Chancellor’s reaction.
Chancellor Neighsay stared blankly into space. Unflinching, he checked another box.
“...If you’ll all follow me,” he said finally, tucking the pencil and scroll away. He turned back towards the bridge.
As he started walking, the students glanced at each other uneasily, then scrambled to grab their things and followed. Neighsay simply wasn’t reacting to their teasing, and that was sucking all their enjoyment out of it - which meant this trip had a high chance of being terrible.
Smoulder grimaced as she jogged to catch up with Sandbar at the back of the group, shouldering her backpack. “Yeesh. It’s like he’s allergic to fun.”
The young pony gave a reluctant nod in agreement. “He definitely doesn’t wanna be here. Never mind our letter. I bet the Headmare had to beg him for weeks to come and do this with us.”
Ocellus glanced uneasily over her shoulder at the two friends. With a click of her wingcases, she flitted into the air and joined the older unicorn at the front of the group, gathering up the courage to speak as she hugged her bag to her chest.
“Um… sir?” she tried meekly. “Mr. Neighsay?”
“Chancellor,” he corrected automatically, and didn’t bother looking at her. “What is it?”
“Where are you taking us? Headmare Twilight said it was a surprise.”
That got his attention. He finally made eye contact, but his face remained a blank mask. “Excellent question. I was hoping all of you might be able to figure it out along the way. That,” he declared, raising his voice a little so that the other creatures behind him could hear, “is your first assignment on this trip-”
“Is it Sugarcube Corner?” called the hippogriff, her voice echoing from under the bridge.
“No. Would you care to join the rest of us on dry land, by the way?”
At the Chancellor’s sharp tone, there was a short silence - and then a splash, a chime of magic, and the sound of wingbeats as Silverstream obediently appeared over the stone wall and landed clumsily beside Yona. “...I was only going to stay in the water until the end of the bridge,” she mumbled.
Neighsay cleared his throat loudly. “As I was saying, I expect you all to use your compasses, environmental clues, and educated guesswork to discover where we’re headed. If anycreature guesses our destination before we arrive, they will be excused from their homework assignment related to the trip. Any questions?”
“Yona have question,” the yak piped up. “Where pony taking us?”
“...Does anycreature else have any questions?”
There was a ripple of stifled giggles from the students, and Neighsay fought to keep his ears from pinning back. This was going to be a long trip. Not for the first time since he’d signed his reply to Headmare Sparkle’s letter, he wondered if he’d made a grave mistake.
But he’d signed the forms, and so had their parents, and so had Headmare Sparkle. There was no going back on this now. Not without it reflecting very badly on him.
Neighsay made himself raise his head, walking with as much purpose as he could muster, and pulled a scroll from one of his saddlebags. He unrolled it without much flourish and levitated it over his head for everycreature to see.
“This is a map of Equestria,” he declared, addressing them over his shoulder. “I want you all to use this map to work out where we are.”
The scroll drifted behind him and landed in Smoulder’s claws. She glanced down at it, and her expression instantly shifted into a bewildered stare.
“Yona know where we are! Yona still see school! Pony ask trick question!”
“Mr. Neighsay, we walk this path almost every day,” Gallus droned.
“Then it ought to be no problem for you to locate our whereabouts on that map,” Neighsay replied smugly.
“Hold on, guys.” Smoulder turned the map sideways, then back again. She frowned. “This isn’t Equestria... Is it?”
Sandbar trotted close to her and peered at the scroll. “...Whoa. That’s not like any map I’ve seen. Is - is that supposed to be the sea?” He pointed with the tip of his hoof to what looked like a squiggly line, and tilted his head quizzically. “Or mountains?”
“It looks like a fledgeling drew it!” Gallus exclaimed, hovering close to Smoulder so that he could peek past her spines at the unlabelled, barely-legible pictograms. “Are you serious?”
Unfazed, Neighsay just smiled confidently to himself. “Long before Equestrian cartography was standardised with rules of scale and orthodox key symbols, ponies of long ago would draw their own maps of the region. They were rough, approximate, and entirely serviceable… given some deciphering. This is a copy of one such map I borrowed from your Headmare. I expect you all to make good use of it.”
As the students murmured confusedly between themselves, Chancellor Neighsay slowed his pace a little, drifting to one side just slightly so that he might keep an eye on the group without having to crane his neck.
To his relief, it seemed like the students were willing to play along with this little game of his - at least for the moment. Honestly, he had been expecting a lot more resistance. Aside from the prank they’d failed to execute (foal’s play, did they really think he wouldn’t be expecting that one?) and a little bit of backtalk, they were being surprisingly complacent.
Yes, it seemed a little too good to be true.
Neighsay trudged through the mud, his normally poker-straight mane turned slightly frizzy by the wet weather despite the umbrella-shaped canopy of magic he was conjuring overhead. Currently, his chances of making it through the trip without outside intervention were looking slim.
Outside intervention meant Princess-Headmare Twilight Sparkle or one of her lackeys showing up to save the day. Neighsay could not afford to come under scrutiny for this. Not now.
“Question,” he declared, daring to hope that keeping them engaged might lift the mood. “Who can explain why our shadows disappear in overcast weather?”
The dragon raised her claw, promisingly.
“Smoulder, was it? Speak.”
“The weather ponies steal ‘em to make those big black rainclouds.”
Neighsay ground his teeth as there was the sound of a clawed high-five behind him.
“Not a fan of pop quizzes, are we,” he stated flatly. There was no response, and the students went back to chattering amongst themselves.
They’d made their way north from Ponyville, following a path out from Saddle Lake that led them through the hills. He’d dismissed guesses from the students that they were headed for Canterlot, but they were correct in that they’d be passing beneath it. Their disappointment had been voiced in complaints about the view they would be missing, but he’d quelled those with the promise that their actual destination would be worth it.
When the rain had started, however, the mood had dropped for everycreature except the hippogriff, who - much to the Chancellor’s chagrin - was now splashing merrily in every puddle they passed.
“Mo-o-orning in Ponyville shimmers,” she sang, and it was a credit to the strength of her voice that Neighsay couldn’t fathom whether or not she was belting it wildly off-key on purpose. She projected like she’d had vocal training, and yet: “Morning in Ponyville-” she hesitated, taking a deep breath, “-shi-i-i-ines!”
Chancellor Neighsay was no Ponytone, but he was fairly sure that this song was not meant to have so much warbling in it.
“We aren’t in Ponyville,” Ocellus pointed out. “Maybe we can make up our own song?”
“Morning on the road outside Ponyville on the way to somewhere we don’t know shiiiines!” Silverstream corrected, taking a flying leap from one puddle to another and sending a wave of water splashing up towards Neighsay.
He flung up a shield just in time. The water deflected harmlessly, and Neighsay swore he could see a flicker of disappointment on the hippogriff’s face, just for a second. The changeling was giggling.
“Hey, I have a question.” Sandbar piped up, his voice muffled by a yellow raincoat that was shuffling as he walked. “Why are we walking all the way to this mystery place when you have that magic medal thingy? Couldn’t you just take us there?”
“The EEA medallion is for emergencies and EEA business only,” he answered plainly, adjusting the umbrella-shaped shimmer of magical shielding over his head. “This trip is neither. Besides: this field trip is intended to be a learning experience. I posit you would learn very little if I were to simply warp us to our destination, and then we would have three days to spend twiddling our hooves."
“Yona not know what pony teaching us about walking. Yona walk everywhere.” There was a thoughtful pause. “Except when Yona run,” she added. “Can Yona run ahead?”
“No,” he said quickly, seeing that she was about to charge. “We stay as a group. That especially applies to those of us with wings,” Neighsay emphasised, glancing pointedly up to his left where the blue griffon was flapping idly in the air.
Gallus rolled his eyes obstinately. “Relax, I’m not going anywhere - I’m staying with the group! I just wanna stretch my wings. Griffons have to fly a lot or our wings fall off.”
“I am well aware that isn’t true.”
“Is too,” Smoulder chimed in helpfully. “The feathers fall out, they shrivel up like twigs, and then they drop right off. Saw it happen. It’s really sad.”
“It’s true. Happened to Grampa Gruff.”
“I have seen him at Friends and Family day. His wings are perfectly intact.”
“They grew back,” Gallus retorted, to a ripple of snickering.
At least - at the very least - he was not in his office, struggling with red tape.
The road was beginning to steepen, leading them up towards the looming, jagged shape of Mount Canterlot. As the weather worsened, it would be easy for anypony to miss the entrance to the tunnel that lay ahead, partly obscured by sheets of rain. Silverstream was no pony.
"Are we going in there!?" screeched a bubbly voice directly beside Neighsay's ear.
He jerked his head away and flashed her an indignant look before answering. "We are. It will be a boon to get out of the rain, but I would also like to remind everycreature to stay together. Nearly all forks in the underground path have been cordoned off by rope, or blocked by controlled cave-ins - but should anycreature wander off, you may not emerge in the same place as the rest of the group."
There was a rustle of paper as Smoulder unfolded the map, and she and Sandbar scrutinised it curiously.
"Okay," Sandbar began, "that pointy thing has to be Canterlot."
Smoulder made a doubtful noise. "I thought that was Neighagara Falls. Where does that put Ponyville if that's Canterlot?"
Neighsay didn't bother turning around. As promising as it seemed that they were taking an interest in the challenge he'd set, he doubted very much that they'd get anywhere with it.
That was until a rough voice spoke up from behind the two.
"That Canterlot. This Ponyville." The sound of Yona jabbing the map twice got everyone's attention, and Neighsay ventured a glance over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. Yona continued. "Saddle Lake - Neighagara Falls - old pony town - other old pony town."
"Wait - Yona, you can read this?"
"Old pony map just like yak map," she declared, and gave a smug smile. "Yak maps best… but Yona know mouth-drawing of a house when Yona sees one."
The students glanced at each other, clearly just as shocked as Neighsay felt - and then they all drew close. Even Gallus alighted on the muddy ground and peered at the map with the others.
"So… where are we on this thing, Yona?" he asked, tilting his head owlishly.
Yona looked thoughtful. "Yona think here," she announced, and pointed.
Neighsay blinked. He knew perfectly well that she was correct, and he failed to mask his surprise. Swiftly, he came to the realisation that for several paces Sandbar’s eyes had been locked on him.
“You’re gonna make good on that thing about the homework, right?” he asked, and there was a smug note to his voice that the Chancellor did not appreciate one bit.
“We shall see,” he offered unhelpfully. “Working out how to read a map is very different to predicting where one will end up. See that you all pay attention.”
Luckily for Neighsay, Sandbar’s attention was quickly diverted - as the entrance to the Cantering Mountain Thoroughfare loomed ahead. The younger pony stopped in his tracks, staring up in awe at the chiselled whorls of the old artisanal stonework, and one by one the others either bumped into each other or skidded to a halt or splashed to a stop to admire it too.
The entrance was tall and looming, like the mountain itself, and the tunnels under the mountain had first been hollowed through long ago. Ponies had needed respite from the Windigos back then, and eventually most of their more sheltered routes and byways had been lost to time. With its proximity to Canterlot, however, this one had been worn smooth by the hooves and cart wheels of thousands of travellers either on their way to the capital or just passing from the north of Equestria to the south.
Chancellor Neighsay said none of this. He merely stopped, turned, and addressed the students dully.
“Move as a group. Do not stray from the lit tunnels. If we do find ourselves in the dark, follow the light of my horn.”
There was a pause as the students seemed stalled by the imposing stonework of the old entryway.
Then, with a rustle of raincoats, they darted ahead.
“Last one out of the rain’s a wet puckwudgie!”
Neighsay glared down at the splatters of mud now covering most of his legs from their charge, and stepped gratefully into the dry air of the tunnel as the magic that formed his makeshift umbrella dissipated. He pulled an embroidered kerchief from inside his robe and began to dab down his hooves without a word. Just behind him, one last set of footsteps followed them all in from the rain.
He glanced up. Gallus stood uneasily in the entrance, dripping rainwater and looking dubious.
Ahead of them, the other unruly students had thankfully come to a halt in the open space that signified the beginning of the tunnels, and were now peeling off their raincoats and shaking themselves dry as they chattered amongst themselves and argued over who’d been the puckwudgie.
“It looks like you may have lost your friends’ little game,” Neighsay pointed out.
Gallus made a dismissive noise and shrugged off his raincoat, wrung it out, and then shook himself like a dog. His wings splattered water across Neighsay’s robe and earned him a pointed glare, which he ignored.
“Hey, uh, just wondering. This tunnel thing doesn’t get any smaller, right?”
Neighsay raised an eyebrow, dabbing at his clothing with the hoofkerchief. “The tunnel was carved to very specific standards, and has since been shored up by more modern architects.”
“Yeah,” Gallus said, “what.”
Neighsay cleared his throat and tried a different tack. “I mean it will remain the same size throughout. Though there are other tunnels which branch off the main route that may be smaller or less-travelled, we will be staying as a group.”
He paused, studying the griffon carefully. Gallus had his wings pinned firmly to his sides, and seemed to be reluctant to move forward.
“Think of it as nothing more than a road, the same as the one we just travelled.” he suggested carefully.
“Yeah, it’s no big deal,” Gallus snapped, and urged himself to trot away from the Chancellor to join his friends. Without turning around, he could tell the unicorn was still watching him as he pretended to laugh at one of Smoulder’s jokes.
The long, straight tunnel of the Cantering Thoroughfare was well-trodden and carefully maintained by the earth ponies who primarily used it, but it was evidently overdue for a unicorn patrol. Not all of the bracketed crystals that lined the walls were fully charged, and some had gone out completely.
Still, things were going well. Below each lamp, a way marker plaque was indented into the wall, and the students had opted to play a game with these, which made it a little easier to ignore the occasional stretches of darkness between fully-functioning lamps.
"Rocks?" Sandbar suggested.
"No," said Smoulder. "Yona already said that one."
"Road?"
"Silverstream, that was yours last round. No."
"Plaque's coming up."
Ocellus' wings buzzed anxiously. "Oh, no! Um - rafter?"
"Too late," Smoulder declared victoriously as they passed a plaque marking the quarter-mile mark. "The word was 'rope'. Saw some blocking off a side tunnel back there."
"Yona's turn! Yona spy with Yona's eye something beginning wiiiith… Y!"
Smoulder folded her arms. "Is it Yona?"
"Nope!"
"Yak," came a dull, monotone voice from just ahead of the group.
Yona smugly opened her mouth to retort. She blinked. The smug look deflated only a little, and she snorted indignantly. "...Yes."
"Wait," Sandbar said with a sharp look, "is Neighsay playing?"
"News to me," Smoulder growled out of the side of her mouth.
Neighsay's voice echoed sharply in the long tunnel. "I wasn't aware there was a rule to this game that prohibited answers from a setten petrafum."
"Bless you!" chirped Silverstream.
Neighsay shot her a look. "It is an Old Ponish term for a temporary legal guardian."
"Then why not say that?" Gallus ground out, trying not to think about how low the ceiling felt in the dark stint between the lamps.
Abruptly, Neighsay slowed his pace in order to drop back and join the gaggle of students, falling into step beside Gallus and looking down at him with an expression that, for once, contained not an ounce of disdain.
"Using the wrong term in an official EEA document could mean the difference between a school gaining permission for a field trip and a school being closed down for an administration error," he explained. The griffon was watching him closely, and Neighsay broke eye contact. "The rules are very specific. Learning to use the right words by default reduces the risk of mistakes. I hope I’ve made myself clear."
The other students had gone silent, and for a while the only sounds were the soft echo of their assorted footsteps. The griffon was frowning up at him, scrutinising him - Neighsay risked another glance and this time held his stare evenly.
"...As crystal," said Gallus dismissively, and looked away.
The quiet stretched on.
Neighsay counted down until the gleam of another way marker passed them by.
"S," he said loudly.
"Silverstream!" replied Silverstream, all too eager to break the awkward silence. "Smoulder? Sandbar? I need a hint!"
Neighsay quirked a brow and relented. "It is an object, not a creature."
While the hippogriff hummed in consideration, it was Smoulder who spoke up next.
"Saddlebags." It was delivered in a snarky, deadpan sort of way. Okay, we’re playing. And we’re gonna win.
Neighsay read the challenging smirk on the dragon's face and, for the first time, cracked a dry smile. "No."
"Is it… Shadow?"
"Students?"
“Stuffy unicorn?”
Neighsay dismissed the barrage of answers with a smug smirk. The game was on, if only for a moment.
And then he counted heads.
Neighsay stopped in his tracks, to a resounding oof as the hippogriff bumped squarely into him. “Everycreature stop.” Heads turned. “Where is Yona?”
Panic, though a wonderful motivator, was not what Chancellor Neighsay had come on this trip to feel. He was good at keeping a calm head in a meeting, or in the sterile, authoritative atmosphere of the EEA evaluation hall.
However, moving at a brisk pace across uneven ground in a narrow tunnel while his horn light reflected off every glowing surface of the unidentified crystals around him, and a gaggle of flighty, agitated students followed virtually close enough to suffocate each other -
This was not going to look good to Headmare Twilight.
“Are you certain she came this way?” he demanded, his voice echoing eerily down the passageway and sounding much more anxious than he’d intended it to.
Just ahead, Sandbar gestured with one hoof over his shoulder, prompting Neighsay to lift his head a little. The light of his horn glinted ominously across the crystalline walls as they headed deeper. They shouldn’t be here. This, he was fairly certain, would eventually lead into the Canterlot catacombs.
“It was the only lit tunnel since the last time we saw her,” Sandbar explained confidently. “She has to be down here.”
“I think I’m gonna hurl,” mumbled Gallus, his breath a little too fast and his claws scrabbling unevenly against the shiny floor.
“You should have waited at the fork, as I suggested!” snapped Neighsay.
“Well, I can’t just leave my friends!”
“Yeah! We don’t do that!”
“Besides! You told us we had to stick together!” Silverstream yelled. “Make up your mind - and stop picking on my friends!”
Neighsay willed his horn to shine a little brighter, focusing intently on the shape of Sandbar picking his way down a steep slope ahead of them, and barely managed not to rise to their bait. “Watch your step!” he forced out instead of the snippy retort he’d wanted to give them, and began a careful descent, momentarily unaware of the fact that at the back of the group, Gallus had his eyes tightly closed.
A juvenile griffon colliding with one’s back at full tilt did not make for an easy halt at the top of a smooth-floored slope. Smoulder dug in her heels a moment too late, and smacked into Silverstream. Silverstream gave a piercing whoop of shock, and felt Ocellus’ hard wing casings make acquaintance with her face.
For a moment, Ocellus teetered on the edge. She saw Neighsay look back up at her almost as if in slow-motion, and the dawning look of horror on his face would in any other situation be kind of hilarious.
“No, no, no, no-!” she squeaked out, to no avail.
Her feet slipped on the smooth crystal floor, and with that the assorted cluster of students careened down over the edge.
Everything was upside-down and sideways for all of three seconds. She heard Sandbar cry out. Somecreature’s feathers were in her mouth. A spaded tail whipped through the air dangerously close to her face.
And then, quite suddenly, gravity ceased to work.
A soft orange aura surrounded the group, and carefully split them apart. Each student was carefully and deliberately turned the right way up, and found themselves set down on their feet at the bottom of the slope.
Neighsay, his hoof still resting on his EEA badge, lowered himself to the ground and finally let go. His hoof switched places, from his badge to his right eye, and with the one not covered he fixed the group with a furious glare.
He opened his mouth to speak.
Somecreature beat him to it.
“Whoa,” said Yona. “That nearly a nasty fall.”
“Yona!”
Sandbar, Ocellus, and Silverstream darted forwards to pile on their friend in a relieved huddle.
“Yona sorry! Y-Yona see a spider - get distracted - see shiny tunnel, everything else dark, Yona think follow the light and find friends!” She enveloped them in a bone-crushing hug, her long fur smothering them just a little. “So sorry! Yona got so lost!”
Neighsay took a deep breath in through his nose.
He looked back at Gallus and Smoulder, who were staring at him in what he could only describe as deep apprehension.
“Uh,” ventured Smoulder. “Found her.”
“I can’t,” breathed Gallus, “go back,” he continued, “up there...”
Neighsay exhaled slowly.
He paced over to one of the flat, smooth facets of the wide crystal cave they were now in, peered at his reflection, and gingerly lifted his hoof from his eye.
“Easy, Gallus. We’ll be out of here in no time.” The dragon patted her friend comfortingly on the wing, and plonked herself down on the ground beside him. Her eyes flicked from Yona and the others to Chancellor Neighsay, and she winced.
“...That looks pretty bad. Got you with my tail, huh.”
“Mm,” a beat, “hm.”
“Dude. I am so sorry. Somecreature had my wings pinned.” She watched uneasily as the unicorn examined the rapidly-forming bruise over his eye. “...Are you okay?”
In silence, Neighsay retrieved his saddlebags from a snag halfway up the slope, straightened his robe, and peered up the way they came at the narrow, uneven walls and ceiling. His hoof lifted, pressed against the smooth crystal of the slope, and tested the grip. There was none. He glanced over his shoulder to take stock of the yak and the earth pony, then down at the griffon curled up in shock with his belly to the ground. He didn’t need to do a calculation.
As he made his way past them all and into the centre of the large cavern, the chatter died down.
“Up,” he snapped tersely, “all of you!” As they scrambled to their feet, he didn’t bother wondering if it was the EEA Officiator’s Voice, the hoof-stomp, or the black eye that had really caught their attention. “Everycreature stand still.”
Neighsay peered around at the strange, iridescent crystals that made up the walls of this new cave offshoot, and sighed at the realisation there were multiple identical exits and no signs to tell which one led where. He closed his eyes and focused, and his horn sparked to life. The light was faint, but the spell was a subtle one, and he stepped forwards blindly, turning his head and tilting his horn this way and that until the faintest whisper of a breeze murmured past. He opened his eyes and peered suspiciously down the tunnel he found himself facing.
“Single file behind me. Yona, up front!” He glared at her fiercely as her ears drooped and she hurried to do as she was told. “I would like a word.”
Five minutes later, in the silence that hung around them like a thundercloud as they made their way up through a crystal-lined tunnel, Neighsay tried to reassure himself that making a student cry was not, and had never been, grounds for reprimand.
It did not make him feel any better.